Dreams of Superconductivity

The more I learn about engineering, the more I dream about the possibilities for the future. And as I marvel at my Droid smartphone's abilities (I can say "navigate to nearest Taco Bell" and it does), I also realize how far we have to go before we really hit our peak. I wrote an essay long ago that argued that as the Industrial Age has ripened, the number of major innovations has tapered off, while the number of minor (incremental) innovations has exploded. You don't see flying cars, you see cars getting slightly higher gas mileage. You don't see free energy, you see cleaner nuclear plants.

And so when obviously important, needed, plausible innovations are apparent it makes me sad that I will probably not see them bear fruit during my productive lifetime. The two examples I am talking about are obviously fusion and ambient superconductivity. For fusion, see about one in three of my entries in 2009.

But as for ambient superconductivity, I have to say: the possibilities are endless. Besides wind generators that produced infinite power, motors with infinite torque, long-distance power generation with zero current loss, solenoids with infinite strength, reduction in wire size by a factor of 100, and a cadre of other uses, the fact that structures like the Large Hadron Collider could reach much higher field strengths leads to further potential for major innovations. Maybe a wormhole isn't feasible to artificially create and maintain...unless you had superconductive wire that could hold the current necessary without melting.
Or what if you took a superconductive wire and plunged one end into the sun? In theory (see Larry Niven's Ringworld series) the wire could not be different temperature at any point along it, so the entire wire would heat up to the temperature of the sun. Plunge the other end into a lake...and evaporate the lake. Or plunge the other end into the Atlantic Ocean west of Africa, and the evaporated water could irrigate the entire Sahara Desert!

For me, the dream is of building linear actuators about the same size as human muscle, but a thousand times the strength. Powered exoskeletons become very realistic if you no longer have to worry about overheating your solenoids.


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