In a game-changing twist in the quest for room-temperature superconduction, researchers have successfully broken the record distance for transmitting a super-current in which all of the electrons are spinning in the same direction.

Researchers from Leiden University cooled chrome dioxide, which can only transmit currents with a net spin, down to cryogenic temperatures to create a superconductor. They were then able to transmit a super-current with a net spin a distance of 600 nanometers on it.

While this is a puny distance for the naked eye, it is a breakthrough considering the fact that we are talking about quantum phenomena. “This seems like a small stretch — bacteria are bigger — but it lets electron pairs live long enough to work with,” the researchers say in a press release about the study, which was published in Physical Review X.

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