lincoln@randvax.UUCP (Tom Lincoln) (06/30/87)
The following description of a recent meeting is submitted in its entirety: At Los Alamos recently, a physic colloquium was presented by Dr. David Pines of U-Illinois at Urbanna. He is one of the leading researchers in superconductivity, and his presentation was beautifully articulated and comprehensible even if one is not a particle physicist. He summarize the state of knowledge in superconductivity, and pointed out that a particular pairing mechanism (betweene electrons) which was responsible for the original low temperature superconductivity is only one of many pairing mechanisms that can lead to the phenomenon. There are about 8 on the current list of theories, and he anticipates that others will be found. There is a competition among the theories for explaining high temperature superconductivity, and for pointing the direction to new compounds. Surprisingly, all compounds that exhibit high temperature superconductivity contain copper oxide (CuO). It is not known why this must be so, but substitution of Zn for the Cu kills the behavior. At the moment, is is not known whether other metals might be substituted for the Cu and still have superconductivity. He predicts the development of materials that are superconducting at ever higher temperatures and believes that room-temperature ones will be discovered within a decade. His most tantalizing and exciting comment was almost a throw away -- the last line on his last chart. He believes that superconductivity is possible in room-temperature biomolecules, and suggests that the several pairing mechanisms may prove to be important explanations for some of the behavior and chemistry of biological systems, especially that of neural nets. TOM LINCOLN lincoln@rand-unix.arpa