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fearout

@ fearout @kbin.social

Posts
18
Comments
400
Joined
3 yr. ago

  • First room temperature and pressure superconductor discovered

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  • Long-distance energy transfer without energy loss will make it possible to connect more energy grids and sources together, so stuff like the saharan desert providing solar power to Europe, for example, suddenly becomes feasible. Maglev trains will no longer require lots of power to run, since they could utilize superconductor magnetic levitation. You could make super-efficient processors that wouldn’t really heat up at all. Superconductors are also key to quantum computers, so expect lots of advancements in that field as well. They will also make it much easier to build and run fusion power experiments.

    Lots of tech in general would benefit from this discovery, stuff like MRIs, electric vehicles, space telescopes or particle accelerators would become way more efficient, cheaper and easier to produce.

  • First room temperature and pressure superconductor discovered

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  • Reposting my comment from another thread to add a bit of context in case anyone’s curious.

    So I read the paper, and here’s a tldr about how their material apparently gains its properties.

    It is hypothesized that superconductivity properties emerge from very specific strains induced in the material. Hence why most of the discovered superconductors require either to be cooled down to very low temperatures, or to be under high pressures. Both shrink the material.

    What this paper claims is that they have achieved a similar effect chemically by replacing some lead ions with copper ions, which are a bit smaller (87 pm for Cu vs 133 pm for Pb). This shrinks the material by 0.48%, and that added strain induces superconductivity. This is why it apparently works at room temperature — you no longer need high pressures or extreme cold to create the needed deformation.

    Can’t really comment on how actually feasible or long-lasting this effect is, but it looks surprisingly promising. At least as a starting point for future experiments. Can’t wait for other labs’ reproduction attempts. If it turns out to be true, this is an extremely important and world-changing discovery.

    Fingers crossed :)

  • Italy wildfires encircle Palermo as temperatures hit 47C

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  • Yeah, it’s definitely very rare. I can’t seem to find that article right now, but I remember reading that these events account for something like 0.1–0.3% of all wildfires. So while insignificant as an actual cause in general, with 100k+ wildfires happening each year it means that a couple of hundreds per year should still be caused by those. Which is still like one every 1-2 days on average.

    Not enough to be a noticeable threat, but enough to cause a pedantic comment mentioning those as existing :)

  • The First Room-Temperature Ambient-Pressure Superconductor

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  • Oh I bet there are several labs that are already on it :)

  • The First Room-Temperature Ambient-Pressure Superconductor

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  • So I read the paper. Here’s a tldr about how their material apparently gains its properties.

    It is hypothesized that superconductivity properties emerge from very specific strains induced in the material. Hence why most of the discovered superconductors require either to be cooled down to very low temperatures, or to be under high pressure. Both shrink the material.

    What this paper claims is that they have achieved a similar effect chemically by replacing some lead ions with copper ions, which are a bit smaller (87 pm for Cu vs 133 pm for Pb). This shrinks the material by 0.48%, and that added strain induces superconductivity. This is why it apparently works at room temperature — you no longer need high pressures or extreme cold to create the needed deformation.

    Can’t really comment on how actually feasible or long-lasting this effect is, but it looks surprisingly promising. At least as a starting point for future experiments. Can’t wait for other labs’ reproduction attempts. If it turns out to be true, this is an extremely important and world-changing discovery.

    Fingers crossed :)

  • The First Room-Temperature Ambient-Pressure Superconductor

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  • Like a hot tub: Water temperatures off Florida soar over 100 degrees

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  • That’s a great write up, thanks. Haven’t heard about the connection between the Amazon rainforest and African diatoms, that’s fascinating.

    I thought lake Chad started to dry up mostly in the 60s. I went to read some more about that and I just can’t not mention that the original lake is apparently called Mega-Chad :)

    Anyway, in case anyone else is interested to read about ancient microorganisms fuelling Amazon’s growth, here’s a really interesting paper that describes this system in great detail.

  • The most fitting end to r/Place

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  • Better late then never. Glad to see the message is so clear :)

  • Like a hot tub: Water temperatures off Florida soar over 100 degrees

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  • Holy crap. So coral bleaching in that area is basically guaranteed at this point. And some plankton and algae can’t really survive if those temperatures persist.

