At the end of last month, the Quantum Energy Research Centre (Q-center ), Researchers from Korea University and other teams have submitted two papers announcing the successful synthesis of the world's first room-temperature atmospheric superconductor, named LK-99 .The so-called superconductor, that is, some materials will show very low or even zero resistance under certain conditions, this phenomenon was discovered at the beginning of the last century, has been considered to be the breakthrough of human beings to achieve the next technological revolution. But before the Korean paper was published, most superconducting materials discovered by humans had harsh environmental requirements, either ultra-low temperatures close to absolute zero or high pressures. So "room-temperature atmospheric superconducting materials" and "controlled nuclear fusion" have been recognized as the Holy Grail of physics - as long as it is found, some of the key scientific and technological problems facing mankind may be solved.
So you can imagine how shocked the world was when the Koreans announced that they had synthesized this room-temperature atmospheric superconductor material - it turned out that room-temperature superconductors could be prepared on Earth without mining on Pandora!So a lot of concepts followed the first time up. Researchers in related fields in various countries are following up on the research - the biggest feature of science and technology different from magic is that it can be copied. Now that the Korean team has published their paper, it stands to reason that the superconducting material can be synthesized by other teams. However, so far, it seems that no other authoritative researchers in the world have strongly endorsed this "breakthrough." So whether this breakthrough is a feat or a scam still a question mark.
One more word, don't look at a lot of strategy games, South Korea has scientific research racial bonus. However, in reality, South Korea's scientific community has a global reputation for academic fraud.
The most famous, for example 2005 At that time, cloning technology was once considered the next "Holy Grail" and "outlet" of human technological breakthroughs. As a result, Hwang Woo-suk, a veterinarian from South Korea, claimed to be an "academic genius" who successfully cloned cows, pigs and dogs. South Koreans suddenly burst with national confidence, dubbed him the "top scientist," "national hero," and even proposed to print him on the next edition of the won banknotes.However, the Korean media's own investigation found that the so-called "Hwang Woo-suk Myth" is nothing but pure and pure academic fraud. And the means of counterfeiting are particularly inferior, so Hwang Woo-suk suddenly fell from a "national hero" to a "national disgrace," and all South Korea began to reflect on how such an academic loser.
Reflection to reflect, people found that this problem has nothing to do with the academic itself, but the Korean nation in the history of the vassal and colony of other countries for too long, National self-confidence is seriously lacking, so it has a more intense desire for vanity, eager to prove themselves in scientific research, sports and other fields - even if the means are flawed. So this gives academic swindlers like Hwang Woo-suk false and 2002 Scandals such as South Korea's "winning" of the World Cup in 2008 have left room for manoeuvre. In fact, to this day, it is said that South Korea still has a gang of Hwang Woo Suk's iron fans that their professor Hwang is an academic genius, and his achievements have been jealous of Japan and the United States, and the "media traitors" in South Korea have been targeted and killed. It's the "Kennedy assassination in academia" Yun Yun... In short, there are various conspiracy theories based on nationalist vanity. It still seems to have a market in Korea.Before punishment, there is no way to die, because as long as "bragging for the nation", there will be a popular environment in the Korean academic circles after Hwang Yuxi is still banned repeatedly, and his reputation is basically in line with the spirit of fair competition of South Korean athletes on the field.So today, seeing two (in fact, because the signatories of the paper are highly overlapping, it is more likely to be the same) South Korean experimental team claims to have synthesized a superconductor at room temperature and pressure, I don't know if anyone in the academic world will watch people eat dishes and have an instinctive bias and doubt about their results.According to the description of some media, the synthesis of LK-99 used in raw materials, "online shopping available," preparation conditions close to the level of secondary school laboratory, "a burn in the laboratory" came out. Somehow, I always feel like I smell a whiff of "alchemy" from these descriptions...I hope that this layman, who knows nothing about anything, is wrong, and I hope that this time we are really witnessing a great revolution in the history of science and technology.So assuming that this academic achievement is true, let's imagine what will happen next.
