Scientists concoct material that superconducts at room temperature

Is this some sort of early April the first joke?

More journalistic puffery, along with a bundle of speculation it seems.

<"Reportedly, a pair of mad scientists from Canada and Germany have developed a silicon-hydrogen compound that can superconduct at room temperature">

<"....the work done so far was classified as "theoretical,"....">

So nothing has been made or developed at all, except an interesting picture, which Salvador Dali might once have been proud of.

Kind Regards....

The research was funded by the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, the Canada Research Chairs program, the Canada Foundation for Innovation and the Max Planck Institute, according to EETimes.com

I will believe it when I see it Independantly varified (and duplicated) by "happy" scientists.

From Science peer review vol.319 No. 5869 pg. 1506:

Superconductivity in Hydrogen Dominate Materials: Silane

M. I. Eremets,^1* I. A. Trojan,¹† S. A. Medvedev,¹ J. s. Tse,² Y. Yao²

The Metallization of hydrogen directly would require pressure in excess of 400 gigapascals (GPa), out of the reach of present experimental techniques. The dense group IVa hydrides attract considerable attention because hydrogen in these compounds is chemically precompressed and a metallic state is expected to be achievable at experimentally accessible pressures. We report the transformation of insulating molecular silane to a metal at 50 GPa, becoming superconducting at a transition temperature of T_c =17 kelvin at 96 and 120 GPa. The metallic phase has a close-packed structure with a high density of atomic hydrogen, creating a three-dimensional conducting network. These experimental findings support the idea of modeling metallic hydrogen with hydrogen-rich alloy.

(transcribed by me so any errors are mine and common law copywrited so their use is only with written permission)

When does 17^o kelvin = room temp. ? (Pluto?)

At higher pressures tested Tc was never higher than 11.3^o K

A room temp. superconductor would be BIG, but "theoretical" reported as Fact is a con game.

dissapointed (lots of ideas for room temp. SC)

Brad

The Engadget.com report is junk, and even the original posting at EEtimes had to be corrected, with the following: "Editor's Note: This is a slightly corrected version of the original story, which intimated that the silicon compound was tested at room temperature. It was not. However, nor was it "supercooled," so it is expected to lead to room-temperature superconductivity in the future." Nothing spreads faster than a lie.