"The development in room temperature superconductor is going to have the same amount of impact as fire." This bold statement isn't from a science fiction writer—it's from Yale's Yu He, speaking about one of the most coveted breakthroughs in modern physics.
Yu He is an assistant professor in Yale's Department of Applied Physics and Physics, specializing in high-temperature superconductivity research. When a Korean team claimed this summer to have created the world's first room-temperature superconductor at ambient pressure, the scientific community erupted with equal parts excitement and skepticism overnight.
In this comprehensive interview, Professor He breaks down the fundamentals of superconductivity, explains why the Korean breakthrough claim matters so much, and reveals how superconductors are already revolutionizing everything from nuclear fusion to MRI machines—and why the next 5-10 years could bring applications we've only dreamed of.
Watch the full interview now on EO's YouTube channel! Below is the complete transcription of the interview. Minor edits have been made for clarity and readability.
Key Highlights:
"High temperature superconductor-based nuclear fusion is going to yield some really exciting results. If you look no further than all these startups that are invested heavily by private sector investors."
"I also think in the next 5 to 10 years, people will know better what type of superconductors will be needed to build the next superconducting quantum computer platform."
"The development in room temperature superconductor is going to have the same amount of impact as fire."
"Earlier this summer, there had been one Korean team reporting the first ambient pressure room temperature superconductor. The news of this breakthrough has really garnered a lot of public attention and also academic attention overnight."
"I also think in the next 5 to 10 years, people will know better what type of superconductors will be needed to build the next superconducting quantum computer platform."
"The development in room temperature superconductor is going to have the same amount of impact as fire."
"Earlier this summer, there had been one Korean team reporting the first ambient pressure room temperature superconductor. The news of this breakthrough has really garnered a lot of public attention and also academic attention overnight."
The Magic Behind the Levitation
What sparked your fascination with superconductivity, and how would you explain it to someone who's never encountered the concept?
Yu He: My name is Yu He, and I'm an assistant professor in Yale Department of Applied Physics and Physics. One major portfolio is looking at high temperature superconductivity.
I remember when I was a high school student, I went to this science fair. Some folks from these fancy research labs, they demonstrated a very interesting setup where you have some floaty objects just levitate by itself on some magnet. It was just really cool. Later on, when I actually learned physics, quantum mechanics, solid state physics, I realized that superconductivity is really behind many of these leading technological advances we consider as a future generation of this site.
When we run electrical current through say a copper wire or run it through your CPU when you're mining your Bitcoin, you're going to feel a lot of heat. This is because in normal materials, if you were to pass the electrons through them, the electrons are going to be bounced off of the material of atoms, and all these bouncing off events are going to eventually become heat.
Superconductor is a type of material where if you were to pass the electricity through them, you're going to not have any heat loss. This is particularly amazing because nowadays a lot of energy is lost during energy transfer from the power plants to our household appliances, and this will really help us cut down the energy loss.
I remember when I was a high school student, I went to this science fair. Some folks from these fancy research labs, they demonstrated a very interesting setup where you have some floaty objects just levitate by itself on some magnet. It was just really cool. Later on, when I actually learned physics, quantum mechanics, solid state physics, I realized that superconductivity is really behind many of these leading technological advances we consider as a future generation of this site.
When we run electrical current through say a copper wire or run it through your CPU when you're mining your Bitcoin, you're going to feel a lot of heat. This is because in normal materials, if you were to pass the electrons through them, the electrons are going to be bounced off of the material of atoms, and all these bouncing off events are going to eventually become heat.
Superconductor is a type of material where if you were to pass the electricity through them, you're going to not have any heat loss. This is particularly amazing because nowadays a lot of energy is lost during energy transfer from the power plants to our household appliances, and this will really help us cut down the energy loss.
The Eureka Moment That Changed Physics
Can you walk us through the historical discovery of superconductivity and why it was so groundbreaking?
Yu He: Superconductor or superconductivity only occur below a certain threshold temperature. So everything dates back to the early 20th century. By that time, there's one glaring question that almost every physicist has been thinking about, which is how matters will behave when you approach absolute zero temperature.
Absolute zero temperature is a temperature that is known to be unattainable on a theoretical ground based on the basic law of thermodynamics. It is a temperature when most of the molecules and atoms and the electrons, they are going to stop their classical motion.
As people try to cool material down to lower and lower temperature, on an April day of 1911, a scientist named Carmeli Anus, he found out that in solid mercury, the resistance would all of a sudden disappear as the temperature dropped to below 4.2 Kelvin, which is more than -400 °F or more than -270 degrees Celsius.
They checked and checked and checked many rounds of experiments day and night. It's really just a zero in the sense that it's below the detection threshold of any available technology back then. So that was really the eureka moment of discovery of superconductivity.
