Compressing simple molecular solids with hydrogen at extremely high pressures, University of Rochester engineers and physicists have, for the first time, created material that is superconducting at room temperature.

In the period after the discovery of high-temperature superconductors, there wasn't a good conceptual understanding of why those compounds worked. While there was a burst of progress toward higher temperatures, it quickly ground to a halt, largely because it was fueled by trial and error. Recent years brought a better understanding of the mechanisms that enable superconductivity, and we're seeing a second burst of rapidly rising temperatures.

Since its discovery more than a century ago, superconductivity has come to play a powerful role in many modern day technologies, such as maglev trains and MRI scans, but its utility has been limited by the need for extremely cool operating temperatures. Scientists are now claiming a big breakthrough in this area, creating what they say is the first material capable of superconductivity at room temperature.

A team of physicists in New York has discovered a material that conducts electricity with perfect efficiency at room temperature — a long-sought scientific milestone. The hydrogen, carbon and sulfur compound operates as a superconductor at up to 59 degrees Fahrenheit, the team reported today in Nature. That’s more than 50 degrees hotter than the previous high-temperature superconductivity record set last year.

Fulfilling a decades-old quest, this week researchers report creating the first superconductor that does not have to be cooled for its electrical resistance to vanish. There’s a catch: The new room temperature superconductor only works at a pressure equivalent to about three-quarters of that at the center of Earth. But if researchers can stabilize the material at ambient pressure, dreamed-of applications of superconductivity could be within reach, such as low-loss power lines and ultrapowerful superconducting magnets that don’t need refrigeration, for MRI machines and maglev trains.

Compressing simple molecular solids with hydrogen at extremely high pressures, University of Rochester engineers and physicists have, for the first time, created material that is superconducting at room temperature.

For the first time, a team of scientists say they’ve built a superconducting material — one that permits the totally unimpeded flow of electricity — that works at room temperature.

Scientists have created a mystery material that seems to conduct electricity without any resistance at temperatures of up to about 15 °C. That’s a new record for superconductivity, a phenomenon usually associated with very cold temperatures. The material itself is poorly understood, but it shows the potential of a class of superconductors discovered in 2015.

Some 322 light-years away in the constellation Libra lies one of the most extreme and hottest worlds discovered by astronomers so far. Launched into Earth orbit last December, the European Space Agency’s shiny new exoplanet-hunting satellite CHaracterising ExOPlanet Satellite (or CHEOPS) spotted exoplanet WASP-189b, a gas giant circling close to one of the hottest known stars with a planetary system.

In order to keep water from evaporating from the soil, farmers will often cover the ground around their crop plants with sheets of polyethylene plastic. There could soon be a more eco-friendly alternative, though, in the form of soybean oil-coated sand.

Farmers often need to regulate soil temperature, reduce weeds, and minimize water loss. Agricultural mulch can help farmers do so.

The monsoon season — that period from mid-June through September that each year brings rains to the Mojave Desert and other areas of the Southwest from the tropical coast of Mexico — has been a dud this year.