Why is the recent news around the LK-99 room-temperature superconductor such a big deal? What material impact would those findings have on electronics and modern technology?

  • Sem@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    8
    arrow-down
    4
    ·
    1 year ago

    For example, you can resolve a lot of blockers of scaling quantum computers based on superconductive qubits.

    • Fermion@feddit.nl
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      Quantum computing needs to be cold to avoid thermal noise from destroying coherence. A room temperature superconductor probably doesn’t enable room temperature quantum computing.

      • Sem@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        1 year ago

        I think that if you can scale your physical qubits easily you will be able to use all the power of error correction codes. Even a thousand of physical qubits per one logical qubit should be feasible if you do not need to support superconductivity by helium coolers.

        • Fermion@feddit.nl
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          Error correction relies on the majority of values to remain unchanged. I don’t think that assumption holds for qubits at room temperature. I’ll admit that I’m not well read enough to be certain.

          Room temperature superconductors would be great for a lot of applications, but I don’t think they do that much to enable quantum computing.

          Afaik superconducting quantum computers are operated well below the critical temperature for copper. They wouldn’t go through that extra effort if it wasn’t necessary.

        • Fermion@feddit.nl
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          1 year ago

          At the temps needed, regular copper is superconducting.

          It could be helpful in some of the intermediary stages to reduce heat production, but it’s not going to be a major linchpin for quantum computing. They’ll still need cryostats and liquid helium cooling.