Absolute zero temperature is a temperature that is known to be unattainable on a theoretical ground based on the basic law of thermodynamics. It is a temperature when most of the molecules and atoms and the electrons, they are going to stop their classical motion.
As people try to cool material down to lower and lower temperature, on an April day of 1911, a scientist named Carmeli Anus, he found out that in solid mercury, the resistance would all of a sudden disappear as the temperature dropped to below 4.2 Kelvin, which is more than -400 °F or more than -270 degrees Celsius.
They checked and checked and checked many rounds of experiments day and night. It's really just a zero in the sense that it's below the detection threshold of any available technology back then. So that was really the eureka moment of discovery of superconductivity.
What were the major theoretical breakthroughs that helped scientists understand superconductivity?
Yu He: Then a lot of physicists are trying to understand why this would be the case because it will not be captured by any known theory by that time. It was not until 1957 when John Bardeen, Leon Cooper, and Robert Schieffer came up with this widely recognized theory of superconductivity in 1957. So that was a major watershed moment that signaled our microscopic understanding why superconductivity happens.
Then, of course, people have looked at this theory and tried to apply it to describe superconducting materials and even at some point try to predict superconducting materials, but people were not able to really increase the transition temperature of superconductivity until in the 1980s.
It came totally as a serendipity in 1986 when Mueller and Bednors, the two physicists working on oxide insulators, found out that superconductivity of unprecedented robustness can actually be discovered in some type of oxide ceramics. It's totally opposite to all the dogma that people have thought where you should look for superconductivity. That was in 1986. Within six months, people were able to reproduce discovery, the experimental discovery, and that was held as one of the major moments, the birth of high-temperature superconductivity in this particular case based on copper oxide-based ceramics.
Then, of course, people have looked at this theory and tried to apply it to describe superconducting materials and even at some point try to predict superconducting materials, but people were not able to really increase the transition temperature of superconductivity until in the 1980s.
It came totally as a serendipity in 1986 when Mueller and Bednors, the two physicists working on oxide insulators, found out that superconductivity of unprecedented robustness can actually be discovered in some type of oxide ceramics. It's totally opposite to all the dogma that people have thought where you should look for superconductivity. That was in 1986. Within six months, people were able to reproduce discovery, the experimental discovery, and that was held as one of the major moments, the birth of high-temperature superconductivity in this particular case based on copper oxide-based ceramics.
From Maglev Trains to Nuclear Fusion
What are some of the most exciting real-world applications of superconductors that are happening right now?
Yu He: There are so many interesting applications that superconductivity can drive even nowadays. In Long Island, I think starting from 2008, there has already been the first demonstration of superconducting electrical grid. Its power rated to a few hundred megawatts. Last year in China, people have demonstrated maglev train that doesn't need any major active electrical power inputs.
There are also recent efforts to use superconductors to make extremely strong magnetic fields, and what that means is you can use them to make small, miniaturized MRI machines.
There are also applications very recently involved in nuclear fusion technology. A lot of us know our mankind has been riddled with an energy crisis. One common way that can be used to alleviate this crisis is to go to nuclear fusion technologies, and the leading technology for nuclear fusion is to use very, very strong magnetic field to confine plasma or very hot electron and atom gases and force them to interact with each other to fuse.
Just from 2 to 3 years ago, people started to realize that with the new technology to make electrical tapes composed of high temperature superconductor, you can actually run very high current without any heat generation and there has been a startup company spun off from MIT and also nowadays everywhere in the world trying to make these much smaller form-factor magnetic confinement setups to facilitate nuclear fusion based on plasma confinement.
There are also recent efforts to use superconductors to make extremely strong magnetic fields, and what that means is you can use them to make small, miniaturized MRI machines.
There are also applications very recently involved in nuclear fusion technology. A lot of us know our mankind has been riddled with an energy crisis. One common way that can be used to alleviate this crisis is to go to nuclear fusion technologies, and the leading technology for nuclear fusion is to use very, very strong magnetic field to confine plasma or very hot electron and atom gases and force them to interact with each other to fuse.
Just from 2 to 3 years ago, people started to realize that with the new technology to make electrical tapes composed of high temperature superconductor, you can actually run very high current without any heat generation and there has been a startup company spun off from MIT and also nowadays everywhere in the world trying to make these much smaller form-factor magnetic confinement setups to facilitate nuclear fusion based on plasma confinement.
The Holy Grail: Room Temperature Superconductors
Tell us about the recent Korean breakthrough claim and why room temperature superconductors would be so revolutionary.
Yu He: I agree with the statement that the development in room temperature superconductor is going to have the same amount of impact as the invention of fire. So room temperature superconductor is the type of material that we mankind still aspire to find that can support superconductivity at our ambient temperature. This is obviously important because we don't want to always use superconductors by putting it inside a big fridge, but we really want to be able to just use it in a simple way that we can just hand it around without any additional protection.
