[HN Gopher] A room-temperature superconductor? New developments
___________________________________________________________________
A room-temperature superconductor? New developments
Author : nneonneo
Score : 793 points
Date : 2023-08-01 15:52 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.science.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.science.org)
| djha-skin wrote:
| Hug of death
| https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1sARgr7qWQdkRKfToEZJIm-1XVsbq...
| firatkizilboga wrote:
| I want to believe
| sandworm101 wrote:
| And a great many people also want _you_ to believe. Just
| remember: don 't give anyone any money, not until this is
| properly verified.
| wilg wrote:
| > don't give anyone any money, not until this is properly
| verified
|
| Instructions unclear: can't buy lunch.
| firatkizilboga wrote:
| Why would I pay any money when I can just cook it up at home?
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| Who could you possibly give money for this? It's not like
| there's a as-seen-on-TV ad for superconductors.
|
| But I agree that it needs a healthy dose of skepticism until
| several reputable groups have replicated it.
| ncallaway wrote:
| No one's selling a retail product now, but there's
| definitely going to be investors speculatively pushing
| money into the space
| ReptileMan wrote:
| Trust me - all the crypto bros that turned AI bros will
| become superconductor bros overnight
| themagician wrote:
| > Who could you possibly give money for this? It's not like
| there's a as-seen-on-TV ad for superconductors.
|
| Well, not with _that_ attitude.
| p1mrx wrote:
| Are you tired of stuff sitting on the ground like
| yesterday's news? Introducing Hovertape, the super-
| productive superconductor. Now for only 12 easy payments of
| $19.95, you can make almost anything float. If you order
| now, we'll throw in 3 rare earth magnets absolutely free!
| forgotusername6 wrote:
| This reminded me of the Sirens of Titan. The main
| character makes some bad investment decisions, including
| in hovering furniture that wobbles uncontrollably when
| touched.
| hughw wrote:
| Founders soliciting investment, for one.
| hinkley wrote:
| Most of us are not rich enough to be eligible.
|
| The last dotcom I worked for was trying to get funding
| and had a freakout because someone took money from an
| unaccredited investor. Had to spend a bunch of their
| remaining cash to buy that person out and clear the
| balance sheets.
|
| You have a lot more leeway to ~defraud~ work with
| accredited investors without all sorts of consumer-
| protectiony legal clauses kicking in. It's a liability
| for future rounds. Luckily there are a bunch of rich
| suckers out there.
| nick__m wrote:
| You are not alone !
| cardosof wrote:
| this changes everything (if it's true)
| carabiner wrote:
| Best way I've heard the DFT preprint described: "You know those
| spam pop sci websites where they find a study in which a specific
| cancer cell is killed by a certain drug and then go to print an
| article titled 'SCIENTISTS CURE CANCER'. This is a similar
| situation." by https://www.reddit.com/user/giantraspberry. The
| preprint doesn't mean much.
| xwdv wrote:
| What's the next big tech in the tech tree after room temp
| superconductors?
| trailingComma wrote:
| Cold fusion, after containment with superconductors becomes
| easy.
| gtsnexp wrote:
| Failed attempt to replicate: Semiconducting transport in
| Pb10-xCux(PO4)6O sintered from Pb2SO5 and Cu3P
| https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/2307/2307.16802.pdf
| epistasis wrote:
| I would expect to see such failed replications even if LK99 is
| the real deal. Getting the exact conditions correct for any
| sort of novel lab science is non-trivial, and often times the
| crucial variables might not even be measured in initial
| publications.
|
| People use this fact to try to bash things like cancer
| research, but it is unfortunately just a fundamental problem of
| science. Scientific publications are not kernels of distilled
| truth, they are work-in-progress commits. If we waited to
| publish until every last detail is known, science discovery
| would slow to a snails pace and we would miss a ton of
| discoveries.
| greggsy wrote:
| These are just as important as successes, as they build
| knowledge about what is _not_ possible.
| TheAceOfHearts wrote:
| Always gotta be careful about what we record as not being
| possible though. Just because some research claims
| something isn't possible doesn't always guarantee the claim
| is accurate. If some factors are mistakenly overlooked,
| it's entirely possible that something which is actually
| doable becomes regarded as impossible.
| carabiner wrote:
| Good reason to believe what the Chinese synthesized is far way
| from what the Koreans characterize as LK-99:
| https://twitter.com/robert_palgrave/status/16863940964101488...
|
| They tested a different substance.
| [deleted]
| mk_stjames wrote:
| I would be interested to see the daily order numbers on Sigma
| Aldrich's supplychain website for Lead II Oxide and Copper
| Phosphide powder in the last week....
