When your laptop or smartphone heats up, it’s due to energy that’s lost in translation. The same goes for power lines that transmit electricity between cities. In fact, around 10 percent of the generated energy is lost in the transmission of electricity. That’s because the electrons that carry electric charge do so as free agents, bumping and grazing against other electrons as they move collectively through power cords and transmission lines. All this jostling generates friction, and, ultimately, heat.
But when electrons pair up, they can rise above the fray and glide through a material without friction. This “superconducting” behavior occurs in a range of materials, though at ultracold temperatures. If these materials can be made to superconduct closer to room temperature, they could pave the way for zero-loss devices, such as heat-free laptops and phones, and ultraefficient power lines. But first, scientists will have to understand how electrons pair up in the first place.
Now, new snapshots of particles pairing up in a cloud of atoms can provide clues to how electrons pair up in a superconducting material. The snapshots were taken by MIT physicists and are the first images that directly capture the pairing of fermions — a major class of particles that includes electrons, as well as protons, neutrons, and certain types of atoms.
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