Earlier this summer, there had been one Korean team reporting the first ambient pressure room temperature superconductor. The news of this breakthrough has really garnered a lot of public attention and also academic attention overnight. We were all very excited.
In the meantime, there's also a lot of skepticism that we also hold. We share with a lot of scientists all over the world. Those of us who follow closely with the high temperature superconductivity research, actually every few years, there will be a few reports of room temperature superconductivity under ambient pressure. Up until then, every single one of them failed to be reproduced by other research groups independently.
Earlier this summer, there had been one Korean team reporting the first ambient pressure room temperature superconductor. The news of this breakthrough has really garnered a lot of public attention and also academic attention overnight. We were all very excited.
In the meantime, there's also a lot of skepticism that we also hold. We share with a lot of scientists all over the world. Those of us who follow closely with the high temperature superconductivity research, actually every few years, there will be a few reports of room temperature superconductivity under ambient pressure. Up until then, every single one of them failed to be reproduced by other research groups independently.
What advice do you have for the general public when evaluating these kinds of breakthrough claims?
Yu He: Also, one other thing I want to mention is to say there's an oversupply of information these days. For our general public, it's really important to not be swayed by sensational news titles, but really take one step back and see if these discoveries have already been verified independently by other research groups.
You should not take everything as it's being advertised. Every discovery, every statement has to have a logic behind it.
You should not take everything as it's being advertised. Every discovery, every statement has to have a logic behind it.
The Next Decade of Quantum Breakthroughs
How do you stay current with rapid developments in science and technology, and what should we expect in the coming years?
Yu He: First, I have to say, I myself find it challenging to keep up with all these exciting technological developments in modern day research. But I think an important note, maybe out of my own experience, it's probably impossible to keep up with all these rapid developments, but it's very important to keep an open mind, whether it's in your direct line of interest, or direct line of research or not because mankind at this stage have accumulated so many different domains of knowledge.
Cross-pollination, interdisciplinary inspirations often happen in most unexpected places. So, you really need to keep an open mind. Talk to experts in the field, ask them to give you high level views just like what we are doing right now. That's how I keep up with a lot of new developments in science and technology.
I think changes always happen little by little. I never expect the world to change all of a sudden. Even when ChatGPT and large language model has received so much great success over the past few months, you see the world is still changing little by little and my view does not differ in terms of the development of quantum technology, but I firmly believe that in the next 5 to 10 years, one should see a significantly broadened application of superconducting technologies including its use in medical research, it's used in public transportation, it's used in computation, even more broadly due to the rapid development in quantum materials research.
Cross-pollination, interdisciplinary inspirations often happen in most unexpected places. So, you really need to keep an open mind. Talk to experts in the field, ask them to give you high level views just like what we are doing right now. That's how I keep up with a lot of new developments in science and technology.
I think changes always happen little by little. I never expect the world to change all of a sudden. Even when ChatGPT and large language model has received so much great success over the past few months, you see the world is still changing little by little and my view does not differ in terms of the development of quantum technology, but I firmly believe that in the next 5 to 10 years, one should see a significantly broadened application of superconducting technologies including its use in medical research, it's used in public transportation, it's used in computation, even more broadly due to the rapid development in quantum materials research.
Technology as Our Friend
What's your overall philosophy on technological advancement and its impact on society?
Yu He: I view technology as our friend. We're all playing hide and seek with Mother Nature and that process in and of itself is very interesting.
Of course, there are unfortunate scenarios where discoveries in basic science and the technology becomes used in technological development that harms our values, but I should say in most technological developments, the benefit outweighs the downsides created by those corner cases where technology is used for unethical applications and we should not reject the technology just because they could be used in ways that may harm us.
On the other hand, I think this actually provides incentive for our lawmakers, even our general public to actively participate in the development of technology and the regulation of technology to ensure that we rip the maximum amount of benefit out of it and to limit the downside of the technology to the minimum.
In the case of superconductivity research or more broadly quantum material research, I think it's so fundamental that everyone should embrace the vast possibilities and opportunities that may enable for our future lives.
Of course, there are unfortunate scenarios where discoveries in basic science and the technology becomes used in technological development that harms our values, but I should say in most technological developments, the benefit outweighs the downsides created by those corner cases where technology is used for unethical applications and we should not reject the technology just because they could be used in ways that may harm us.
On the other hand, I think this actually provides incentive for our lawmakers, even our general public to actively participate in the development of technology and the regulation of technology to ensure that we rip the maximum amount of benefit out of it and to limit the downside of the technology to the minimum.
In the case of superconductivity research or more broadly quantum material research, I think it's so fundamental that everyone should embrace the vast possibilities and opportunities that may enable for our future lives.
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