| scarmig wrote:
| "Guardedly optimistic"!
| deeg wrote:
| I'm astounded that the MSM seems to be ignoring this ATM. I did a
| Google news search on LK-99 and saw nothing from major
| publications. A search on the NYTimes returned an article from
| 1974.
| t3rabytes wrote:
| I haven't seen a particularly great explanation that explains
| _why_ this is such a positive discovery that is copy
| /paste/digestable. No MSM outlet is going to run this story
| unless they can say an impact.
| arcticfox wrote:
| There are a ton of them on Twitter.
| cududa wrote:
| Yes and many of them are completely wrong.
|
| I keep seeing people saying "CPU's that don't generate
| heat". How exactly would that work? When a transistor turns
| off/ switches to 0, where does it dump the electrons? Hint:
| into heat
| dlivingston wrote:
| Sorry, can you explain? My understanding is that
| transistors don't "dump" electrons anywhere. The gate
| controls the voltage, which in the `0` state forces
| resistance to be high enough s.t. current flow through
| that transistor stops.
|
| As the Veritasium video explains [0], current flow is not
| a literal flow of electrons, but a state of the
| electromagnetic field (or something to that effect...
| it's been many years since my electromagnetism university
| courses).
|
| [0]: https://youtu.be/bHIhgxav9LY
| jcranmer wrote:
| To be frank, the available evidence at the moment is pretty
| shaky. Derek Lowe here is pretty optimistic, but most of the
| comments I've seen from the superconductor folks are pretty
| pessimistic [1]--and given that Derek Lowe isn't in the field,
| I'm inclined to favor their views over his at this point.
|
| The original articles are a pair of papers posted to arxiv in a
| field which I believe isn't well-known for arxiv publications,
| and most science journalism tends to wait for a peer-reviewed
| paper to come out in a notable journal before reporting on it.
| Although it has been reported by some specialized outlets
| already (a category which I'd include Derek Lowe's _In The
| Pipeline_ ).
|
| [1] See, e.g., https://nitter.net/i/status/1686373516286005248,
| which goes into why even the recent theoretical-confirmation
| papers are unpersuasive to them.
| lolinder wrote:
| Thanks for that link!
|
| My feeling watching all this has been that it's weird people
| are getting so excited about the replication when the
| actually interesting question (is it truly a superconductor)
| hasn't even been answered yet. Glad to see that isn't just my
| ignorance.
| stusmall wrote:
| I actually appreciate that caution. Things have been
| _extremely_ up in the air and it would be very hard to properly
| explain what is happening, how it matters and if it matters.
| The last part I think is why it 's a good thing that they held
| back. There was enough unknown that it wasn't clear if this
| would ever amount to anymore than "some scientists may or may
| not have made a big mistake." I think we are hitting the point,
| with multiple teams saying this is either possible or has
| happened, that we will start seeing MSM stories. They aren't
| ignoring it, they are being cautious. I promise you their
| science beat reporters are watching this like a hawk.
|
| I appreciate reputable news organizations as a reliable filter
| against noise out there on the internet. If I want early rumors
| I have sites like this. If I want something filtered, curated
| and focused, I go to them.
| wallaBBB wrote:
| After racing with each other to fuel political extremism or
| push the corporate narratives like how working from home is
| terrible for the worker or how good it is for us that the
| rich don't pay the taxes, how unaffordable housing is good
| for the economy... this is what they choose to be careful
| about?
|
| Nah, this just doesn't sell or is not a paid article.
| fragmede wrote:
| The EmDrive was first publicized in 2001, but wasn't picked
| up by the mainstream media until 2013, and then again in
| 2016 after NASA picked it up. That Korean scientists have
| this discovery on their hands and the materials world is
| racing to keep up, and isn't frontpage of the New York
| Times, is editor's choice. Currently, that's Joseph Kahn,
| but (unfortunately) science ranks below politics and sports
| and business.
| stusmall wrote:
| It's hard to not let cynicism like this get to me
| especially when the argument makes so little sense. This
| doesn't sell? Isn't sensationalist enough? A possible end
| result of this is magic flying space trains. This isn't
| exactly some boring in the weeds things. This is extremely
| easy to hype if you just want to draw eye balls. But sure,
| yeah, MSM corporate plutocracy or whatever.
| joefigura wrote:
| Well, half the comments are making fun of the spotty quality of
| the evidence and it's been barely a week since the paper was
| published. I think it's reasonable to wait for at least a pre-
| print of a successful replication. I don't think it's fair to
| say the MSM is ignoring it, the possible discovery literally
| just happened and some combination of low awareness and caution
| with the evidence means they haven't covered it yet.
