[NOTE: What follows is revised from the original posting]
This is interesting. A team at Princeton found that the materials for Type II high temperature superconductivity (HTSC) are different from that of Type I low temperature superconductivity (LTSC) in yet another way. LTSC is found in elements such as niobium and lead, and HTSC in certain ceramic copper oxide compounds. LTSC and HTSC both rely upon electron attraction as the bonding “glue”, but now it seems that HTSC materials exhibit greater electron repulsion when not superconducting. Here are two quotes:
“High-temperature superconductivity does not hinge on a magical glue binding electrons together. The secret to superconductivity, they say, may rest instead on the ability of electrons to take advantage of their natural repulsion in a complex situation.” … “Unlike the electrons studied in low-temperature superconducting materials, the electrons in high-temperature superconductors that are most likely to bond and flow effortlessly are the ones that repel others the strongest when the environment is not conducive to superconductivity”.
Cooper pairs have been shown to be the basis upon which both LTSC and HTSC operate. However, the above study indicates that subtly different mechanisms may be in play, since in temperatures above those required for superconductivity the HTSC material’s electrons exhibit a uniquely strong repulsion. That repulsion, strangely enough, indicates their suitability for superconductivity when cooled. Ali Yazdani, a professor of physics at Princeton and the senior author of the paper, says “It’s counterintuitive, but that’s what’s happening.”
This may explain why Tajmar did not find any gravitomagnetic effect for HTSC copper oxide but did find positive measurable results when he tested LTSC niobium. Tajmar’s gMOD results may not only rely upon the electron bonding in superconductivity but also the conditions underlying electron bonding. The answer may lie in phonons vs. spin excitations.
The action of phonons (crystal lattice vibrations) has long been thought to be the mechanism behind the electron bonding in LTSC superconductors. However, in this article it has been suggested that HTSC is not caused by the actions of phonons, but of spin excitations as the basis for the “glue” so critical to high temperature superconductivity. And just this week two separate teams in Germany and the US have performed calculations to suggest that lattice vibrations in cuprates [HTSC] can at best account for just a small fraction of the materials’ superconducting behavior. However, the teams do not suggest what the dominant mechanism for HTSC might be.
So perhaps it is those mechanisms dominant in HTSC (spin excitations?) that interact less strongly with Tajmar’s and Hauser’s gravitophotons, and another mechanism in LTSC (phonons?) that interact more strongly?
Here is another related mystery. Dr. Tajmar’s also reported that his “artificial gravity” field began to show its effect as temperatures merely approach that of superconductivity for the LTSC niobium. That state just above the transition temperature when a material starts to superconduct is known as the “pseudogap”. Researchers report that this pseudogap state as co-existing with that of the HTSC superconductive state, not a precursor to it. But does this hold true for LTSC? If not, might this also be an influencing factor in Tajmar’s results?
Additional research on the mechanism for LTSC (phonons vs. spin excitations) and on the pseudogap state for LTSC would further delineate the similarities/differences of LTSC vs. HTSC and possibly on the basis for gravity modification.
Note from the Editor July 21, 2008:
Eric Hudson, associate professor of physics at MIT, has published a paper on the existence of the pseudogap. In his team’s latest work, published online on July 6 in Nature Physics, they suggest that the pseudogap is not a precursor to superconductivity, as has been theorized, but a competing state.
“We’ve studied a variety of samples and found trends which point toward one possible identity, which is a charge-density wave,” said Hudson. “If it is true that the pseudogap is a charge-density wave, that would be a major, major outcome because people have been looking for this for the past decade,” he said.
Charge-density waves (CDWs) are similar to Spin-density waves (SDWs). Both these states occur at low temperature in anisotropic, low-dimensional materials or in metals that have high densities of states at the Fermi level N(EF). Other low-temperature ground states that occur in such materials are superconductivity, ferromagnetism and antiferromagnetism. Note that SDWs are distinct from spin waves, which are an excitation mode of ferromagnets and antiferromagnets. Spin waves are propagating disturbances in the ordering of magnetic materials. These low-lying collective excitations occur in magnetic lattices with continuous symmetry. From the equivalent quasiparticle point of view, spin waves are known as magnons, which are boson modes of the spin lattice that correspond roughly to the phonon excitations of the nuclear lattice.