Thermal Superconductor, Is it even possible?

Is there a law of physics that would prevent a material from keeping a constant average temperature of it's entire environment over it's entire surface?

I know it hasn't been done yet, or possibly it would be a feature of superfluids.

And just to be clear what I'm talking about. A material that when you put an ice cube on one end and a blow torch on the other, would maintain a temperature halfway between the two extremes, even on the ends directly in contact with the flame or ice. Think copper with a near 0 time delay for heat spread.

It would definitely be useful, but because the ice cube has less cooling power than the blow torch has heating power, I think the spread would be higher than halfway, unless you had a self regulating system, which would defeat the purpose.

I've always wanted a porpoise.

Granted the ice cube wouldn't last long and the whole thing would reach near blow torch temperatures shortly after.

After looking into it a bit more I'm not sure it can be done, or we would even have the technology to try. It would require a material that acted like a single crystal over it's entire length and translated energy equally to every atom at once. I haven't seen anything that can transfer kinetic energy that efficiently. Diamond is one of the closest as far as atomic bonds goes, but even it works as an insulator.

Thermal Superconductor

Superconductive Power transistor would be possible and be a very valuable component. Playing around with the ceramic superconductive materials and treating them with P type and N type elements used in regular PNP NPN transistors could produce something functional.

Applications could be used in high power burst transmission of radio signals and telemetry signals. What that means is a 10 minute message would be compressed into a 1 second burst transmission from a compact devise that would have long range because of the amount of power the superconductive transistor could handle without blowing from heat produced from the amount of power passing through it.

Granted, electrical superconductors have a billion and one uses where they would help. I was looking more at thermal/kinetic energy exchange.

I'm not even sure it could be done really since even solid matter isn't actually solid. The atoms are simply locked into position by their electrons. But that doesn't give them the ability to transfer thermal energy directly without a delay.

Superconductive material in terms of momentum passing through it is interesting.
Consider a metal cube (1 cubic meter) with a steal ball touching one side. Grabbing a sledge hammer and banging the other side of the cube would transfer Kinetic Energy in terms of `conservation of momentum' to the steel ball. However the speed of the transfer of momentum from atom to atom within the cubic meter cube depends on something like the `speed of sound' equivalent to a momentum wave passing through a given type of metal.

Freezing the material with liquid nitrogen wouldn't help and would probably cause the material to shatter like the `Judgment Day Terminator'

The thermal transfer of Energy along the lines of heat as we understand couldn't be done superconductively because heat is random incoherent motion of atoms. Coherent transfer of heat would be in metal rods of an X-ray laser.

How fast does/can an electrical wave transfer from atom to atom in a superconductive liquid nitrogen cooled superconductor? Good question because if it can be made to be the speed of light as i would expect could be possible then you could have a piezo electric superconductor connected to a superconductive wire with a superconductive transducer at the other end. Kinetic Energy would be converted to a speed of light electromagnetic wave at the piezo side, travel ling through the superconductive wire and then being converted into Kinetic Energy again by the superconductive transducer.

Heat in incoherent random bouncing around of atoms. Your quest of a kinetic energy superconductor could lead to building a bell that would resonates coherently and superconductively at the speed of light. The atoms wouldn't be moving but the standing wave energy shells of the atoms would vibrate from side to side around each nucleus of each atom. Imagine a metal rod that resonated like a bell from end to end coherently like a laser but without emitting photons

Thermal superconductivity is possible because `phase state teleportation' between `quantum entangled materials at distances' is possible and has been demonstrated in laboratories along with `quantum computers' utilising the effects.

No... he is not talking about an even temperature gradient, from hot to cold. I believe he is saying:

If one side of a rod was in a freezer (-100 degrees), and the other side of the rod was in an oven (+100 degrees), that the entire thing would be 0 degrees.

The side in the oven would be 0 degrees, even though it's being heated; and the side in the freezer would be 0 degrees, even though it's being cooled.