The illusion of grandeur is common to people living in modern times - even though the news media and our own feelings tell us that human technology is "changing fast." But in reality, we live in the midst of a long interlude between industrial revolutions.Yes, the level of technological innovation of the human industrial revolution has only happened three times so far.The first industrial revolution from18th century 60 s The beginning of Britain, represented by the coal-burning steam engine, human beings for the first time to replace manual labor on a large scale with machines.The second industrial revolution took placeNineteenth century 60yearsRepresented by the innovation of chemical industries such as internal combustion engine, dynamo and chemical fertilizer, smokeless powder, etc., the United States, Germany, Japan and a number of other countries came into being.The third scientific and technological revolution generally took place after world war ii in the 20th century and 60 s -- mainly marked by the inventions and applications of atomic energy, electronic computers, space technology, and biological engineering.It can be seen that the three existing industrial revolutions of human beings are generally a cycle of one hundred years, starting a new technological innovation in the 1960s of each century, and then digesting new technologies in a hundred years to build a new world pattern.And the story of human beings in the three industrial revolutions between these three periods shows a high degree of sameness:Economic growth accelerated in the first half of the century, culminating in the Victorian Age of the 19th century and the global boom of the 20th century.
When the "low-hanging fruit" brought by technological innovation was basically picked up, problems began to arise, and wars between great powers began to break out frequently (the Napoleonic and Crimean wars of the 19th century; The two world wars of the 20th century).
Then war and other factors led to a new round of technological explosion, the new industrial revolution once again eased the problem of human involution.At the outbreak of the Industrial Revolution and between the outbreak of socio-economic and even people's mental state are completely different. Because most of the work done by human economic development during the Industrial Revolution is "quantitative change," mobile phones from Apple 1 Update to Apple 14 "There is no such thing as a lost generation. What the New Industrial Revolution has brought is qualitative change - coal, oil, uranium, quartz sand, etc., which yesterday seemed to have little effect, suddenly overnight became a golden finger that can unlock a new way of life for mankind. The resulting new industries and new economies were unimaginable during the interindustrial revolution.At the same time, the changes that the outbreak of the new industrial revolution will have on the international pattern are also unexpected.18When the British Macartney Mission visited China at the end of the 20th century, the Qianlong Emperor still regarded himself as the Chinese emperor and did not recognize the rapid catch-up of the British, which was a normal reaction for an agricultural emperor who had not seen the power of the Industrial Revolution. At the end of the 19th century, the British Empire also showed a lack of preparation to catch up with the United States, Germany and other countries by the second industrial revolution.The question that arises is, if this breakthrough in room temperature superconductivity is true, does it herald the arrival of the Fourth Industrial Revolution? What will it mean?To be sure, if the Fourth Industrial Revolution came 40 years earlier than the previous cycle, it would have avoided many of the previously seemingly inescapable wars, and the Earth Involution ended early.It is not that once the technological revolution broke out, mankind became more peace-loving. But revolutionary technological innovation means a new industrial blue ocean and a new development window, and the benefits that the country will gain by focusing on economic development will be significantly higher than war preparations and wars. It is definitely a bad idea to go to war without fully digesting and absorbing the fruits of the new industrial revolution. Japan after the Meiji Restoration and the Soviet Union during the Cold War are typical lessons in this regard. Therefore, if the fourth scientific and technological revolution comes now, it may be that some of the former great powers that are now trapped in the quagmire of war and cannot pull out their legs, I am afraid they will completely disappear from the list of world powers.
