| The gyroscope rotors are covered with a layer of niobium, a metal that will superconduct when it is cooled by liquid helium. |
| That led to a rush to find similar materials that would superconduct at even higher temperatures. |
| The alloys used in medical imaging superconduct only at supercold temperatures, about 450 degrees below zero Fahrenheit. |
| But K. Alex Müller and J. Georg Bednorz at the Zurich laboratory of I. B. M. believed that a ceramic material might be able to superconduct at warmer temperatures. |
| In the decades that followed, we discovered that most of the elements in the periodic table superconduct, and some alloys do too. |
| It's a ceramic material that was the first found to superconduct above the temperature of liquid nitrogen. |