    Also, as temperature rises, water holds less and less dissolved oxygen. At the same time metabolic rates of fish increase, which makes them require even more oxygen. The scary thing about that is at some point they lose the ability to get enough oxygen to sustain life, and then bam — the whole species dies in a day.

    Remember those rivers of millions of dead fish? Yeah, it’s like that.

  • Russian lawmakers vote to raise conscription age limit to 30

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  • They have clearly demonstrated that they do not. But like 70+% of the federal budget is pumped, dug or mined from the ground, and the needed workforce for that is rather small, so it’s not like they give a shit.

  • No Need for Twitter—TikTok Users Can Now Make Text Posts

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  • I dislike that piece of Chinese spyware as much as the next guy here, but that take is incredibly rude and condescending.

    Young people tend to read as much if not more than older generations.

  • Italy wildfires encircle Palermo as temperatures hit 47C

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  • While these are more prevalent, they’re not the only causes. For example, sparks from rock falls also cause natural wildfires, as well as spontaneous combustion. The latter is caused by oxidation, bacterial fermentation and other natural processes.

    Manure piles can spontaneously combust during conditions of extreme heat. Cotton and linen can ignite when they come into contact with polyunsaturated vegetable oils. Hay is quite prone to spontaneous combustion when specific moisture/heat levels are reached.

    So while near densely populated areas idiots are way more likely causes, sometimes forests do self-ignite. And the rate of those events increases during heatwaves.

  • I hate horns, so I made this

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  • Might be an unpopular opinion, but is this really the type of content that people enjoy here? Sorry, but it looks like a kid made it. “Haha horn bad”.

    Stuff like this is why it’s way harder than it should be to get people who aren’t into urbanism to understand the whole premise of communities like these. It drives away reasonable discussion imo. Or is this mostly a meme community?

  • General Megathread for Elon Musk Nonsense and Twitter News

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  • No one is going to post news/articles here and then discuss them as they would in a regular post. It won’t get bumped up on the subscribed page if something interesting happens. Most of the comments here are going be about the megathread itself.

    So this is effectively banning all the discussion concerning all of his companies. Which might be something you want to do, every community can decide for itself what kind of stuff they want to forbid after all. But I feel like it should be said directly, not via making a catch-all megathread.

  • In Phoenix, 4.5 million residents are living in hell: this is life at 113°F degrees (45 °C) for more than 20 days

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  • I googled it and it looks like ~80% of their water comes from within the state, and the rest mostly comes from Colorado, and I guess those guys wouldn’t object to a water deal even in case of secession. Not sure if secession is even possible in US though.

  • Antarctic sea ice levels dive in 'five-sigma event', as experts flag worsening consequences for planet

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  • Thanks. So I guess it doesn’t really measure anything in that field. Looks more like a strategy guideline and a set of techniques.

  • Google’s nightmare “Web Integrity API” wants a DRM gatekeeper for the web

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  • Get ready for subscription-based browsers requiring verified accounts, that share your personally identifiable public key with each website you visit.

    I really hope EU or FTC step in. That looks like a dangerous development.

  • Antarctic sea ice levels dive in 'five-sigma event', as experts flag worsening consequences for planet

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  • Interesting, haven’t heard about that. Can you give an example of how it’s used in business? What is actually measured?

  • Antarctic sea ice levels dive in 'five-sigma event', as experts flag worsening consequences for planet

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  • As was mentioned in another comment, it’s a statistical term that measures the standard deviation. It basically tells you how “far” from the center of the bell curve you are with your data points. The higher the sigma, the less likely it is that an observed event was a fluke.

    For example, 1-sigma event has a ~37% chance of being a “coincidence”, and 2-sigma has a chance of about 4.5%.

    In science, 3-sigma (0.135%) is the first publishable certainty, it’s when something becomes significant enough to start a discussion.

    And 5-sigma is the most common threshold for claiming discovery. 5-sigma events have a 0.0000287% chance of being a coincidence or some random happenstance. Or one in 3.5 million.

    Higgs boson discovery was announced after 5-sigma certainty was reached. It means that if that particle didn’t actually exist, the chance of the experiments producing observed results would be 1 in 3.5 mln.