Superconductivity

Superconductivity is a phenomenon in which certain materials exhibit zero electrical resistance and expulsion of magnetic fields when cooled below a certain temperature, called the critical temperature (Tc). At Tc, the material undergoes a phase transition and enters a superconducting state.

Superconductivity was first discovered by Dutch physicist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes in 1911. Since then, scientists have discovered various types of superconductors, including conventional, high-temperature, and topological superconductors.

Superconductivity has numerous practical applications, such as in MRI machines, particle accelerators, power transmission, and magnetic levitation trains. However, the practical applications of superconductivity are limited by the need for extremely low temperatures to achieve the superconducting state.

Room temperature superconductivity: As September 2021, the highest temperature at which superconductivity has been observed was around 15 degrees Celsius (59 degrees Fahrenheit) at ambient pressure, achieved by a team of researchers at the University of Rochester and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, using a material composed of carbon, sulfur, and hydrogen known as carbonaceous sulfur hydride. This was a significant breakthrough in the field of superconductivity, as it represented a considerable increase in the temperature at which superconductivity can be observed.

However, it is important to note that this material was only superconducting at extremely high pressures, in excess of 267 gigapascals (GPa), which is over two million times the atmospheric pressure at sea level. Therefore, it is not yet feasible to use this material in practical applications, and further research is needed to develop superconductors that can operate at high temperatures and lower pressures.

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AI Technical Trustability Update

While working on an update to my RF Cafe Espresso Engineering Workbook project to add a couple calculators about FM sidebands (available soon). The good news is that AI provided excellent VBA code to generate a set of Bessel function plots. The bad news is when I asked for a table showing at which modulation indices sidebands 0 (carrier) through 5 vanish, none of the agents got it right. Some were really bad. The AI agents typically explain their reason and method correctly, then go on to produces bad results. Even after pointing out errors, subsequent results are still wrong. I do a lot of AI work and see this often, even with subscribing to professional versions. I ultimately generated the table myself. There is going to be a lot of inaccurate information out there based on unverified AI queries, so beware.

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