285 – Superconductivity
| Rate/Vote |   (average: 4.75) Loading... |
Guest: Pierre Bauer Host: Markus Voelter Shownoter: Kolja Dummann
Superconductivity, the ability of a material to carry electrical current with zero resistance, is a surprising property of nature, which man has been able to exploit in many ways, in particular, for high-performance magnets. Those are used in magnetic resonance imagers, but also in colliders and fusion reactors. In this episode we discuss the basics of superconductivity and its uses with Pierre Bauer, a superconductor engineer at ITER.
Superconductivity and its Discovery
00:03:05Inversion temperature | Kamerlingh Onnes | James Dewar | Helium | Fritz London | Heinz London | Ohm's law | Energy Gap | Pauli exclusion principle | Cooper pair | Meissner effect
Applications of Superconductors
00:39:08ITER (omega tau 157 - Fusion at ITER | MRI - Magnetic resonance imaging | LHC - Large Hadron Collider (omega tau 30 – The Large Hadron Collider) | omega tau 96 - Controlling the LHC Beam) | StarTram | Railgun
Materials
00:56:45Mercury <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_(element) | Niobium | Tin (XFEL - European X-ray free-electron laser | omega tau 197 - The European XFEL | FCC - Future Circular Collider (omega tau 231 – The Future Circular Collider)
Magnet Design
01:14:40Diffusion barrier <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_barrier
Quench Protection
01:54:30Fringe Fields (MagLab - National High Magnetic Field Laboratory) | Superfluidity
Conclusion
02:42:27
This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this.
Diese Webseite verwendet Cookies. Wir gehen davon aus, dass das für Sie/Dich in Ordnung ist.
Outstanding Episode! I hope there will be more before ITER becomes operational in 2025 :)
We actually do have more stuff in the queue :-)
Fantastic interview! Coming from the world of particle physics and not knowing much about superconductivity, I ended up spending an entire afternoon browsing through papers and books about the subject ;-)
Thank you :) You seem to be right in the middle of the target audience!
Thank you Pierre for all the details you explained us – for me it was THE BEST show I listened to, here at omegatau. I had to insert some listening breaks – but I really like demanding content!!!
It is not only fun to hear but also education.
I just stumbled across this tweet from @CERN which shows some aspects of the production process https://twitter.com/CERN/status/1006493801345634304
Thanks for this wonderful episode.
Wow – simply wow! In contrast to the german episodes, I only hear the english episodes occasionally (rather the non-aviation ones…) – but this episode was just too tempting and I’m thrilled. Three hours of best podcast entertainment and education – and another 3-4 hours of secondary literature to better understand the one or the other detail. Thanks and more of that :-) Best regards!
Wow – einfach nur Wow! Im Gegensatz zu den deutschsprachigen Folgen höre ich die englischen nur gelegentlich (eher die nicht-fliegerischen…) – aber diese Folge war einfach zu verlockend und ich bin begeistert. Drei Stunden beste Podcast-Unterhaltung und -Bildung – und dazu nochmal 3-4 Stunden Sekundärliteratur, um das eine oder andere noch etwas besser zu verstehen. Vielen Dank und gerne mehr davon :-) Beste Grüße!
Thanks for your nice comment :-) You’ll be glad to hear we have more stuff on Fusion in the Queue.
Great interview!!
As a non-technical listener I can’t say I grasp the details of this but it was still interesting. 5/5.
I struggled, too :-)
Great episode! Please more episodes on ITER! What a fascinating project
There will likely be more on ITER next year!
This is intended as praise! Honestly.
This is one of the few episodes that I ended up not completing. Not being a physicist (nor very clever in these things) this was beyond my level. I got some of the basics (so I DID learn new stuff), but gave up around the half-way mark.
And somehow it made me very happy to know that there are people out there with this level of knowledge, and that OmegaTau provides an outlet for them to share it without dumbing it down – even if it wasn’t for me.
I felt a bit the same as with one of my local TV channels. Most Sundays evenings they broadcast a concert. If it is Brahms or Beethoven, I enjoy sitting through it. If it is Karl-Heinz Stockhausen, I honestly marvel at people who understand it, and am happy to live in a world where someone will actually do all the hard work of broadcasting it. Even if I am the one who switches off.
Again, I really meant this as praise!
Thanks Bo! I can totally relate to your feelings. For OT10, we are currently preparing a timeline of key moments of omega tau over the years. One “category” of things we want to talk about there is “the most over my head episode”. This one here ranks very high on that list for me!
Great episode! We all think, we know basically what superconductivity is. – We also covered part of that University in physics. And then somebody with extremely deep knowledge gives you a rollercoaster ride of all kinds of engineering implications this has. Thoroughly enjoyed this experience. This is one of my favorite episodes!
Thanks :-) This one was hard for me to record – the limit of what I could keep up with during the recording. Glad you like it anyway.
So much space for ideas opened up within just one podcast. I am overwhelmed and thankful.