: Peter nussbaumer/Wikimedia Commons)

Our lives, in the modern age, are dominated by the technologies of electronics and electrical energy. Our worldwide need for large amounts of continuous power underscores the need for increased efficiency across the board: from energy generation to transmission to consumption. In every step of that process, energy loss is a problem, as the very act of pushing electrons through a current-carrying wire is an energy-losing proposition, owing to the electrical phenomenon of resistance. There’s only one physical circumstance where current can be transmitted with no resistance: when your material is superconducting. Superconductors today have a wide variety of applications, from MRI machines to particle accelerators to magnetic fusion devices and .

At present, however, the only known materials that superconduct do so under extreme conditions: very low temperatures. The “holy grail” of superconducting research is to find a material that would superconduct under normal conditions: at room temperature and ambient pressures. If we could discover one and implement it on a wide scale, we could…