| exoque wrote:
| Really? Here's an article from one of switzerland's biggest
| newspapers: https://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/ein-supraleiter-fuer-
| den-alltag...
| failuser wrote:
| There have been several false reports of high-temperature
| superconductors during previous months. There seems to be
| backlash to the high-temperature superconductors claims now.
| brucethemoose2 wrote:
| Most people I talk to don't recognize the importance of room
| temperature superconductivity.
|
| A floating grain is cool, but not something that jumps out at
| people like a rocket or a big fusion reactor.
|
| The application is similarly unintuitive. Many here on HN ask
| why such a thing would be important, and they are probably the
| 99th (or 99.9th?) percentile in materials science and EE
| literacy.
| [deleted]
| boppo1 wrote:
| >Most people I talk to don't recognize the importance of room
| temperature superconductivity.
|
| I don't. I read someone saying it would be the biggest
| breakthrough since fire. Is that true or hyperbole?
| brucethemoose2 wrote:
| Thats kinda hyperbolic.
|
| Its more like the transistor.
| xereeto wrote:
| The transistor was unequivocally the biggest
| technological breakthrough since fire
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| Even if it is true, we are a long ways off from Star Trek
| utopia. No idea if macroscopic quantities can be robustly
| produced, what their limitations will be, cost per gram, etc.
| If the material is confirmed, there will be oodles of money
| pumped into the space, but it could still be years before
| commercial applications begin to appear.
| 0xDEF wrote:
| Danish and German media has covered it by interviewing local
| scientists who are all calling it bullshit.
| moooo99 wrote:
| that does indeed sound like a very German reaction
| mrWiz wrote:
| NYT did mention it the other day, as a side note to this story
| about allegations of misconduct by a physicist who has studied
| superconductors.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/26/science/ranga-dias-retrac...
| Bjorkbat wrote:
| Because until more scientists can replicate this the news is
| little more substantial than the typical post on /r/futurology
| on any given day.
| AlanSE wrote:
| It's still not believed. It's just Twitter that I've seen the
| juicy stuff, like a (very sketchy) claimed replication from a
| Russian, and now another claim from a Chinese group.
|
| I could still see this being something "new" but not a true
| superconductor. If you read the link, there seems to be some
| kind of discovery brewing, but the original discovers may not
| have understood what they found.
| throwaway23354 wrote:
| While you're correct about the scarce and sketchy evidence
| currently it is in the process of narrowing down. Or to put
| it better the evidence is mounting that it might be a
| breakthrough. It likely hard to manufacture correctly, but
| simulations done at Berkeley Labs seem to support the claims
| of the original paper https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.16892 And
| aside from that to be honest I hope that we have time to
| prove or disprove those claims, before any major news outlet
| jumps onto the hype train and ruins it.
| lolinder wrote:
| Why a throwaway account for this? It honestly makes me
| immediately question your take.
| Q6T46nT668w6i3m wrote:
| The paper you referenced doesn't say anything about the
| room-temperature superconductivity claims.
| declan_roberts wrote:
| I think them waiting until there's more research is preferable
| to them coming out and making random claims which pan out not
| to be true.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Because the media is of course known for studying topics in
| high detail to make sure they don't report the wrong thing
| and not for rushing half written hearsay out the door before
| the competitors do.
| adamsb6 wrote:
| Wait wait wait... Are eggs healthy again?
| tills13 wrote:
| That hasn't stopped them in the past...
| ygjb wrote:
| I think it's more likely that the bulk of folks don't fully
| comprehend why this would be so important. I would imagine
| alot of reporters look at the things they could write about
| and the choices are politics, war, polarizing news, or nerds
| nerding hard trying to prove other nerds right or wrong, and
| it just doesn't make the cut.
| zgluck wrote:
| This plus vacation time in the Northern hemisphere - that
| one science reporter per large news org who actually
| understands the importance is AFK.
| refulgentis wrote:
| No...that's not the case here, to wit, we can observe
| writers from these publications discussing it casually.
| lolinder wrote:
| Newspapers don't work like that. The same reporter isn't
| responsible for politics, war, _and_ science--they
| specialize, and a dedicated science reporter is going to be
| at least as savvy as a random commenter on HN.
|
| They may want to cover it and just have a hard time
| explaining it to their editor, but I think "we can afford
| to wait until a peer reviewed paper comes out" is more
| likely.
| fragmede wrote:
| Right. There's nothing to write about (yet!), but their
| science reporter is scrolling science twitter harder than
| we are. The movie can come later.
| byw wrote:
| Though that's like the opposite of how most media operate.
| mattwest wrote:
| True, but that hasn't stopped MSM in the past
| wilg wrote:
| Genuinely a laugh-out-loud take on mainstream science
| reporting.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| Why aim to improve when we can just keep making the same
| old mistakes?
