As engineers we are given building blocks that we can build things from. Iron, steel, copper, plastic. Every once in a while a new building block arrives. It takes a while for us to figure out how to use it. But when we do, the world changes.
- batteries + touch screens => iPhone
- batteries got better => Tesla
- reinforced concrete => pretty much all the worlds buildings and bridges
- neodymium magnets + gyros => drones
A room temperature superconductor... well, that changes things on a completely new level. Order of magnitude smaller losses plus order of magnitude higher magnetic fields? OMFG can we build SciFi things from this if it pans out.
So yeah - we are in a hurry. If this pans out, there will be a massive shift in how pretty much anything is made. And the reward for the people who can figure it out first are insane, in terms of potential value created.
We're in a hurry in the sense that we don't want to leave investigation of this on the back burner for a few months, but we're not in a hurry in the sense that it's going to make any difference in practice whether a lab group reports today that they've reproduced it, or takes a bit more time to be careful and reports more thoroughly in two weeks time. Any first mover advantages are likely to accrue to the groups who come up with a reliable reproduction method over the next couple of months, not to the ones who send out the first press release and twitter post this week.
Ever felt schedule pressure / been on the critical path? This is that concept applied globally. The hurry is that delays in initial research measurably delays potential rollout. I'd like to see this material meaningfully used in my lifetime for its potential global society wide benefits / ease of human suffering / margin on total ecological collapse. The pace set now affects the mean and standard deviation of probability of that happening on the timeline.
My point partly is that as outside observers we can't deduce "is taking it chill" merely because we haven't seen two press releases and three tweetstorms from any particular lab yet. They might be slogging away but not caring to report every step on the path to the outside world.
- batteries + touch screens => iPhone
- batteries got better => Tesla
- reinforced concrete => pretty much all the worlds buildings and bridges
- neodymium magnets + gyros => drones
A room temperature superconductor... well, that changes things on a completely new level. Order of magnitude smaller losses plus order of magnitude higher magnetic fields? OMFG can we build SciFi things from this if it pans out.
So yeah - we are in a hurry. If this pans out, there will be a massive shift in how pretty much anything is made. And the reward for the people who can figure it out first are insane, in terms of potential value created.