From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!seismo!hao!hplabs!sri-unix!KFL@MIT-MC
Newsgroups: net.physics
Title: long superconductors
Article-I.D.: sri-unix.4939
Posted: Mon Dec 27 20:54:27 1982
Received: Wed Dec 29 01:55:44 1982

From: Keith F. Lynch <KFL @ MIT-MC>

  What makes you think a superconductor of electricity is also a
superconductor of heat?  I have never heard of any superconductors
of heat.  If there was such a thing, its uses would be manifold.
For instance you could never burn a hole in it unless you managed
to heat the whole piece up to above its transition temperature.
Given a big enough piece, that could be made arbritrarily difficult.
  The closest thing I have heard of to that is superfluid helium,
whose viscosity is supposedly zero, and in which heat travels at the
speed of sound (which is a lot faster than the speed of sound in air).
Still not really a superconductor of heat (Or of electricity; superfluid
helium is an excellent insulator!).  To the best of my knowledge it is
still more of a laboratory curiosity than anything else.  If only there
were a room temperature substance that conducted heat that well it might
be practical to run heat pipes from the equator to the poles, and save
on heating and air-conditioning bills world-wide.
								...Keith