Measurements on a superconducting material show an abrupt transition between a normal metal and a "strange" metal. The really strange thing, however, is that this abruptness disappears when the temperature falls. "We don't have any theoretical machinery for this," says theoretical physicist Jan Zaanen, coauthor of a Science article, "this is something that only a quantum computer can calculate."
Superconductors have provided surprises for over a century. In 1911, Heike Kamerlingh Onnes in Leiden discovered that mercury will conduct electrical current without any resistance at 4.2 Kelvin (4.5 degrees above absolute zero, or -273.15 degrees Celsius).
The phenomenon was explained only in 1957, and in 1986, a new type of superconductivity was discovered in complex copper oxides. This high-temperature superconductivity even survives at balmy temperatures of 92 Kelvin.
If it could be extended toward room temperature, superconductivity would mean unprecedented technology applications, but so far, the phenomenon has dodged a complete explanation. This not for a lack of effort by physicists such as Jan Zaanen, co-author and house theoretician with a group of Stanford experimental physicists who published an article in Science.
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