RUMOURS of a superconductor that works at room temperature have been circulating for several months. Now South African physicist Johan Prins has finally published his results in a peer-reviewed journal – a feat that no previous claim of room-temperature superconductivity has ever achieved.
Superconductors transmit current with zero resistance, so no electricity is lost as heat. That creates the promise of ultra-efficient electronic devices and power cables, but the first superconductors to be discovered only worked at temperatures close to absolute zero. The discovery of relatively high-temperature oxide superconductors in the late 1980s raised hopes for materials that might superconduct at…
