Discovery of bismuth superconductivity at extremely low temperature jeopardizes theory
Friday, December 2, 2016 - 08:51
in Physics & Chemistry
(Phys.org)—A team of researchers at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in India has found that cooling a sample of bismuth to 0.00053 Kelvin caused the material to become a superconductor, putting at risk a decades-old theory regarding how superconductivity works. In their paper published in the journal Science, the team describes their cooling and testing approach and why they believe what they found will require physicists to rethink theoretical work that describes the conditions under which a metal can become superconductive.