At the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry and Minds, scientists are blasting diamonds during their research on superconductivity. During one year, we break maybe 100 diamonds, something like this. 50, 100 diamonds. So question for what? We have really big goal, metallic hydrogen. And metallic hydrogen requires very high pressures and so a lot of diamonds. And also metallic hydrogen, interesting by predicted high temperatures superconductivity. For me, I was really surprised to realize that we lived in the world of electricity. I would say only 100 years. But there is some interesting phenomenon which this quality approximately the same time 100 years ago. The so-called superconductivity. When electricity can go through conduct without any loss, just zero resistance. And you can imagine that if mankind will use superconductivity. So it's also going to change dramatically because of the world. The effort is well worth it. In Germany, resistance accounts for 6% of energy loss in power plants and households. The 6,000 gigawatts per hour lost per year could provide mines with power for more than 8 years. As a result, the potential energy savings are huge. At the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry and Minds, Dr. Aramitz and his team are conducting research on new materials and their applications using very high pressure. Their dream is to find a material that is superconductive at room temperature. But unfortunately, from the beginning of discovery of superconductivity, it was linked to lower temperatures, unpractical. And also, what is important, not understood. And only for the 50 years, it was understanding what is the phenomenon of superconductivity. While superconductivity was discovered way back in 1911, it took almost 50 years for any significant progress to be made in the field. In 1957, the physicists, Bardeen Cooper and Shrepha came up with a conceptual and mathematical foundation for conventional superconductivity, known as Bardeen Cooper Shrepha Theory, which they later received the Nobel Prize for in 1972. But also, next question, what is the highest critical temperature of superconductivity, my VB? So is it possible to have room temperature superconductivity? And theory gave hope that it was possible. And what we have recently found, we have found superconductivity, not room temperature superconductivity. But minus 73 degrees, it's already best temperature superconductivity. You can find this temperature in the air, in Antarctica, in Siberia. So it's some kind of street superconductivity. Where can we find the good superconductives? And if we look on elements, so we see this first column of a periodic system, alkaline metals. And at the top, we see hydrogen. And from a theoretical point of view, this is ideal case to find superconductivity. While it may seem surprising to consider hydrogen as a superconductor, the element belongs to the same group as the alkaline metals, lithium and sodium. Hydrogen was therefore expected to have similar characteristics under certain circumstances. The only bad thing about hydrogen is it's insulator, it's not metal. But it can be metal, but at very high pressure. So in the real, this pressure should be around three or four megawatts. It's pressing the center of the air, which is three from six megawatts, was to reach this pressure. And now it's available in the laboratory. The equipment used to reach this requisite very high pressure on Earth is surprisingly unspectacular, and can even be carried around in your pocket. Inside of this cell we have sample, which is squeezed between two diamond endos. And such a way we produce very high pressure. But price for this high pressure is small sample, few micrometers. Despite the fact that both the equipment and the sample were very small, the researchers successfully proved that hydrogen has the characteristics of a superconductor in terms of very low resistance under very high pressure. Why we have so many broken diamonds? Even diamonds are very hard material, but still it's very brittle. And it's also not perfect, there are some defects, cracks and so on. And for unfortunately, we break a lot of diamonds. Of course, especially at very high pressures, we have very strong stresses, which cause breaking of diamonds. On their way to finding out about superconductors, Dr. Aramits and his team discovered that a gas can conduct electricity when it gets metallic characteristics. Let's take a moment to understand the basics of conductivity itself, so we can get a better understanding of what superconductivity is all about. Normally electrical current goes through copper wires, and of course there is electrical resistance, and a lot of losses even in copper holidays. Copper is a good conductor. The copper atom is surrounded by electrons, which can jolt one another and conduct electricity. Electricity spreads and copper cables almost at the speed of light, but an ordinary conductor's resistance slows down the current. Dr. Aramits and his team found out that a gas-like hydrogen can get metallic characteristics and conduct electricity in a similar way to copper. And the high pressure molecule, hydrogen, transformed to atomic hydrogen. In this atomic hydrogen, electrons becomes free, so it becomes like alkali atom and similar to copper. It conducts electricity. Next question, how to find really high superconductivity, very good superconductivity. Metallic hydrogen is ideal case, but it requires really very high pressures. And we systematically work on hydraids. So, this substance, which has a lot of hydrogen, plus something. But finally, recently we found very interesting in sulfur hydride, in many respects, unexpected. So, it can be considered like metallic hydrogen. Inside of this metallic hydride, there are ions of sulfur, which attract hydrogen atoms in some way stabilize this metallic hydrogen. Molecular changes in hydrogen sulfide are observed at a high pressure and low temperature. Pairs of electrons are formed at a certain temperature. These coupéry electrons can conduct electricity without any resistance whatsoever. In discovering that hydrogen sulfide is superconductive, the scientists set a new world record in 2015. They found out that hydrogen sulfide becomes a superconductor at a temperature of minus 70 degrees and a pressure of 1.5 million bar. Next, what can we do? And what we're doing in the near future? First of all, we're looking for room temperature superconductivity. The easiest way for us is to reach with high pressure. And next, we're starting to work on searching for materials with high temperature superconductivity without pressure, which is most interesting for applications. Even though some more diamonds may end up being blasted during this research, the effort is well worth it. Possible technical applications include nuclear fusion and high speed trains. In the computer chip industry, meanwhile, superconductive materials have the potential to increase the speed of current computer chips more than 1,000 times over. The search for more superconductors continues with a view to eventually turning the dream of superconductivity at room temperature and for a broad range of technical applications into a reality.