Unfortunately I am completely ignorant about the subject; could this, in the long term, lead to a breakthrough in the development of superconductor-equipped hovering vehicles?

All progress is important. However the type of technology you invision would require higher-temperature superconductors. There has been a large effort towards understanding the pairing mechanisms in these types of materials.

Thanks, it is a very interesting field.

Not sure if this is the same form of self assembly, but this video has a nice explanation of at least one type: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Dp6EFyROT4

No link to the paper?

> The group’s findings are detailed in a [paper published in Science Advances][0], Jan. 29.

There are some great visualizations in the PDF[1].

[0] http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/2/1/e1501119

[1] http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/advances/2/1/e1501119...