Five months after Japanese researchers stumbled upon a promising superconducting material, scientists on two continents have manipulated the material in ways that foreshadow its practical uses. However, scientists who did not conduct the studies said it still is too early to predict whether magnesium diboride will become an everyday material. I think they're very promising, but I don't put a time scale on them. A superconductor is a material that conducts electricity with little or no resistance. Superconducting materials would dramatically reduce power losses.
Conventional wires leak energy as heat.
However, most superconductors are impractical because they require extremely cold temperatures to function. Magnesium diboride is a common metal compound. It had been ignored for the past 15 years because researchers have been enamored with oxygen-containing compounds that can superconduct as warm as minus 172 degrees. But those compounds are more exotic and more expensive than magnesium diboride. The physics community was stunned in February when Japanese scientists determined that magnesium diboride could carry electricity with little resistance at minus 388 degrees.