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In 2024, superconductivity — the flow of electricity with zero resistance — was discovered in three different materials. Two times that advance the understanding of the event book. The third cut it off completely. “This is an unusual form of superconductivity that many people say is impossible,” he said. Ashwin Vishwanatha physicist at Harvard University who was not involved in the discoveries.

Since 1911, when Dutch scientist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes first observed the loss of electrical resistance, superconductivity has fascinated physicists. Therein lies the pure mystery of how this happens: The phenomenon requires electrons, which carry electricity, to pair up. Electrons repel each other, so how do they combine?

Then there’s the technological promise: Already, superconductivity has enabled the development of MRI machines and fast particle collisions. If physicists fully understand how and when the phenomenon occurs, perhaps they can engineer a wire that superconducts electricity under everyday conditions rather than exclusively at low temperatures, as it is now. World-changing technologies—lossless power grids, magnetically levitating cars—could follow.

A series of recent discoveries have both added to the mystery of superconductivity and raised optimism. “It seems, in materials, that superconductivity is everywhere,” said Matthew Yankowitza physicist at the University of Washington.

The discoveries stem from a recent revolution in materials science: All three new instances of superconductivity arise in devices assembled from flat sheets of atoms. These materials exhibit unprecedented flexibility; at the push of a button, physicists can switch them between conducting, insulating, and more exotic properties—a modern form of alchemy that has fueled the search for superconductivity.

Now it seems more likely that various factors can cause the phenomenon. Just as birds, bees and dragonflies all fly using different wing structures, materials seem to combine electrons in different ways. Although researchers debate exactly what is happening in the various two-dimensional materials in question, they expect that the growing zoo of superconductors will help them achieve a more universal view. look at the attractive event.

Pairing of Electrons

The case for Kamerlingh Onnes’s observations (and superconductivity found in other extremely cold metals) was finally broken in 1957. John Bardeen, Leon Cooper, and John Robert Schrieffer Know that at low temperatures, the jittery atomic lattice of a material quietens, so more dangerous effects occur. The electrons slowly pull the protons into the lattice, forcing them in to create an excess positive charge. That deformation, known as a phonon, can capture the second electron, which becomes a “Cooper pair.” Cooper pairs can all merge into a single quantum entity in a way that singletons cannot. The resulting quantum soup is free of leakage between the atoms of the material, which would normally block the flow of electricity.

Bardeen, Cooper, and Schrieffer’s theory of phonon-based superconductivity earned them the physics Nobel Prize in 1972. But it turns out that this is not the whole story. In the 1980s, physicists discovered that copper-rich crystals called cuprates can superconduct at higher temperatures, where atomic jiggles wash out phonons. Other similar examples followed.