Read more: "Instant Expert: Superconductors"
A century after the discovery of superconductivity, what have we learned? One big lesson is that the time from the discovery of a phenomenon to important applications is long. It took the best part of 50 years to work out how to make a superconducting magnet and half as much time again to develop the first killer application, magnetic resonance imaging. The long timescale is not for want of trying - it is just that getting all the conceptual and technological pieces in place for an application is very difficult.
Superconducting materials are still surprising us. The iron-based superconductors discovered three years ago were utterly unexpected, and this highlights how much we still have to learn. Like a master chef searching for that elusive perfect recipe, we are still working by something only marginally more informed than trial and error to search for a ...
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