| wilg wrote:
| I misread it as saying the news always does it this way,
| which was clearly not what they meant.
| lolinder wrote:
| I took it as saying "they usually jump in too early, so
| this is a refreshing change of pace."
| wilg wrote:
| Oh yes, you're right, I think I read it too quickly.
| raziel2701 wrote:
| It's because it's a piece of news that doesn't cause outrage
| and polarization so they don't know how to profit off it.
| arcticfox wrote:
| I am also completely baffled by this! So many stupid mouse-
| model medical discovery stories over the years and actually
| zero LK-99 coverage.
|
| It doesn't even matter if it works or not as for whether it's
| newsworthy; the mystery, human backstory, and
| Argonne/China/independent scientists jumping to replicate alone
| is a whole swathe of viable and fascinating topics ready to be
| published.
|
| The crazy thing is NYT just bothered to publish a story about
| the Dias superconductor paper retraction; a paper that had
| never even crossed my radar in the first place because TBH I
| don't care about superconductors unless they're going to be a
| huge step change in practical applications, which the Dias
| "finding" wasn't.
|
| What are they doing?!
| nomel wrote:
| > What are they doing?!
|
| Trying to make ad money with views, which is their profit
| incentive.
|
| Mouse models are nearly always spun as applicable to humans,
| which an average, aging, viewer would be interested, usually
| relating to "Cure <ailment>", "regrow limbs", "stop aging",
| etc.
|
| The average viewer isn't interested in superconductors, and
| the 10 seconds the news orgs have for each bit of news isn't
| enough to explain them.
| arcticfox wrote:
| The NYT has published 3 articles about room-temperature
| superconductors since March; all about the insanely high-
| pressure one that is INFINITELY less exciting than the new
| claim and turned out to be bunk anyways.
| phoenixstrike wrote:
| Almost all of the stories in major newspapers are
| commissioned ("pitched") by interest groups that want to see
| that article published. It's why a lot of articles contain
| quotes from weirdly specific people with middle-office titles
| in specific organizations. Journalists aren't cold calling
| random office workers to get these quotes. An outline of an
| article is provided, journalists do some minimal fact-
| checking and write it out into a proper article. Beat writers
| that cover a specific topic regularly and have made their own
| contacts in that field are an exception.
| mike00632 wrote:
| What should the headline be? "South Korean scientists claim
| room temperature superconductivity again! Are they lying like
| their last paper? Let's celebrate!"
| arcticfox wrote:
| "Potential superconductor breakthrough sends national labs
| scrambling"
| epistasis wrote:
| 99% of science journalism is repeating a press release that
| came out of a university's press office.
|
| It's very hard to become a science journalist where you can
| pursue your own stories, because the market for this is
| practically zero in comparison to other parts of the media.
|
| I always try to pay for media that publishes stories from the
| likes of, say, Ed Yong, and leave messages that I'm doing it
| for the science journalism. But I doubt it has much
| substantial effect on how much real science journalism
| happens.
| Q6T46nT668w6i3m wrote:
| There isn't much to report.
| fHr wrote:
| ok this is very exciting to hear
| Exuma wrote:
| Has that German scientist that answered like an asshole ever
| posted a reply yet? I want to see what some of the aggressive
| nay-sayers are saying now. I love this bit of schadenfreude.
| badman2001 wrote:
| the dft results are definitely interesting, but i note that with
| the caveat that my background is in experimental condensed matter
| physics for materials like this and not theoretical, my
| understanding is that the dominant feature of the conclusions
| (the flat bands) is a necessary but not sufficient condition for
| superconductivity in the way the authors describe.
|
| again, in experimental condensed matter physics it's acceptable
| to do a fine experiment and then throw in a half-baked
| "theoretical underpinning" to appease reviewers, so I wouldn't be
| surprised if the superconductivity turns out to be totally
| unrelated to the mechanism proposed in the paper. i would really
| like to see some more robust characterization work(biased because
| this is my background), hopefully some of the labs doing the
| replication studies can take a look at the juicy stuff
| adw wrote:
| I know some DFT (*), but very little superconductivity, but I
| read through Sinead Griffin's preprint and there was nothing in
| there which looked weird from a methodological perspective -
| and the methods (and software) she is using are extremely well-
| established and well-categorized.
|
| (*) it was, like, two decades ago, but I've got a first-author
| PRB paper so I wouldn't trust me compared to an active
| researcher but I'm not _entirely_ clueless
| foven wrote:
| Something that I find hard to understand is why there is
| superconductivity without cooper pairs; granted my
| understanding is related to more traditional superconductors
| and I'm not really very knowledgeable about the cutting edge
| high-Tc stuff.
