Real-Life Weirdness

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by tshiggins

I'm not sure what the applications might be

A superconducting diode? Most of the applications I've heard of for diodes are related to power -- rectifying current, voltage references, steering current in power supplies, transient blocking, isolating parts of circuits to protect them, that kind of thing. So, high-current/power versions of any of those, perhaps. (It would come in handy for the top of your castle tower the next time you want to animate a flesh golem to properly direct the lightning bolts.)

Also, this particular material apparently exhibits its chiral property only when a magnetic field is applied, so there might be a use for sensitive magnetic field detectors (like in disk drives or MRAM), turning the field into much larger and more easily detectable changes in current. Denser information storage, ways for Them to read your supposed-erased hard disks. Or somebody will think of a clever reason to use a magnetic field to switch or modulate a large current, which at least would be electrically isolated from the high-power path. So perhaps there's a use for weapons. (You have to properly modulate the orbital mind control lasers to get the mind control, but after all, they have to be really high power to reach the surface from orbit.) Or high-powered communication, so your starwisp probes can return information, or your SETI program carry out that conversation with Trappist-1d.