The submitted title is incorrect. The actual article title is "Pressure-induced high-temperature superconductivity retained at ambient". The abstract doesn't make the claim of superconductivity at room temperature at 1 ATM.
I'm a layperson skimming in a hurry, but it looks like this is actually "our findings with material A may be transferable to material B", which is very close to a room-temp superconductor but doesn't seem to be the same thing as "here, I have a chunk of it on my desk".
to quote the conclusion:
"In conclusion, we have demonstrated that the pressure-induced/enhanced superconducting phases
with high Tc and the pressure-induced semiconducting phases in FeSe and Cu-doped FeSe can be
stabilized at ambient without pressure by pressure-quenching at chosen pressures and
temperatures. Theses pressure-quenched phases have been shown to be stable at up to 300 K and
for up to at least 7 days. The observations suggest that the recently reported room-temperature
superconductivity in hydrides close to 300 GPa may be retained without pressure, making
possible the ubiquitous applications of superconductivity envisioned"
Note this is about phase metastability, and not RT, 1ATM high Tc. They don't claim that in the actual article, just that phases like high Tc phases survive at 1ATM. There is __no way in hell__ that they would have published this, if they hadn't already tried the viable RTS phases, and they didn't work. It would have been literally giving away a Nobel prize to any other group which could race to do it first.
You must have never submitted a paper for peer review :P The incentive is to make the paper seem as important as possible, the hope it could work is impact, they would never admit such experiments.
Imagine this being a turning point in human history. This seemingly mundane HN post links to humanities defining discovery for centuries. This begins a path that takes us to the stars and a post scarcity species.
More likey there's some deal breaking issue. The pop-sci sites wave it from the rooftops for a few weeks then we forget about it.
I am not a physicist, let alone the right kind of physicist, but from the abstract it looks like the transition temperature is 35K. That is a long long way away from "room temperature".
"Some phases" (a few molecules?) appeared to have to be stable at 300K for a week. Whatever. I've been writing and reading about cold fusion hype since the 1980s, still waiting for my maglev vacuum cleaner.
Iron selenide in those phases does not superconduct at room temperature. The authors have a "strong belief" that other room temperature high pressure superconductors will retain superconductivity at atmospheric pressure using their technique even though the one they studied doesn't.
It seems like they're describing a phenomenon where a material remains in a metastable configuration associated with a higher critical temperature, even after the pressure is removed and the sample warmed to room temperature.
That said, the Tc of this phase is still fairly low at about 30+ K, so this does not superconduct at room temperature, regardless of the pressure.
This isn't quite RTS, but it's a breakthrough step towards it. If this pressure-quenching concept can be applied to some of the more exotic high-temperature superconductors (~300K) that usually require hundreds of GPa, it might result in superconductivity at room-temperature and pressure.
Transmission of power with reduced/no loss, maglevs become a reality, computers can become much faster with much less/no loss of power to heat.
Anything that conducts electricity or operates with a magnetic field becomes hyper efficient, imagine how many modern machinery depends on those principles.
