A recent claim by South Korean researchers that they have created a material which works as a superconductor at room temperature – long a holy grail of physics – has been met with huge excitement on social media but scepticism from scientists. Superconductors can carry electrical currents with zero resistance, unlike traditional materials such as copper which lose part of the charge as heat. ?Since the phenomenon was discovered in 1911, thousands of superconducting materials have been found – but to work, all have to be kept at extremely cold temperatures and high pressure, limiting their real-world applications. ?So the...