It was mid-May of last year when we realized we were onto something.
We were measuring the electrical properties of a pellet squeezed between two diamonds in an anvil. The anvil could apply 2 million atmospheres of pressure, or about half the pressure found at the center of the Earth. Theoreticians had calculated that at extreme pressures like these, and temperatures between 123 degrees Celsius and negative 73 degrees Celsius, metallic hydrogen would lose all of its resistance to electricity. It would become a perfect conductor, letting current flow through it essentially forever.
This could be a big deal. True room-temperature superconductivity could allow lossless electrical transmission, fast trains, levitation, new computers—the sky would be the limit. But superconductivity at room temperature was (and remains) unreachable—when we were doing our experiments, nothing warmer than negative 130 C worked at normal pressures.
So, inspired by the theoretical prediction, we set about looking for a chemical compound that had a lot of hydrogen in it. We tried silane (four hydrogen atoms bonded to one silicon atom), but it became superconducting at an extremely cold negative 256 C. Not impressive.
Nobody imagined that people would find superconductivity in cuprate systems.
We eventually…
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