Helix Technology, a cold play on semiconductor equipment Message Board

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Technology Stocks : Helix Technology, a cold play on semiconductor equipment

HELX 38.08

+0.3%

Nov 26 4:00 PM EST

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To: John Finley who wrote (920)	5/29/2001 7:42:28 AM
From: Sidney Street	Read Replies (1) of 1227

Good summary of state of commercial superconducting applications: nytimes.com May 29, 2001 High-Temperature Superconductors Find a Variety of Uses By KENNETH CHANG ifteen years after their discovery, high-temperature superconductors have not come close to the most grandiose projections for their use, like high-speed trains levitated by superconducting magnets. But the materials, which are able to carry electricity with virtually no resistance at relatively warm temperatures, have found useful niches in the real world. This month, workers pulled out nine cables from underground conduits at a Detroit power substation so that they could be replaced by the first high-temperature superconductor cables in a working power grid. The three new cables contain only 250 pounds of superconductor, yet they will be able to carry just as much current as the 18,000 pounds of copper in the nine cables they replace. Swapping copper cables for superconducting ones within existing conduits could allow utilities to triple their power capacity without disruptive digging. High-temperature superconductors are already used to improve signal reception in cell phone towers and for sensitive magnetic probes in scientific equipment. Efficient electric motors may be next. Engineers have developed these uses even while physicists remain unable to explain why high-temperature superconductors are superconductors at all. "We don't understand the physics, the mechanism," said Dr. Greg Yurek, chief executive of American Superconductor Corporation of Westborough, Mass., one of the companies involved in the Detroit project. "Yet it works. It's there." <snip>

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