(Image: Bratislav Milenkovic)
PUBLISHED IN new scientist, 23 september 2015
SOME wonder technologies, such as the personal jetpack, were never really serious propositions. But researchers in the 1980s did confidently promise we would all soon be travelling in superfast levitating trains. The choke point was the need for a material that conducts electricity with zero resistance at room temperature. Without such a superconductor, the magnets that power the few maglev trains that do exist are incredibly power hungry.
It’s the same story with a host of other technologies: our inability to make the right materials is holding things up. Cheap, efficient solar panels require substances that can convert huge amounts of sunlight into electricity, rather than the measly quantities they manage now. Low-energy lightbulbs work well enough, but rely on rare and expensive elements. And don’t even mention batteries – the quest for better ones has been consuming research dollars worldwide for an age.
It’s all down to the bothersome way we hunt for materials. When we realise we need one for a particular job, we either scour nature or try combining elements in novel ways to find something that fits. There’s no guarantee of success, and failures eat up time. We can’t make every possible material at once.
But what if we were to make them inside a computer, all the materials we can imagine – and all the ones we can’t? That’s just what is beginning to happen, with a virtual materials hypermarket that is starting to build up its stock. Who knows, perhaps even the material for that personal jetpack …