SUPERCONDUCTIVITY is usually turned on and off by cooling a material and then warming it up again. Now this switching has been done electronically, an achievement that could lead to far faster computer chips.
When certain metals are cooled to within a few degrees of absolute zero, quantum effects cause electrons to stop repelling each other and pair up. It is this pairing up that leads to superconductivity, the total absence of any electrical resistance.
Superconductors are an attractive future alternative to the microscopic semiconductor switches that are the ultimate building blocks of computer chips, as their lack of resistance…
