IN A video seen by millions on social media, a thin, grey puck floats on one edge atop a magnet. It never fully levitates and so isn鈥檛 quite the smoking gun it should be. Its creators say the puck is a revolutionary new material, one that could transform science and technology. Others are sceptical that it really is what they say it is. Either way, the puck has generated an intense wave of interest and that, in of itself, could be valuable.
Superconductors, materials that perfectly conduct electricity without losing any energy to resistance, were first discovered more than a century ago. Yet our understanding of how they work and our ability to make them are both limited.
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The best description of what causes superconductivity comes from a framework developed in the 1950s called BCS theory. This says superconductivity is the result of electrons pairing up in such a way that they avoid generating electrical resistance when they move, but it tells us little of use about how to make such a material.
That hasn鈥檛 stopped the search. However, every superconductor found and confirmed so far only works under the extreme conditions of ultra-low temperatures and ultra-high pressures. This makes them impractical for most applications.
If one were found that worked in a more comfortable environment, it could transform technologies that use electricity and enable everything from making the power grid more environmentally friendly to bringing nuclear fusion closer to viability.
So it is no wonder a little puck that might just be a room-temperature, ambient-pressure superconductor has grabbed a lot of attention.
The history of superconductors is littered with claims that haven鈥檛 stood up to further scrutiny, so scepticism is, of course, the right approach. But with research groups already racing to try to replicate the experiments, this flurry of activity could be just what the search for new superconductors needs to make progress.
