Scientists theorize that having found one unconventional superconductor like PuCoGa5, they may find more in the future. Making the research even more intriguing is the fact that plutonium is a base actinide material of the compound. This new class of magnetically mediated superconductors might encompass a broad range of materials, metals to oxides, and be the path toward superconductor science’s ultimate goal to someday synthesize a “room-temperature” superconductor that would be the basis for the dissipation-less flow of electric current through power lines, and for an even more minute generation of computer chips.
The discovery is the result of collaboration between the Laboratory’s Materials Science and Technology and Theoretical divisions. In addition to Curro, the team includes Tod Caldwell, Eric Bauer, Luis Morales, Yunkyu Bang, Matthias Graf, Alexander Balatsky, Joe Thompson and John Sarrao.
From a LANL press release.
This can’t be good…
Back when I was doing solid state physics, plutonium was somewhat notorious for its unusual crystal structure – it melts at a relatively low temperature, and between absolute zero and the melting point it goes through 6 distinct phases, more than any other element.
Of course the only people who actually get to do experimental research on Pu seem to be at places like Los Alamos, for some reason…
Just what the world needed:
A really good reason for spreading lots of plutonium around.
There is a God and the bastard has a sense of humor! :-)
…is that a SOUTH Korean helped discover this stuff.
is very active – we (at the Physical Review journals) were surprised when we first put our research journals online, of the top 10 universities and other research institutions downloading physics papers, 2-3 Korean universities were right at the top – Seoul National University in particular. Partly because it’s just a very big university, but partly also apparently a cultural approach to knowledge quite different from that in large American institutions.
It’s also interesting, if you look at research activity levels, that while nuclear physics has been on a decline in the US and Western Europe (nuclear meaning research into nuclei and nuclear reactions, not the very high energy particle stuff), it’s still rather high in some other countries: Korea, India, Pakistan, China, Israel, Brazil, etc…