Someone was saying "can we just not with April fools" this year because everything is so grim and dire in the world... but I think this is such a perfect level we need. I could go for more whimsy like this.
This one was good. It was pretty low-stakes and not anything that would impact anyone. For a while there, companies like Google were announcing products that sounded like a good idea, but turned out were just them trolling everyone over things people had been requesting for a long time.
IMO a made up "artist conception" picture on an article like this would have been perfectly appropriate, we've seen worse (think of the whole NEOM thingy).
There was more than enough skepticism and cautious optimism too. While it sounded too soon to be real, it wasn't unlike carbon nanotubes, graphene, or solid state batteries — previously unachievable material-tech getting validation in the lab, with a 20yr pipeline for global production. With even nuclear fusion being achieved in very specific / limited instances in the last decade, it's not inconceivable to hope that maybe RTSC are just around the corner.
The joke is, more or less, you can reduce everyone into two piles. But that's almost assuredly wrong.
It's very very hard to have what most people would call "autistic" levels of rationality in discourse in this world. But if you hold yourself to high standards, you quickly compute the logical argument OP is making (people who were excited were gullible marks etc. etc.) and realize it's wrong in several different ways (happy to explicate if unclear).
This is, of course, very easy if you were A) excited and B) didn't think it'd come to pass. Also observing that A does not imply B and vice versa is the minimally sufficient observation to rule out OPs comment being rational*
* n.b. "rational" means something akin to "not affected by a psychoactive disorder" in everyday discourse. In philosophy / logic class, it means, the statements x conclusion are internally coherent. "The moon is made of cheese because it is yellow" is rational, "The moon is made of cheese because Teddy Roosevelt likes cheese" is irrational. "The moon is made of cheese because the Pope likes cheese" is rational with the implied premises "God controls all, and he loves the pope"
Why are room temperature superconductors an 'obviously-impossible' technological claim?
Asking since we've managed to increase superconductor temperature several times in the past, right? (to ~ -130 degrees celsius right now IIRC). Why is our current temperature of, say ~30 degrees celsius special?
If you look at a list of known superconductors and their transition temperatures - it appears that the difficulty of getting a material to superconduct is proportional some unfriendly power of the absolute temperature.
Superconducting does seem much easier under a few hundred GPa's of pressure - but that's less convenient to maintain than liquid helium cooling.
> Why are room temperature superconductors an 'obviously-impossible' technological claim?
Disclaimer - all I know about superconductors, I know from high school physics, and I left high school some 35 years ago so I know the State of the Art is waaaay over there somewhere now, and here I am still playing with my mercury cuprate stuff.
Anyway.
You have a car. It's similar to my car. It has a 200bhp engine, weighs about two tonnes, and tops out at about 100mph. How would you make that a 200mph car?
Well, you'd need more energy, for a start, but E=1/2mv^2 turns into sqrt(2E/m) right, so you need four times as much power for twice the speed. This is okay. You're not getting 800bhp out of the engine you have now but it's doable. You can buy cars with 800bhp engines, these days maybe you'd be looking at some electric motor.
But you're still not doing 200mph because the drag increases as the square of the speed too, so you'd actually need 1600bhp to get to 200mph, which is still doable but opens up even more problems because now everything needs to be heavier to cope with the power.
So all else being the same you're actually onto about 2400bhp or so before you crack 200mph.
Which you achieve just as you either run out of road, or more likely petrol, at £1.50 a litre, so you're not taking too many attempts at it.
Anyway, the tl;dr - it's not just one thing that's stopping you getting that transition point higher, it's a bunch of stuff that interacts in weird ways.
1, Reading the Headline on HN) "Man, this is probably going to be something more practical, but I wish they were superconducting go-karts or golf-carts to get around the facility in."
2, Reading the article) "...okay, I was right? Kinda? Huh. Something feels off. Wait a-"
3, Remembering the Date) "FUCK. OK, CERN got me. Good one. Still want a superconducting kart though."
