  One of the most important and still unresolved problems in the field of
dispersion forces, is that of determining the influence of temperature on the
Casimir force between two metallic plates. While alternative theoretical
approaches lead to contradictory predictions for the magnitude of the effect,
no experiment has yet detected the thermal correction to the Casimir force. In
this paper we show that a superconducting cavity provides a new opportunity to
investigate the problem of the thermal dependence of the Casimir force in real
materials, by looking at the change of the Casimir force determined by a small
change of temperature. The actual feasibility of the proposed scheme is briefly
discussed.
