In 1911, Dutch physicist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes made a paradigm-shifting discovery: at a few degrees above absolute zero, mercury completely lost its electrical resistance. This meant that with the right conditions, electrical currents could travel indefinitely without losing power as it passed through matter. Scientists soon realized that this feature, dubbed superconductivity, wasn’t just limited to mercury. Specific quantum mechanical effects enable superconductivity, so other elements could exhibit these properties under the right conditions. Eventually, physicists found a way to bring superconducting materials into wires and magnets, which opened up entirely new avenues for testing and utilizing weird quantum phenomena….