Stone to Silicon

Math & science · 1911

Superconductivity

Mercury cooled to 4.2 kelvin loses all electrical resistance.

Heike Kamerlingh Onnes found it after liquefying helium. Superconducting magnets now power MRI scanners, the LHC and fusion experiments.

See it in the living tree Wikipedia

Arcs above join it to what it stood on, arcs below to what it led to. The bar places this stretch on the tree's whole timeline.

What it built on 3

What it led to 5

Related measurements

The dashed line marks when it first worked.

Record fusion triple product Latest: 1.73×10²² keV·s/m³ (2017) Source: Wurzel & Hsu 2022, Physics of Plasmas 29, 062103; Wurzel & Hsu 2025 update, Physics of Plasmas 32, 112106