All these controversies were broken with the publication of the latest issue of Discovery magazine in 2022.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Boston metropolitan area, Massachusetts, USA.

Early in the morning, Pablo Giarillo Herrero arrived in his lab in the electrical engineering department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Winner of the 2020 Wolf Prize in Physics, Herrero is best known for his discovery of superconductivity in distorted graphene.

Cao Yuan, who has returned to China and teaches at the University of Science and Technology of China, is a student he brought out, and Cao Yuan played a key role in the discovery of the phenomenon of distorted graphene superconductivity.

But the leader is Herrero himself.

Even for this discovery, Herrero was awarded the 2020 Wolf Prize in Physics.

It's just a pity that since Cao Yuan returned to China, in the past two years, the research on graphene superconductivity has fallen into a low ebb, and both Cao Yuan's team and Herrero's own team have not made progress for a long time.

It wasn't until three months ago that Pang Xuelin's paper on the new theory of superconductivity woke up Herrero.

Although Pang Xuelin's theory only has a purely mathematical model, according to the results given by this model, Herrero faintly realized that the normal temperature superconductor that the scientific community has been looking for may fall on the two-dimensional superconducting material.

Thinking about it this way, is there a more suitable superconducting material than two-dimensional graphene?

Therefore, in the past three months, Herrero and his team have been concentrating on Pang Xuelin's paper, trying to construct a whole sense of graphene room-temperature two-dimensional superconducting materials on the basis of this paper.

But this kind of work is very difficult, they have tried many methods, but the superconducting transition temperature of graphene has never been able to rise, or even from liquid helium to liquid nitrogen.

But there's no way around it.

Doing research is sometimes like that, it's a process of trial and error, maybe you spend a lot of time and energy, but you may get nothing.

In fact, it's not just the Herrero team who didn't find anything, hundreds of teams around the world have done similar work, but have never been able to find the ideal room-temperature superconductor.

Herrero originally wanted to contact his students to see how Cao Yuan's progress was.

It's just strange that no matter whether it is sending an email to Cao Yuan's mailbox or calling the phone number he left, Cao Yuan has not been able to be contacted.

The news from the University of Science and Technology of China said that Cao Yuan went to the Qiantang Laboratory to participate in a cooperation project, and he may not be able to come back in a short time.

This made Herrero faintly uneasy.

Cao Yuan went to the Qiantang Laboratory, which made him think of Pang Xuelin at once.

In fact, in the first half of this year, the Qiantang Laboratory sent an invitation to Herrero, hoping that Herrero could join in.

It was only rejected by Herrero.

It's not because of Herrero's patriotism.

Herrero, a Spaniard, has been in the United States for more than a decade and has not yet become a U.S. citizen.

He is purely because he has been doing well at MIT, and he belongs to the top group in terms of treatment and research funding.

In this case, he naturally did not think about going to China to start a new adventure.

It's just that he never expected that Pang Xuelin suddenly became interested in superconductivity theory, and successfully unified the superconductivity theories of various schools through mathematical means, forming a new theoretical system.

And after that, his disciple Cao Yuan also got involved with Pang Xuelin.

Herrero is very aware of Cao Yuan's level.

is also famous at a young age, Cao Yuan is a very good experimental physicist, coupled with many years of research in the field of two-dimensional graphene materials, Herrero can not imagine that once Cao Yuan and Pang Xuelin cooperate, what kind of chemical reaction will occur between the two.

Until today, this fear had been in Herrero's mind.

That is until his student Asker hurried into the lab with a copy of the latest issue of Discovery magazine.

"Guys, the latest news, the team of Pang Xuelin, Cao Yuan, and Li Changqing of Qiantang Laboratory has discovered superconducting materials with a transition temperature of up to 353K at atmospheric pressure!"

"What?"

The lab boiled all at once.

A dozen of Herrero's doctors and postdocs gathered around Asker to read the cover paper of the latest issue of Discovery.

Among them, of course, is Herrero.

"A superconducting transition temperature of 353K, how is it possible?"

"Under the condition of 353K, ordinary two-dimensional materials cannot exist normally at all."

