In 1911, physicist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes aimed to lower mercury's temperature to as close to absolute zero as possible. He hoped to win a disagreement with Lord Kelvin, who thought metals would stop conducting electricity altogether at extremely low temperatures. Carefully manipulating a set of glass tubes, Kamerlingh Onnes and his team lowered the mercury's temperature to 3 K (-454 F). Suddenly, the mercury conducted electricity with zero resistance. Kamerlingh Onnes had just discovered superconductivity.
This single finding led to a worldwide investigation that's spanned a century. While it resolved one scientific debate, it created many more. The Department of Energy's Office of Science and its predecessors have spent decades supporting scientists investigating the mystery of why superconductivity occurs under a variety of circumstances.
The answer to this question holds major opportunities for scientific and technological development. About six percent of all electricity distributed in the U.S. is lost in transmission and distribution. Because superconductors don't lose current as they conduct electricity, they could enable ultra-efficient power grids and incredibly fast computer chips. Winding them into coils produces magnetic fields that could be used for highly-efficient generators and high-speed magnetic levitation trains. Unfortunately, technical challenges with both traditional and "high temperature" superconductors restrict their use.
"To the extent that Tesla and Edison introducing the use of electricity revolutionized our society, ambient superconductivity would revolutionize it once again," said J.C. Séamus Davis, a physicist who works with the Center for Emergent Superconductivity, a DOE Energy Frontier Research Center.
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