Okay, so probably more efficient electronics and power grids, MRI machines without helium, probably easier maglev tech, …?
Anything electric would be dramatically improved. Electric car range, consumer devices like computers and phones would have a huge jump in efficiency, etc. You name it basically.
Wireless charging of mobile devices generates lots of heat which then degrades the battery. If we had superconductors, the charger wouldn’t heat up at all no matter how high the current is. The chemical reactions inside the battery might still generate heat, but the rest of the system wouldn’t.
The chemistry obviously has its limitations too, but as far as the charger and internal electronics of the device are concerned, having superconductors would speed up the process.
The potential for tech miniaturization alone is a massive deal.
Right now, one of the biggest obstacles toward packing more transistors into a given space is the fact that they radiate a shit ton of heat which must be removed by close to immediate contact with the heat sink.
Without the need to deal with a shit ton of waste heat, instead of only having one, or only a couple layers of transistors in a processor, you can stack that shit high. Volumetric processing. Instead of wider chips, we could have taller chips. Hell we could stop calling them chips, and start calling them blocks!
If our processors could be as dense vertically as they are horizontally, we would see entire orders of magnitude more processing power, and, because a lot of energy is not being lost to heat, it’s actually being used productively. Or in other words, you need less energy and yet can accomplish even more work.
I read in another comment somewhere that introducing a superconductor wouldn’t change the properties of the semiconductor bits. So the transistors themselves would still produce heat. But there are also full-conductor bits that produce heat that might be eliminated.
It would take maglev from a laboratory technology to a common one. That would be an enormous boon to rail tech, especially in high density corridors.
A common one everywhere except for the US *
especially in high density corridors.
It would require building additional tracks (that would be expensive to maintain), so doubt it.
I don’t disagree with you, but for the sake of keeping a hopeful tone, let’s say that all of this is in Minecraft.
Everything that has lots of wired coil (motors, generators, turbines, wireless charging)
Less resistance = less energy lost in these endless wire coils.
More efficient battery technology. Imagine being able to have a battery in your laptop that lasts for weeks.
Can you elaborate on this? I always thought the limits on batteries was the energy density of the chemistry rather than heat/conductivity of the components. What am I missing?
All computers becomes instantly outdated by what amount to 50 years of speed increase.
You could be a crypto bro on a Raspberry Pi.
Hell, someone might finally max out Flight Simulator X.
Home mag-lev. Build the super-conductor into the flooring of your home. Equip heavy furniture and appliances with electromagnets in the feet. Dial up the power on the magnets and the furniture will float up and you can slide it to it’s new location. Dial down the magnets and furniture will settle back to the ground.