I'd be cautious of residual Higgs Booson particles in the tunnels. They can cause unexpected phase shifts if encountered, which may expose the driver to unexpected hazards.
It took me a while to notice the first april, but
actually the image was too unbelievable. But if
such karts were possible, I bet the guys at CERN
would absolutely use it. And then post on youtube.
We know how things happen in "professional research".
85 comments
> explained school director, Rosalina Pfirsich, looking up from her storybook
Pfirsich in German means Peach, as in Princess Peach :D
> schoolteacher Yoshi Kyouryuu, mid-way through painting spots on eggs
I was even going to point out how ironic it is that the mans first name and last name fit together so well.
In my defense I only got as far as idraulico and missed the "Mamma mia, they're super!"
Vibe-wise they all feel closer to Raytheon and I sure as fuck wouldn't want to see an attempt at a whimsical joke from Raytheon.
They may have had more success with another image. AI slop made us lazy.
It's very very hard to have what most people would call "autistic" levels of rationality in discourse in this world. But if you hold yourself to high standards, you quickly compute the logical argument OP is making (people who were excited were gullible marks etc. etc.) and realize it's wrong in several different ways (happy to explicate if unclear).
This is, of course, very easy if you were A) excited and B) didn't think it'd come to pass. Also observing that A does not imply B and vice versa is the minimally sufficient observation to rule out OPs comment being rational*
* n.b. "rational" means something akin to "not affected by a psychoactive disorder" in everyday discourse. In philosophy / logic class, it means, the statements x conclusion are internally coherent. "The moon is made of cheese because it is yellow" is rational, "The moon is made of cheese because Teddy Roosevelt likes cheese" is irrational. "The moon is made of cheese because the Pope likes cheese" is rational with the implied premises "God controls all, and he loves the pope"
Asking since we've managed to increase superconductor temperature several times in the past, right? (to ~ -130 degrees celsius right now IIRC). Why is our current temperature of, say ~30 degrees celsius special?
Superconducting does seem much easier under a few hundred GPa's of pressure - but that's less convenient to maintain than liquid helium cooling.
> Why are room temperature superconductors an 'obviously-impossible' technological claim?
Disclaimer - all I know about superconductors, I know from high school physics, and I left high school some 35 years ago so I know the State of the Art is waaaay over there somewhere now, and here I am still playing with my mercury cuprate stuff.
Anyway.
You have a car. It's similar to my car. It has a 200bhp engine, weighs about two tonnes, and tops out at about 100mph. How would you make that a 200mph car?
Well, you'd need more energy, for a start, but E=1/2mv^2 turns into sqrt(2E/m) right, so you need four times as much power for twice the speed. This is okay. You're not getting 800bhp out of the engine you have now but it's doable. You can buy cars with 800bhp engines, these days maybe you'd be looking at some electric motor.
But you're still not doing 200mph because the drag increases as the square of the speed too, so you'd actually need 1600bhp to get to 200mph, which is still doable but opens up even more problems because now everything needs to be heavier to cope with the power.
So all else being the same you're actually onto about 2400bhp or so before you crack 200mph.
Which you achieve just as you either run out of road, or more likely petrol, at £1.50 a litre, so you're not taking too many attempts at it.
Anyway, the tl;dr - it's not just one thing that's stopping you getting that transition point higher, it's a bunch of stuff that interacts in weird ways.
1, Reading the Headline on HN) "Man, this is probably going to be something more practical, but I wish they were superconducting go-karts or golf-carts to get around the facility in."
2, Reading the article) "...okay, I was right? Kinda? Huh. Something feels off. Wait a-"
3, Remembering the Date) "FUCK. OK, CERN got me. Good one. Still want a superconducting kart though."
We know how things happen in "professional research".
> Each kart is turbo-boosted by 64 superconducting engines,” explains project leader Mario Idraulico
I guess we can now call you Mario 'Kart' Idraulico.
Oh wait.
Thank you CERN, that was a smart one.
(Half-Life joke)