New Type of Superconductivity Spotted

Superconductors, materials that carry electricity without resistance, can be divided into two broad groups depending on how they react to a magnetic field — or so physicists thought. New experiments show that one well-studied superconductor actually belongs to both groups at the same time. If the experiment is true, this would add a whole new class of superconductors, says Egor Babaev, a theorist at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. The advance may not immediately lead to new gadgets and applications, but it suggests that superconductivity, which has already netted four Nobel Prizes, may be an even richer phenomenon that previously thought