| montecarl wrote:
| The thing that stands out to me is that the DFT simulations
| show that the flat bands only occur in a particular crystal
| structure of the material and it is not the most stable state
| (at least according to the simulation). This would explain the
| synthetic challenges involved. These simulations are not
| perfect, but they can be VERY useful when guided by experiment
| and when they correlate strongly it is a good sign that you
| have a mechanistic explanation of the phenomenon.
| dang wrote:
| The major threads so far, in reverse order--have I missed any?
|
| _Huazhong University demonstrates LK-99 diamagnetism_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36953819 - Aug 1, 2023 (265
| comments)
|
| _LK-99 crystal verified to be magnetically levitated (with
| video)_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36953396 - Aug 1,
| 2023 (10 comments)
|
| _Room-Temperature Ambient-Pressure Superconductor LK-99 preprint
| revision 2_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36952894 - Aug
| 1, 2023 (272 comments)
|
| _Origin of correlated isolated flat bands in LK99_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36951815 - Aug 1, 2023 (196
| comments)
|
| _Semiconducting Transport in LK99 reproduction attempt_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36951140 - Aug 1, 2023 (245
| comments)
|
| _LK-99: The live online race for a room-temperature
| superconductor_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36940323 -
| July 31, 2023 (619 comments)
|
| _Ask HN: Room temperature superconductor: what to expect?_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36930707 - July 30, 2023 (61
| comments)
|
| _"We are not cheating" (YH Kwon superconductor comments)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36929386 - July 30, 2023 (61
| comments)
|
| _Korea Superconductor Papers Published 'Without Consent'_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36927216 - July 30, 2023 (47
| comments)
|
| _Argonne National Lab is attempting to replicate LK-99_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36916254 - July 29, 2023
| (201 comments)
|
| _LK-99_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36897300 - July
| 27, 2023 (58 comments)
|
| _Superconductor news: What's claimed, and how strong the
| evidence seems to be_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36881808 - July 26, 2023
| (471 comments)
|
| _The first room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductor?_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36864624 - July 25, 2023
| (875 comments)
|
| Edit: thanks to mystery user for emailing hn@ycombinator.com to
| suggest we include the days, not just month/year, for fast-moving
| stories like this.
| fragmede wrote:
| Why not put them into a single megathread with the links linked
| in text? Each new post still has repetitive comments ("What if
| it's a hoax?" "What does this enable" "Reminds me of the
| EmDrive"...)
| irthomasthomas wrote:
| Any idea why the Science article links to a HN post as the
| source?
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36953396 (10 comments)
| sampo wrote:
| > the Science article
|
| It's a blog post. Not a Science article.
| dang wrote:
| Ok, I've added 36953396 to the above list - thanks!
|
| Why did Derek Lowe link to HN? Who knows - maybe he noticed
| all the traffic this place has sent him, or how loved his
| articles are here!
| MillionOClock wrote:
| If it's real, how fast could we see concrete applications using
| this material? 5-year time frame? 10-year time frame? More?
| themagician wrote:
| If real it will be weaponized in 90-days.
| nemo44x wrote:
| You'd need breakthroughs in the manufacturing of it (yield,
| process, scale, etc) and then building the infrastructure and
| supply chain to support it. Depending on its availability you
| could see governments hoard the material for "security" and
| "public interest" use cases, etc. Military first as usual.
|
| If this turns out to be a super conducting material you can be
| assured that overnight there will be many thousands of people
| all around the world, from academic, corporate, government, and
| private labs working with the new theory and materials and
| discoveries will occur as our understanding of the phenomenon
| get deeper and wider. There will be so much incentive to find
| new methods and materials that have the properties of this
| material.
| brucethemoose2 wrote:
| > if you could grow a good single crystal of LK-99, it seems as
| if the superconductivity might only occur along one crystal
| axis: put crudely, you'd see superconductivity if you hooked
| your wires to two particular opposite faces of said crystal,
| but not to the others! Crystalline grain boundaries are already
| known to be a big deal in the efficiency of existing
| superconducting materials, and this would mean that
| polycrystalline samples of LK-99 would be pretty unfavorable to
| demonstrating robust effects.
|
| I think this means production of usable superconducting masses
| will be tricky, if its even possible.
|
| So... Probably on the longer side? Time will be needed to
| figure out how to make it macroscopically, or discover a
| similar compound thats easier to produce in bulk.
|
| But once wire, coils, high purity samples and such start
| getting sold, I think the adoption would be very quick.
| distortionfield wrote:
| But what you just described would still be insanely valuable.
| Just in the field of semiconductors and chip fab, it would
| probably unlock insane gains.
