Superconductors are materials that have no electrical resistance, so electricity can flow through them with out any loss. The superconductivity phenomenon was first discovered in 1911 by researchers in Germany who used solid mercury as their conducting material. Superconductivity was at first seen only in certain substances when supercooled to temperatures close to absolute zero, or -459°F (-273°C)—the coldest temperature theoretically possible.
In 1986 Georg Bednorz (b. 1950) and Alex Muller (b. 1927), both researchers at IBM, discovered a new type of superconducting material, copper oxide perovskites, that could superconduct at -396°F (-238°C). Paul Chu, at the University of Houston, improved on this by bringing the superconducting temperature up to a relatively balmy -296°F (-182°C).
For the first time, superconductivity could be made to occur at temperatures in the range of liquid nitrogen. The discovery quickly led to a huge meeting of physicists in New York, a meeting that became known as the "Woodstock of Physics."
In 1987 Bednorz and Muller were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics and, in the same year, U.S. president Ronald Reagan declared that the United States was about to enter a new era of technology, thanks to high-temperature superconductors.
Although the technology has yet to take over the world, high-temperature superconductors have found applications in MRI medical scanners and in special superconducting wires, cooled by a sheath of liquid nitrogen. Japan uses coils of this super wire for their experimental maglev train, and the U.S. Navy is researching the use of the wire for their next generation of ships.