"According to Pang Xuelin's theoretical calculations, there are indeed superconducting materials with such transition temperatures, but other conditions will become very harsh."

"Will this material exist in the real world?"

……

There was a lot of talking.

But this kind of discussion, as Ax opened the "Exploration" magazine and entered the main text, suddenly fell silent.

"It's a multi-walled carbon nanotube!!"

Herrero looked at the multi-walled carbon nanotubes in the magazine, and after the layers of carbon tubes curled up, a new two-dimensional interface was formed, which instantly made Herrero react.

The two-dimensional graphene transition temperature is low, and according to the calculation, in addition to the formation of a special angle between the graphene, the distance between each carbon atom also has very high requirements.

In the past three months, hundreds of teams around the world, including the Herrero team, have come up with thousands of proposals, but none of them have worked.

Herrero never imagined that after Pang Xuelin and Cao Yuan's team really got this kind of material out, it would be so simple.

Asker muttered to himself, "Why didn't we think of that?!" ”

Another student, Joanna, said: "Multi-walled carbon nanotubes are indeed no more suitable than this material, at the micro level, it itself has the characteristics of a two-dimensional material, and at the macro level, it forms a multi-layered three-dimensional structure, this material is too perfect." If we had thought of this material earlier, I'm afraid it would have ......"

Before Joanna could finish speaking, Herrero shook his head and said, "Even if we think about it in advance, it's useless." ”

"It's useless to think about it in advance, why?"

Joanna looked at Herrero.

The other students also focused on Herrero.

Herrero smiled bitterly: "There are hundreds of teams around the world, and I'm sure that Pang Xuelin is not the only team that has thought that this material may have room-temperature superconductors. But why did Pang Xuelin's team succeed? ”

"Why?"

Herrero said with a wry smile: "At present, the commonly used preparation methods of carbon nanotubes mainly include chemical vapor precipitation method, arc discharge method, pyrolysis polymer method, gas combustion method and laser vapor method. The carbon nanotubes prepared by this method are often very low in purity, and various single-walled and multi-walled carbon nanotubes of different sizes are mixed together. ”

Joanna and the others nodded involuntarily.

Hearing Herrero say this, they immediately understood the difficulty of this.

Aske said, "I see, Professor, you should be talking about the Flying Blade material, right?" ”

"What flying blade material?"

Joanna wondered.

Aske said: "You have been studying Pang Xuelin's paper for the past few months, and you may not have paid much attention to the news in the materials world. Just two months ago, in the second issue of Exploration magazine, it was reported that the Qiantang Laboratory had invented a carbon fiber material composed of ultra-long single-walled carbon nanotubes, which was called a flying blade material. It is said that this material is more than 10 times stronger than T1000 carbon fiber material, and the toughness is 100 times more than that of steel, making it the strongest material in the world. ”

Joanna had a look of shock on her face and said, "Asker, the material you said was made by Professor Pang again?" ”

Asker nodded, and said with a wry smile: "Until now, the materials science community has not figured out how this material is made, it is said that the length of their single single-walled carbon nanotube has reached the kilometer level, and there are almost no defects in the middle...... Think about it, since the Qiantang Laboratory can manufacture this flying blade material, it doesn't seem so difficult for them to manufacture multi-walled carbon nanotubes that meet the requirements, right? ”

After Asker's explanation, Joanna and the others immediately came back to their senses.

Joanna couldn't help but exclaim: "Professor Herrero, if there is nothing wrong with this achievement, doesn't that mean that next year's Nobel Prize in Physics will be in the pocket of Professor Pang?" ”

Herrero nodded and said with a wry smile: "I'm afraid that's the case, your senior brother Cao Yuan is one of the three corresponding authors of this paper, and I'm afraid the probability of him winning the Nobel Prize is also not low." ”

For a moment, the entire laboratory fell silent.

At the same time, the same scene is happening in thousands of similar labs around the world.

Almost everyone was blown away by the latest results of the Qiantang Laboratory.

Although as early as a few months ago, Pang Xuelin proposed a new theoretical system of superconductivity.

