The record for high-temperature superconductivity has been smashed again

[Dexter]

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612559/the-record-for-high-temperature-superconductivity-has-been-smashed-again/

Chemists found a material that can display superconducting behavior at a temperature warmer than it currently is at the North Pole. The work brings room-temperature superconductivity tantalizingly close.

[Elderberry]

(The caveat is that the sample has to be under huge pressure: 170 gigapascals, or about half the pressure at the center of the Earth.)

[Joe Wooten]

Back when I was a student in Engineering School at UT Austin in the late 1970's, I had a grad student TA running the metallurgy lab I was taking. We talked a lot and I asked him what he was working on for his PhD. He was working on high temperature superconductors. He had developed some that were almost room temperature and some better ones that operated at liquid CO2 temperatures. The only problem with both were that they were so brittle he could not have a piece longer than a couple of centimeters because it would break from it's own weight.

The last time I saw him in the early 80's, he was working for GE and still working on these.