No, I don't think that's possible--- At least, I've never heard of any materials that can do it. You typically will get a transition from hot to cold along the length of the rod.

This post has been edited by Latrosicarius on Mar 6 2008, 03:15 PM

Interesting topic, guys,
Ever since I saw the first graph of an electrical super-conductor (at about 10K or so, the resistance dropped to ZERO!) I was amazed. I've done alot of work measuring thermal conductivity between materials for a semi-conductor fab, and, as with electrical conductivity at normal temperatures, there is a minimum thermal resistance, but I haven't heard of attempts at zero thermal resistance.
It's something I'd have fun looking into.
Peace,
Ron

Yeah, but the trick would be to build something of reasonable size where every atom in it's entire structure is entangled with every other atom. And even if you manage that, if I'm not mistaken entangled atoms tend to decouple.

We might be a few steps closer once we figure out how to take nano-tubes and splice them end to end in continuous strands. Or simply make continuous strands of them in the first place. The next step would be entangling every atom to every previous atom during formation. At least that's the theory I've been playing with.

Even if we could only manage half a millimeter strands, strapping a few million of those side by side, and then layering them could create some seriously useful devices.

Electric superconductors do not conduct heat well, interestingly enough. I haven't read much about this deviation from metals' behaviour (where both conductivities are just proportional), but I'm wondering if this could be a key to understanding superconductivity.

Superfluid helium does superconduct heat, and is the only one to my very limited knowledge. Zero thermal resistance. This has more unexpected consequences, including on the movements of He.

Among normal materials, monocrystalline silicon conducts heat very well - better than copper. Carbon nanotubes could be even better, and this would be extremely welcome, even at high kg cost, for instance in thermal paste for processors. And some ceramics, like AlN (or the disliked BeO) are almost as good as copper but electrical insulators, a much appreciated combination.

Oddly enough I hadn't looked at superfluids. Now I'm going to have to find out if they've managed anything above 2 kelvin. That's a wee bit chilly for every day use. That is the effect I was looking for, the inability to create a temperature gradient.

I know very little about them.

From what I've read, only He4, He3 and Li6 have been observed to be superfluid. He4 has the highest temperature with 2K, but fermions like He3 (3mK) and Li6 become superfluids as well.

You may still read the story of Bose-Einstein condensate. People try to salvage it for fermions with Cooper pairs like for superconductors... Though the story of Cooper pairs is less and less fashionable for superconductors.

Put clearly: No theory.

And probably nothing known above 2K.

Hey, if you have engineering goals, the solution is called a heat pipe. Used in some Cpu coolers.

You know? A sealed tube (but could be another form) filled with a liquid and its vapour. Something like a felt or a sintered metal part helps the liquid move from one end to the other through capillary action.

Because the tube is sealed, the pressure of liquid+vapour adjusts to the temperature. At the warmer end, the liquid evaporates. At the cooler end, the vapour condensates. Capillary action lets the liquid circle back.

As long as the pressure is equal in the whole pipe, so is the temperature, since the liquid/vapour equilibrium determines completely the relation between both. The heat pipe does it - or in other words, conducts heat efficiently - by absorbing a lot of heat when evaporating.

Only limits: The liquid must arrive quickly enough to absorb the heat, and the temperature must be compatible with the liquid state.

You asked if some theory precludes a material to be a thermal superconductor...

I would be very wary of any such theory.

All theories about the absence of electrical resistance are grossly false for some material.
Hence, all theories about the presence of electrical resistance are false.
Thermal resistance is linked to electrical resistance in metals.

So I suspect all the stuff based on phonons and crystal imperfections they tried to explain me at school and university is plain crank.

What is experimentally observed:
- Conductivity improves at low temperatures
- Chemical purity improves the conductivity of metals at low temperatures
- Monocrystals conduct better
- Isotopic purity improves the conductivity. For instance, diamond made with less C13 is even better.

Beyond that, no solid observation for what I know.