| brucethemoose2 wrote:
| Probably yeah.
|
| But I dont want to jump to conclusions. I dont think its a
| drop in replacement for, say, the copper substrate.
| radicaldreamer wrote:
| Nobody knows, it depends on a multitude of factors, but most
| likely this won't be the exact material which will have
| applications, I'm sure there is a much easier to fabricate
| related material which will be the first of a whole set of
| materials which act as superconductors at room temperatures.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Why be so sure about that? I really hope it doesn't turn out
| to be graphene 2.0, a material that can revolutionize
| everything but can't be produced consistently and in usable
| quantities by any means at all.
| distortionfield wrote:
| Yeah, this feels like the really early results of a material
| that they eventually refine into a process, hence their
| patents. There are reports they were worried about being
| beaten to the punch, im curious if that's true and if so, who
| the word on the street said was close.
| mrandish wrote:
| > They also predict that substituting gold atoms into the Pb(1)
| site could lead to a material with very similar properties, which
| will be an extremely interesting idea to put to the test.
|
| Since the base material is lead apatite, I had a random thought
| that maybe medieval alchemists trying to turn lead into gold just
| had it backward, as doping gold into lead might be a
| breakthrough. :-)
| samstave wrote:
| Postulation :
|
| Can someone please take layers of graphene and pure gold leaf
| and tell me what that may result in, aside from beautiful
| "damascus"?
| itsarnavb wrote:
| Now I'm imagining what history would have looked like if the
| alchemists had indeed stumbled upon a floating lead apatite
| sample a few centuries ago...
| javajosh wrote:
| Good idea! They wouldn't have been able to do any
| applications without a voltaic cell, and it would have been a
| novelty. Like gunpowder in ancient China.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| The force of tradition is amazing. Imagine centuries
| knowing how to make something that explodes violently, and
| using it for entertainment instead of weapons.
|
| Just like how Mesoamerican civilizations invented the
| wheel, but only used it on children toys and not for
| transportation. There were no draft animals in the region,
| but they didn't even make wheelbarrows.
|
| https://www.mexicolore.co.uk/aztecs/home/the-concept-of-
| the-...
| arugulum wrote:
| Another example that I read about once and have never
| been able to verify (or it may be completely made up) is
| that the because the Chinese invented porcelain first
| (which was more sturdy than glass or something) they
| never bothered with glass, which meant they missed out on
| all the cool astronomical discoveries (which then has
| implications on their development of mathematics and
| physics).
|
| Again, no idea if there is any validity to this or just
| something completely made up.
| Veserv wrote:
| The Mesoamerican civilizations did not have copper,
| bronze, or iron metallurgy which is a prerequisite for
| making the metal rims needed for transportation wheels. A
| wooden wheel without a metal rim is too fragile for
| transportation.
|
| Without the wheel, humans are actually relatively
| comparable to other pack animals in carrying efficiency.
| It is the wheel that makes moving larger loads more
| efficient which makes it advantageous to domesticate pack
| animals that can exert greater force.
| hosh wrote:
| Keep in mind, the Chinese were using bombs, granades, and
| rockets in warfare. Cannons were slowly being
| incorporated during the Ming.
|
| It's just that, the Chinese also had standardized
| crossbows capable of punching through armor, and allowed
| for long range sniping, centuries before gunpowder. The
| Manchus who founded the Qing dynasty valued archery, and
| were slower to adopt firearms. The mid and late Qing
| period saw firearm military units, with bows and arrows
| evolved for powerful short range attacks, ceding long
| range to firearms.
|
| Even so, it looks like Chinese generals were interested
| in fielding firearms, and found them effective.
|
| Wikipedia has a list of theories on why gun development
| stagnated, and the leading theory is that Chinese
| fortification were more resistant to cannon fire. https:/
| /en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunpowder_weapons_in_the_Min...
|
| As far as Mesoamericans and wheels, I'm not sure the
| hilly terrain and dense jungle would make wheeled
| transports that easy. They seemed to be able to create
| step pyramids with stone just fine.
| philwelch wrote:
| Even in the west, firearms took centuries of evolution
| and constant peer-level warfare to evolve into the
| primary weapon.
| mvalente_ wrote:
| Is there a name for this kind of effect?
| Prickle wrote:
| "The road not taken" is a Science Fiction trope that
| generally explores that idea.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| The "untyped languages are just fine" effect :P
| GMoromisato wrote:
| I always call this a "local maximum" problem. Once you've
| optimized the crap out of your tech, any change makes it
| worse (e.g., replacing crossbows with primitive guns).
| But if you do switch, then optimizing that technology
| takes you to an even higher maximum.
