Dear friend of CIFAR,

I feel like a tourist in my own home town. I’m seeing things I’ve known all my life in an entirely new way. I have been studying that most mundane of metals, iron. It is one of the most common and familiar on the planet – blacksmiths, steel magnates, and auto manufacturers seem to have squeezed every possible use out of it. But now we’ve discovered that iron has secret powers – incredible powers. Under the right conditions, iron can conduct electricity without resistance – it is the basis of an entirely new class of superconductors. Superconductors are essential to super-efficient electrical power grids, better medical scanners and high speed trains. The idea that iron could be used for such wonders truly makes it an element of surprise.

Here’s one way to understand the potential of superconductors: think of the difference between a light and a laser. Lasers are the coherent form of regular light. We use lasers in everything from microchip production to eye surgery, from holograms to bloodless surgery, and from light shows to interferometry.

Superconductivity is the coherent form of electricity. So, in a conventional power grid, as much as 40 percent of electricity can be lost between the source and the consumer. Using superconductors, that loss can be reduced to zero.

Superconductors have other unusual properties as well, including the capability to create magnetic fields that can be used to levitate a train and move it as speeds rivaling that of a jet plane.

The main limitation of these wondrous materials is that, so far, we have only been able to create them at extremely low temperatures. Even the class known as high-temperature superconductors have an upper limit that is still more than 100 degrees below freezing.

But every new discovery – and making high-temperature superconductors out of iron is a major advance – brings us closer to the ultimate goal of materials that superconduct electricity at room temperature.

If we can do this, it will change everything. Consider another application for superconductors: the MRI scanner. MRI stands for “magnetic resonance imaging” and the magnetic field used in this type of medical scanner is generated using superconductors. Because of the system required to supercool the materials, MRI’s are expensive, and huge. Room-temperature superconductors would allow MRI’s to shrink from the size of a garden shed to something portable that could be brought to an accident scene for on-the-spot diagnosis and triage.

In medical imaging, transportation, energy consumption and much more, superconductors hold great potential to improve all of our lives. And now that we know that a common element like iron can be used to make them, we are that much closer to realizing their full potential.

Best wishes from the frontiers of human knowledge.

Takashi Imai

———————————————————————————————————