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GENEVA - It has been called an Alice in Wonderland investigation into the makeup of the universe — or dangerous tampering with nature that could spell doomsday. Whatever the case, the most powerful atom-smasher ever built comes online Wednesday, eagerly anticipated by scientists worldwide who have awaited this moment for two decades.

American Superconductor said it's the longest high temperature superconductor cable that's ever been installed. A piece of Long Island, N.Y.'s power grid has received an upgrade, with Devens, Mass.-based American Superconductor (Nasdaq: AMSC) announcing today that a section of high temperature superconductor cable was installed at a major interconnection point in the system. The 2,000-foot long cable, made with wire produced by American Superconductor, is the longest installation of high temperature superconductor, or HTS, cable in the world, according to the company, and the only HTS installation running at transmission voltage. The Long Island Power Authority has already flipped the...

ARGONNE, Ill. (April 4, 2008) – Superinsulation may sound like a marketing gimmick for a drafty attic or winter coat. But it is actually a newly discovered fundamental state of matter created by scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory in collaboration with several European institutions. This discovery opens new directions of inquiry in condensed matter physics and breaks ground for a new generation of microelectronics. Led by Argonne senior scientist Valerii Vinokur and Russian scientist Tatyana Baturina, an international team of scientists from Argonne, Germany, Russia and Belgium fashioned a thin film of titanium nitride which...

When chilled to 77 kelvins (–321 degrees Fahrenheit) or colder, so-called high-temperature superconductors such as the ceramic YBCO (yttrium barium copper oxide) begin to carry electricity without resistance, which produces a strong magnetic field without wasting energy. Liquid hydrogen (20 K, or –424 degrees F) could chill the superconductor as well as power a hydrogen fuel cell to send electricity through it, he and co-workers report in the journal Superconductor Science and Technology. Masson says that based on their designs, a YBCO turbine would generate as much power as a single-engine Cessna aircraft for roughly half of the mass. A...

The new state is a solid filled with a collection of energy particles known as polaritons that have been trapped and slowed, explained lead investigator David Snoke, an associate professor in the physics and astronomy department in Pitt's School of Arts and Sciences. Snoke worked with Pitt graduate students Ryan Balili and Vincent Hartwell on the project. Using specially designed optical structures with nanometer-thick layers-which allow polaritons to move freely inside the solid-Snoke and his colleagues captured the polaritons in the form of a superfluid. In superfluids and in their solid counterparts, superconductors, matter consolidates to act as a single...

Levitation becomes possible using superconducting materials In 1987 Ronald Reagan declared that the US was about to enter an incredible new era of technology.Levitating high-speed trains, super-efficient energy generators and ultra-powerful supercomputers would become commonplace thanks to a new breed of materials known as high temperature superconductors (HTSC). "The breakthroughs in superconductivity bring us to the threshold of a new age," said Reagan. "It's our task to herald in that new age with a rush." But 20 years on, the new world does not seem to have arrived. So, what happened? Early promise Superconductivity was first discovered in 1911...

An exotic quantum state that had previously appeared only under conditions of astonishing cold has made its room-temperature debut, reports an international team of scientists. In related experiments, other researchers have produced a similar state in different, still-chilly materials but claim that their experiments will lead to room-temperature versions as well. The new findings, unveiled in independent reports in the Sept. 28 Nature, reveal a bizarre new branch of an already exotic family of quantum states of matter known as Bose-Einstein condensates. Previously produced Bose-Einstein condensates, which form only at temperatures near absolute zero, include a superfluid of liquid helium...

A physicist in South Africa claims to have created a new superconducting state of matter at room temperature. Johan Prins of the University of Pretoria observed the superconducting state in experiments with diamonds that had been doped with oxygen (Semiconductor Science and Technology 18 S131).Diamond is a semiconductor and Prins has long been interested in using n-type diamond as a "cold" cathode to replace the "hot" cathodes found in television tubes and many other devices. Moreover, he believes that the results of his experiments on n-type diamond surfaces - made by exposing the diamond to energetic oxygen ions - can...