Word: superconductors
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American scientists have eagerly pursued that future since last winter, when a burst of research activity rescued superconductors from relative obscurity. The excitement followed a discovery in the spring of 1986 by IBM scientists in Zurich. Their find: a metallic ceramic compound that became a superconductor at a temperature well above the previously achieved record of 23.2 Kelvin, or -418 degrees F. By year's end researchers were developing materials that became superconductors at higher and higher temperatures. At the University of Houston, a team led by Paul C.W. Chu set the currently recognized standard last February, when it produced...
...once a dazzling array of superconductor uses seemed tantalizingly possible. Researchers now estimate that high-speed computers using superconductors may be three to five years away. Farther off are 300-m.p.h. trains that float on magnetic cushions, which now exist as prototypes but may take at least a decade to perfect. Power lines that can meet a city's electric needs with superconductor cables may be even farther in the future...
...some new mechanism involved." That unexpected result, says Chu, played right into what he considers his group's strong suit: "We feel we have an advantage over some other groups because we are not confined to conventional thinking. We think wildly." Chu found that the compound remained a superconductor up to 52 K (-366 degrees F) when subjected to from 10,000 to 12,000 times normal atmospheric pressure...
Iowa's Finnemore compares the movement of the electrons in a superconductor to a crowd moving across a football field. "If they act as individual particles," he explains, "they will bump into each other and scatter. That's the equivalent of electrical resistance. But suppose someone starts counting cadence, and everyone locks arms and marches in step. Then even if one person falls into a chuckhole, he won't fall because his neighbors hold him up." Thus in a superconductor electrons move unhindered...
...recent advances in superconductivity. Says IBM Physicist John Baglin: "The question is not 'How can we take this material and do something everyone has wanted to do?' but 'How can we do something that no one has yet imagined?' " Some tongue-in- cheek suggestions overheard at a superconductor meeting: superconducting ballroom floors and rinks that would enable dancers and skaters literally to float through their motions...