|
| The problem is that you have to go backwards to go
| forwards, and you can't always predict (or convince the
| powers-that-be) that the end result will be better.
| netrus wrote:
| Extremely relevant to electric cars. Looks like we are
| close to electric > ICE, (or past that point, whatever),
| but it was a long painful time of hyping subpar cars by
| those who believed in the potential of the technology.
| GMoromisato wrote:
| Agreed! I also believe that once we flip (EV > ICE) the
| momentum goes the other way.
|
| For example, let's say that 50% of cars on the road are
| EVs. Now gas stations have a problem. You can't survive
| with half your customers gone, so maybe half the gas
| stations go out of business. But that means your nearest
| gas station is much further away, so now the incentive
| for EV goes up.
|
| In California (and the Bay Area, particularly), I bet
| we'll see this relatively soon.
| [deleted]
| bluGill wrote:
| The Chinese invented cannons about the time they invented
| gun power. However by coincidence their forts used stone
| walls thick enough to resist cannon fire and so it was not
| really better than the various catapult systems they also
| had (which also couldn't breach their fort walls).
|
| https://acoup.blog/2021/12/17/collections-fortification-
| part... Goes into this in more detail for a couple
| paragraphs.
| sorokod wrote:
| Shooting in steep trajectory, howitzer style, would still
| be valuable.
| akomtu wrote:
| The ring of solomon was a curious mix of metals with a magnet
| in it. Its inventors were definitely up to something.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Watch gold be the only practically viable solution, making this
| new material wonderful but also incredibly expensive.
| worldsayshi wrote:
| Time to start mining asteroids.
| mrandish wrote:
| Interestingly enough, there's already some idle speculation
| that the apparent variability of LK99 synthesis might be
| improved with zero-G manufacturing.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| Is this how the science fiction future we've all read in
| books becomes reality?
|
| SpaceX becomes an evil megacorp mining gold from the
| asteroid belt with LLM AI controlled robot slaves so that
| we can make hover cars using superconductors?
| themagician wrote:
| I want to _believe._
|
| After several millennia of killing people for gold, we can
| finally put all that gold to good use--using it to create
| superconductors that can power energy weapons we can use to
| kill each other.
|
| It's the circle of life
| mrandish wrote:
| > I want to believe.
|
| Yeah, it's always possible this may not pan out but I'm
| really enjoying the visceral reminder that new fundamental
| science always has the _potential_ to be suddenly
| transformative across a spectrum fields.
| samstave wrote:
| YOU IDIOT! W _need_ the gold to turn the slaves back into
| carbon,m so we can make more slaves to harvest the gold!!* -
| https://youtu.be/rMz7JBRbmNo
|
| --
|
| I know we hate jokes - but apropos
| bufferoverflow wrote:
| People cut cables for copper. Imagine what will happen with
| cables with gold.
| xwdv wrote:
| Gold is everywhere in computing, not a big deal.
| themagician wrote:
| Not computing, arms manufacturing. Lead, tungsten or
| uranium projectiles with superconducting jackets fired
| from railguns.
| ajuc wrote:
| You would probably put the superconductor in the barrel
| and magnets in the ammunition :)
| [deleted]
| nwiswell wrote:
| It would be sub-10%* gold content. We're talking about gold
| doping, specifically substitution in the Pb(1) site, not an
| alloy.
|
| ETA: I was off by an order of magnitude (originally I said
| sub-1%) because the doping is extensive, and the mass of
| the lead/gold is a dominant fraction of the total. The
| formula given in the paper is (subscripts in brackets):
|
| Pb[10-x]Cu[x](PO4)[6]O with 0.9 < x < 1.1.
|
| Similarly for Au we would have Pb[10-x]Au[x](PO4)[6]O.
| Taking the centerpoint x=1, this becomes
| Pb[9]Au[1](PO4)[6]O. In other words, there would be one
| gold atom for every 9 lead atoms.
|
| The "unit cell weight" is 2647.59 g/mol, and the molar mass
| of gold is 196.97 g/mol, so in fact the hypothetical gold
| weight content is about 7.44%, not sub-1%.
|
| That said -- presumably superconducting transmission wires
| would be thinner than the ones we are used to (a function
| of critical current rather than resistance). So I'm not
| sure that we'd have a theft problem worse than we already
| have with copper.
| robbintt wrote:
| FWIW strip mining operations till materials for ~6 PPM
| gold.
| araes wrote:
| 7.44% gold? That's ~$75 per oz of material. And you're
| talking about lead cable. Its kind of heavy, even if its
| thin. And it seems really easy to melt and separate.
