Superconductors have just reached a new high. A material has been shown to transmit electricity with no resistance at the highest temperatures ever: the chilly conditions you might experience in Antarctica.
Mikhail Eremets at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz, Germany and his colleagues used a diamond anvil to squeeze a tiny quantity of hydrogen sulphide to almost 1.6 million times atmospheric pressure.
Although hydrogen sulphide is most familiar as a toxic colourless gas with a smell of rotten eggs, when it is chilled and held at high pressure it transforms into a metal. The researchers found that under the pressure from their diamond anvil it transformed into a material that superconducted at temperatures as high as -70 °C, breaking the previous record of around -110 °C.
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