The usually genteel field of condensed matter physics has been roiled recently by controversy and acrimony over reports of breakthroughs in superconductivity at higher temperatures than ever previously achieved. This has been discussed here in earlier posts:
- “arXiv Preprint Server Cancels Papers, Bans Researcher over ‘Inflammatory Content’ ” (2022-03-16)
- “Nature Retracts Room Temperature Superconductivity Paper” (2022-09-28)
- “Room Temperature Superconductivity? ‘This Time for Sure!’ ” (2023-03-09)
There has been a retraction of a high-profile paper in Nature, allegations of fraud, scientists banned from posting preprints on arXiv for “inflammatory content”, and refusal to share experimental data due to researchers licensing their methods to a company they founded that claims to have raised US$ 20 million to commercialse the technology.
This video provides an introduction to superconductivity, the more than a century’s long quest to find superconductors that operate at higher temperatures and under stronger magnetic fields, and how superconductivity is detected in experiments done under extreme conditions such as compression in a diamond anvil press.