The Impact of Superconductivity on Human Technology

Introduction:

What separates humanity from every other species that has ever existed on planet Earth? Speech? Many animals communicate but none as efficiently as man. Intelligence? There are other creatures with large brains encompassing many complex adaptations but none with the abilities of ours. Opposing thumbs? Walking upright? These can be found in other species. I do not believe there is one single reason for the success of Homo sapiens. Rather, it is all of these characteristics converging and manifesting within us something that truly separates our species from all the rest, our ability to learn and pass this knowledge on to the next generation. Because of this, our ancestors begin manipulating their environment through the imaginative application of technology, giving them an edge in the fight to survive that continues to this day. Our technological evolution has defined who we are every bit as much as our biological evolution. It allowed us to adapt to ever-changing environments and situations that would have killed us otherwise. Ice ages and volcanoes, floods and droughts, locusts and epidemics, and today the vacuum of space, have all been conquered with the aid of technology. Yet, there is one thing that made the rise of humanity possible …Fire. Stone, bone, and wood implements may have preceded it but none can argue that fire is unquestionably our greatest tool. It is impossible to conceive of a world without fire.

We have been refining our use of fire from the very earliest days of our species existence. Fire probably started out as a means of protection, a weapon used to keep predators at bay and aided in the never-ending quest for food. We will never know the exact circumstances surrounding the discovery that fire could be harnessed, that something so frightening could be exploited to improve quality of life instead of harming it, but that only adds to its mystique. At some point, we began cooking our meat, contributing to the success of early man in many ways. It broke down protein aiding digestion. It killed unwanted and dangerous parasites making them healthier. It preserved food making it possible to save for that inevitable rainy day.

Fire not only cooked our foods but smelted our metals. It allowed our ancestors to put down the stone axe and take up a bronze, and later, a steel one. Its discovery is the single defining event in the history of technology without which we would never have risen above Stone Age hunter-gatherers. We continue to push the boundary of fire’s influence. In modern times we have learned to control it in many forms. In the chemical rockets that first opened space, in the guns and bombs we periodically unleash on one another, in coal, nuclear, and fusion power plants that have provided us with electricity at different times, in the combustion chambers of 20^th century cars, trucks and airplanes, in the refineries and factories that produce the goods we consume today. Almost anywhere within manufacturing, fire, or the manipulation of heat energy, is an integral part of the process. The revolution in human affairs that started with fire shows no signs of letting up. From simple beginnings, it has influenced humanity like nothing else.

Coming in a close second is reading and writing. Without writing, there can be no mathematics. Without mathematics, there can be no science. Without science, we do not have civilization. Until writing, the wisdom of man passed from one generation to the next by word of mouth, a notoriously unreliable way to communicate. The earliest known writing is of gods and other tales that we lump together under the banner of religion. Only later did merchants use writing and the emerging discipline of mathematics to keep track of goods and services. In the beginning, religion embraced writing, using it to gather power unto itself. For many cultures, only the priests knew how to read and write. However, for all its power, religion could not stop the accumulation of knowledge once started. Books became the repositories of both secular and religious knowledge. Writing necessitated the invention of education and the quest for truth began in earnest. Over the next eight thousand years, the alphabet evolved from crude scratches in clay to the versatile symbols we use today. The written word is a voice that speaks to us from the grave. Is it coincidence that the first writings coincide with the biblical age of the Earth? Who can say, but as a tool of man, writing ranks as one of the most significant in human history.

Beyond fire and writing are many ideas and inventions that have revolutionized humanity to varying degrees and durations. The wheel, money, religion, metallurgy, domestication of plants and animals, wind power, steam power, nuclear power, solar power, computers, electricity, and gunpowder are only a few that changed the world of man.

Nanotechnology has opened a door into the realm of the very small allowing solid-state manufacturing, one atom at a time. Combined with biology and genetics, nanotechnology has been instrumental in curing most of the diseases and maladies plaguing humankind. Solid-state electronics have allowed computers to become ever more powerful, CPU operating speeds are in the tera-hertz range and Zettaspheres provide the capacity to store all the events of a human life in a space the size of a grain of rice. On a larger scale, man has taken the first shaky steps off his home world, colonized the moon and orbital space, and sent his machines to explore the far reaches of the solar system. Replacing nuclear and coal electrical generation, power satellites concentrate solar energy and beam it down wherever it is needed, anywhere on Earth.

There is a strong case linking the development of new materials to technological progress. Swords and plows could not be invented until bronze became available. Concrete in ancient Rome allowed the Romans to build astounding structures. Steel, aluminum and thousands of metallic alloys ushered in the modern age. Yet, in a society dominated by technology, what is the pre-eminent invention of the 21^st century?

No one doubts that all of these inventions and more have profoundly influenced humankind, but there is one advance making many of these possible. It touches every aspect of 21^st century technology, revolutionizing the manufacturing of our machines, and affecting the way citizens live their daily lives. The single event that made much of our modern world possible is the discovery of Type 3 superconducting materials.

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