xpost from https://lemmy.world/post/2494271
Researchers have discovered a new compound called LK-99 that could enable the fabrication of room-temperature, ambient-pressure superconductors. Two separate sources have provided very preliminary confirmations of this breakthrough, including a simulation indicating it could be possible and a short video from Chinese researchers that seems to indicate some properties of superconductivity.
Why not? Lots of technologies are literally just about mixing chemicals together, and we could have done that at any point in time prior, we just didn’t.
Lithium ion battery technology is literally just mixing materials together. We’ve had access to lithium for centuries but we didn’t turn that technology into batteries until about 30 years ago.
It’s not the same. This is almost like alchemy.