Superconductivity is awaiting a planet-changing breakthrough

livemint.com:

global warming. Superconductors do exist, but work only in super-cold settings. For instance, an MRI machine cannot work without superconductors, and 500 gallons of helium is needed to cool one to a cryogenic -263° Celsius.

Room temperature superconductivity would be a miracle. Besides affordable MRI machines, it could help create a quantum computer sitting on your desk with computation power thousands of times greater than a regular PC. There are even bigger miracles possible with superconductivity: lossless transmission of energy could mean billions of kilowatt hours of electricity saved, and clean energy created at a location could be transported thousands of miles with minimal energy loss.

More impressively, it would also enable nuclear fusion. Experimental reactors require superconductivity, which is done at cryogenic temperatures using liquid helium and other materials. A superconducting material could resolve this and create a reactor that may theoretically produce unlimited clean energy.

There’s more. The biggest problem in creating more efficient and cheaper semiconductor chips is the heat generated in the process. Chips using superconductors would not have that problem and could reportedly be 300 times more energy efficient and 10 times faster than the existing silicon-based ones.

This could make everything cheaper, faster and energy efficient, as today chips power everything. Even your smartphone would be thinner and never heat up. It would make maglev trains much cheaper and more efficient.