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points by redox99 3 days ago | 0 comments

If we had really good understanding of physics, couldn't we find out how to make a room temperature superconductor (or prove it can't exist)?

Or is such understanding reliant in experimentation because there are "hidden constants" we can't figure out with math alone?

[–] teamonkey 3 days ago

We already do have a very good understanding of QCD, it’s a very successful model with 70 years of experimental results behind it. This proof may offer new insight but most likely will just be confirming what we already knew.

[–] dekhn 3 days ago

This is where I start to get curious.

Why haven't these theories had more impact on materials science? We use DFT and other greatly simplified approaches (with tremendous results) but still I suspect we are massively underperforming in terms of producing materials with useful properties.

[–] hershkumar 3 days ago

QCD simulations (like lattice QCD) are extremely expensive (exponential in the number of constituent quarks) and usually things like material properties require bulk physics, in large system sizes. The separation of scale between a theory like QCD and something like a simple metal makes it very difficult to practically do a first principles computation.