> Shouldn’t physics focus much more on the underlying micro states and micro processes than the emergent phenomena? Obviously there needs to be a transition, but at some point you go from physics to engineering.
1. The boundaries between disciplines are where they are in part by historical accident, and in part because that's what the people working in them find useful - there is no actual fact of the matter.
2. We don't actually know the underlying microprocesses of anything. Effective theories are all we have, and there's no fundamental difference between an effective theory for the vacuum (if it is a vacuum) and one for, say, the bulk of a semiconductor.
Room temperature superconductors would not give us zero-cost energy any time soon. Even if one had a high enough critical current to be used in transmission lines (which is not a given), transmission losses are under 10% in modern grids.
1. The boundaries between disciplines are where they are in part by historical accident, and in part because that's what the people working in them find useful - there is no actual fact of the matter.
2. We don't actually know the underlying microprocesses of anything. Effective theories are all we have, and there's no fundamental difference between an effective theory for the vacuum (if it is a vacuum) and one for, say, the bulk of a semiconductor.