But no matter how optimistic Pang Xuelin is, no one could have imagined that in just over three months, Pang Xuelin and his team have really made room temperature superconductors.

This is a cross-generational achievement since the discovery of superconducting materials by Dutch physicist Heiko Kamerin Onnes in 1911.

Historically, countless physicists have tried to raise the superconducting transition temperature to more than 300 K, and the best one is only 253 K made by the Germans, and it was formed at millions of atmospheres.

This can't be compared with Pang Xuelin's achievements at all.

At the same time that the physics and materials science circles are boiling, the world's major media are also boiling again.

Xinhua News Agency: "At two o'clock in the morning this morning capital time, the superconducting materials research and development team led by Professor Pang Xuelin officially released a new superconducting materials paper in the fourth issue of Exploration magazine, in which Pang Xuelin's team successfully found superconducting materials under 353K conditions. The emergence of this superconducting material will be an epoch-making progress for the entire scientific community and industry......"

AFP: "Pang Xuelin's team has created another miracle, Chinese genius scientists have successfully found a new material that shows a superconducting state at room temperature and pressure, this discovery is expected to change the global industrial ecology, and will have a very significant impact on the future of rail transit, power facilities, electrical automation industry, aerospace and other fields......"

Kyodo News: "Following the era of lithium-air batteries, the era of superconductivity is coming, and Pang Xuelin, a national treasure scientist in China, is once again leading the times, and he will surely become one of the greatest scientists in human history!" ”

Reuters: "No language can match the amazing achievements of our Pang Xuelin, the emergence of new superconducting materials, will once again promote China to continue to lead in the new scientific and technological revolution, in the Anglo-Saxon nation is weakening at the moment, far east, an ancient nation is rising......"

AP: "After missing the lithium-air battery revolution, will we continue to miss the superconducting revolution?" The answer seems to be self-evident, as long as that young man is still in China, it seems that we will hardly see any hope of catching up in the future......"

……

Compared with the trend in the media, domestic public opinion seems to be much calmer.

Even sand sculpture netizens reacted much more calmly.

"Why didn't I feel so much surprise at the news? Haha, it seems to be used to it! ”

"Professor Pang has produced results again? Professor Pang is in the headlines again? Is our technology going to progress again? Hey, why should I say again? ”

"Haha, I'll just say, when Professor Pang came up with the superconductivity theory three months ago, I thought that superconducting materials might be about to break through, and the academic community was still arguing, what is there to argue about, when did Professor Pang let us down?"

"Lithium-air batteries, flying blade materials, room-temperature superconducting materials, isn't it time for a fusion reactor next?"

"I just bought a BYD King Long battery car today, it's really fragrant...... With the emergence of room-temperature superconducting materials, superconducting motors should also be used in the future. However, what I am most looking forward to is the next high-speed rail upgrade, as long as this superconducting material can be industrialized, the legendary vacuum pipeline maglev train no longer seems to be a problem, and I feel more and more looking forward to the future......"

"Do you remember the electromagnetic catapult space launch system project that broke out in the second half of last year? At that time, many people still swore that this was unreliable and that it was unreliable, how long did it take, the flying blade material came out, the superconducting material came out, and what happened next? Except for high-power power supplies (capacitors), at the theoretical level, there are no insurmountable problems, the rest is purely engineering problems! ”

……

Compared with the new scientific and technological revolution that superconducting materials can bring, more people are focusing on the Nobel Prize in physics.

"Professor Pang Xuelin just won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry last year, and next year's Nobel Prize in Physics will probably be in Professor Pang's pocket, right?!"

"If nothing else, it should be like this, the Fields Medal, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, the Nobel Prize in Physics, the three top awards, Professor Pang can soar to become a god!"

"Do you think that if this continues, will Pang Shen be able to surpass Einstein?"

"For now, surpassing Einstein is enough, after all, in addition to Pang Shen's mathematical achievements, the rest are achievements at the application level, even if it is superconductivity theory, there are not many fundamental physics. However, if Newton and Einstein are put in the same gear, Professor Pang should be enough to rank at the top of the second echelon! ”