In 2021, I mentioned in this column science fiction’s creativity is often fueled by research in real life endeavors, one of the more prominent of which is superconductivity.
I said back then, “In a nutshell, when electrons travel along a conduit, friction slows things down. Physicists have a holy grail of finding material that offers frictionless conductivity at room temperature.”
News of research in South Korea came out last week involving this very topic. A preprint site for scientific papers called arXiv.org listed two papers (here and here) by Sukbae Lee and others indicating a breakthrough. Specifically, an amalgam of lead, copper, phosphorous and oxygen was found to display superconductive properties at higher temperatures.
Superconductivity, allowing for the resistance-free flow of electrons, has typically only been observed in extraordinarily cold materials, or those under extreme pressure. The Korean team claims to have found the holy grail of superconductivity I mentioned in 2021. Because of multiple instances in which past attempts failed deeper scrutiny or were not reproducible, some scientists have expressed skepticism for now. Although to be fair, scientists should always remain skeptical until reproducing experiments and finding similar results.
For now, we will await those further results to further fuel the fires of fiction. And, alliteration.
This week Pirates of the Milky Way and Agents of the Planetary Republic are both on sale for 99 cents. It’s a great time to pick up both of these 10-book box sets if you haven’t already.
Also, the publication date for Carpathians’ Shard, Book 4 in the Steam & Aether series, has been set for August 1. Jaqueline Sweet has once again produced a stunning cover. To celebrate, in the next week or so we will be running a sale or free days on one or more of the first three in the series for new readers. Stay tuned.
I love the covers of this series, Jaxon! The artwork is fantastic, the artist has captured the essence of the storyline perfectly! 🥰