But even for those countries that have struggled to catch up, it is a metaphysical question of who will really ride the new wave.I have worked in theWhy didn't Qianlong dare to make an industrial revolution?"I have discussed this with you in this article-if Emperor Qianlong opened his eyes when he visited China at the Macarney mission and was determined to engage in the industrial revolution in the Qing Dynasty, is it possible for him to succeed? The answer is no. Because the system of the Qing Dynasty and the way of thinking of the rulers locked up this possibility-the industrial revolution was to open mines, and the crowd caused by mining was a "source of chaos" in Qianlong's eyes, not to mention that the production of products, semi-finished products, and the required raw materials by large industrial machines must rely on high intensity, wide range of commercial circulation, and even international trade to effectively maintain. And this is contrary to the policy of locking up the country in the Qing Dynasty. The political system of the Qing Dynasty, which is highly suitable for the agricultural economy before the Industrial Revolution, has objectively locked up the possibility of the country's development to the Industrial Revolution.Therefore, even if Qianlong was not arrogant and recognized the trend of the world, he could not complete the transformation. In the Near East, the Ottoman sultans of the 19th century were aware of their distance from Europe and the power of the Industrial Revolution. However, because the reform was too damaging to the imperial system, it did not succeed in the end.
To some extent, the performance of the Soviet Union during the Third Industrial Revolution is actually another repetition of this institutional helplessness. I was in theWhy can't the Soviet Union afford a market?The planned economic system of the Soviet Union was a structure highly suited to the industrial ecology formed by the second industrial revolution. It requires planners to determine, through actuarial calculations, how much raw materials each industry and sector needs and how much oil, coal, and electricity to allocate; What kind of assembly line is used for production and what kind of finished product is produced to supply demand.This kind of actuarial science may be very useful in the era of the second industrial revolution, when internal combustion engines and simple electrical appliances played a leading role, But in the era of the third industrial revolution, dominated by electronic information and atomic energy, the instructions and actuarial calculations issued by centralized planning simply did not have time to match the ever-changing iterations of product upgrades. So the Soviet Union is always a bit behind the United States in semiconductor and chip design, atomic energy has Chernobyl, biology has the Lysenko case.The rejection of the command and planned economy of the Soviet Union and the Third Industrial Revolution was all-round.So like the game "atomic heart" fantasy, the Soviet Union with a black technology to achieve a reversal of the wind, catch the fantasy of the United States, after all, can only be a fantasy.In the final analysis, the real history of the Soviet Union was never bad for technology, but for the environment in which new technologies were made effective and evolved.
In the same way, if the technology of room temperature superconductivity really achieves a technological breakthrough, the technological revolution it brings must be the level of the fourth industrial revolution. We cannot discuss it in purely technical terms.Now I see a lot of self-media articles discussing how far our room temperature superconducting technology has developed, or the level is higher than South Korea or the entire West "I do not know where to go." And even more pretentious, talking about how much superconducting technology can save us, how many kilowatt-hours of electricity, we generate the most electricity, So it's the big winner (the people who do this analysis probably don't know that superconducting materials won't be cheap enough to wire in the foreseeable future, and what's more valuable than zero resistance is its complete diamagnetism).I think these discussions are of little significance. A new technology, if revolutionary to this magnitude, it is no longer a technology, but will produce an ecology. It is no longer a test of national technological research capabilities per se, but the adaptation of the whole system and industrial ecology to this technological revolution - ultimately, those societies that are better adapted to the new ecology of the new technological revolution will benefit the most from this revolution.When technological innovation changes the level of the environment, it is not the technology that ultimately competes, but the environment.This reason is a bit similar to the fate of ancient organisms in the climate and environmental catastrophes - this time there is no "volume advantage" or "first-mover advantage," in front of large meteorites, Tyrannosaurus rex and bulk rats "all beings are equal." It's just that species that retain the greatest evolutionary potential are more likely to achieve survival of the fittest.
If room temperature superconductivity is such a technological innovation, we do not yet know how this upheaval will change the world if it happens. But the lesson of the first three industrial revolutions is that it is usually the societies that maintain maximum dynamism and prosperity, and respect for individual private property rights and freedoms, that will prevail in the new industrial revolutions. Because such dynamic societies, like cataclysmic creatures, retain the greatest evolutionary potential.The same rule may still exist in the next industrial revolution. Whether or not that change comes tomorrow, we need to be prepared for it.
Logic chips, power supply chips, Integrated circuits!