It’s rare that condensed matter physics is the talk of the town. But recently a remarkable amount of Internet discussion and news coverage has revolved around a purported advance in the field: bombshell claims from a team of South Korean scientists professing to have discovered an ambient-pressure, room-temperature superconductor.
Of course, the boom-and-bust cycle of LK-99 is a classic demonstration of science in action. The scientific method worked as it should. But in the fading afterglow of LK-99’s social-media-fueled rise and fall, it’s probably worth examining one dimension of what might’ve driven all that excitement in the first place.
Superconductivity alone isn’t enough. For a material to be useful in power generation and electronics, it would need to have many other exceptional qualities. Some superconductors lose their capacity to freely transport electricity at high currents or in the presence of magnetic fields, yet both abilities are necessary for an electrical component to be practical.