By Peter Weiss
Researchers worldwide are racing to develop low-cost wire with no electric resistance. Making it in practical lengths has been a tough challenge. A wire-making company has now demonstrated a process that yields potentially inexpensive, high-current wires about 10 times longer than previous prototypes.
For the past few years, electric utilities have been field-testing power cables and other equipment containing wires of so-called high-temperature superconductors (SN: 11/18/00, p. 330: https://www.sciencenews.org/20001118/bob1.asp).
Those materials lose all electric resistance at temperatures that are extremely cold yet much higher than the operating temperatures of ordinary superconductors.