| Notably, most power lines are actually aluminum, which is
| probably where people would really want this. Also chosen
| for its low weight / density, cause if you're gonna hang
| lines 100's of feet long, you want 2700 kg/m3, not 9000
| kg/m3, and definitely not 11000 kg/m3. Although probably
| also significant applications in mm, um, and nm scale
| wiring.
| [deleted]
| cperciva wrote:
| The superconductor itself would be 7.44% gold, but the
| _wire_ would probably be much less -- superconducting
| tape isn 't particularly strong so it will probably be
| wrapped up in layers of insulator and support wires.
| nwiswell wrote:
| I think that's right. There's no indication that it's
| mechanically strong, so you'd have it wrapped in layers
| of rubber/epoxy and steel cables in order to suspend it
| between power poles or transmission pylons.
|
| YBCO tape has a critical current in the 1-10 MA/cm2
| range, so if the properties of this RT stuff is anywhere
| close, the actual superconducting element of the wire
| could potentially be _very_ thin.
| csteubs wrote:
| Having to handle lead for a practically unretrievable
| amount of gold would (I hope) be enough of a deterrent
| for the vast majority of "citizen scrappers". Worst case,
| I think a Pb/Au scrap grey-market would look something
| like the current catalytic converter market, where raw
| materials are purchased at set rate by an intermediary
| and then sold for further processing. Most people know
| there's gold in their computer parts, but still opt for
| the recycling bin/ziploc bag in a junk drawer.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Nah, they'll just drop it in a smelter and sort it using
| gravity.
| rajamaka wrote:
| It might deter those in wealthy countries, everywhere
| else would be another story.
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| I don't think the material is very ductile so I'm not sure
| that you'd be able to easily run a cable like
| copper/aluminum/steel transmission lines
| nwiswell wrote:
| That would likely be addressed by vacuum deposition
| techniques.
| Teever wrote:
| We'll use them to build spacecraft that retrieve asteroids
| so rich in gold that it permanently crashes the price of
| gold?
|
| People don't seem to realize how radically society will
| change if this superconductor thing is legit.
| andrepd wrote:
| How does room temperature superconductivity lead to the
| feasibility of asteroid mining? Could you please explain?
| [deleted]
| Teever wrote:
| You could also ask "How does room temperature
| semiconductivity lead to the feasibility of asteroid
| mining?"
|
| the answer to that question is the answer to your
| question.
| andrepd wrote:
| What?
| ars wrote:
| Magnetic launch. See:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_driver
| [deleted]
| ajuc wrote:
| Computer components already have gold in them, and they are
| already recycled for gold.
| kbenson wrote:
| There's a wide space between "can be recycled" and
| "profitable enough that there's theft for base components
| that can be resold". That doesn't mean it won't be
| profitable to harvest the gold (I don't know), but one
| does not imply the other.
|
| For example, paper recycling is profitable when
| centralized (barely), but even that's with most the
| pipeline subsidized, and it's not profitable to the
| degree that people are stealing paper to turn in because
| it's worth the effort.
| [deleted]
| coldtea wrote:
| > _After several millennia of killing people for gold, we can
| finally put all that gold to good use_
|
| Wouldn't that just make gold even more valuable (and thus
| more killing will ensue, even ignoring the high energy
| weapons).
| anyoneamous wrote:
| Mostly, I am just glad that all the LK-99 posts are drowning out
| the "AI" news for a few days.
| guestbest wrote:
| Anything is better than crypto.
| scarmig wrote:
| My new start-up, Super Conducting Artifical Minds, is
| releasing a new coin that allows zero resistance neural
| network computation on the block chain. Get in on it now and
| you can make millions in passive income!
| AlanSE wrote:
| No no no, this eliminates the need for cryo, not crypto.
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| How about LK-99 coins!?!? Right? Maybe we use diffusion to
| design them so they are "super-conducting crypto AI coins"
| get yours now for only $199 at the Philadelphia Mint. Act
| now, supplies are limited!
| anyoneamous wrote:
| I'm going to use my new skills as a Prompt Engineer to get
| Stable Diffusion to produce some NFTs for me, and use the
| profits to invest in a SPAC targeting LK-99 start-ups.
|
| Now explain that sentence to a caveman - or even to someone
| in 1990.
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| Language divergence is kind of insane. I heard a person
| say in conversation "I didn't get a picture of it because
| I didn't have my phone with me." And thinking about how
| that would be interpreted, 10, 25, 50, and 100 years ago
| is pretty funny.
|
| There is a funny comedy bit in the movie "Sleeper" where
| Woody Allen's character is explaining what things were
| for to scientists in the 23rd century. But today it is
| even wilder.
|
| What really strikes me is that it isn't "slang" that
| we're dealing with here, it is actual kind of "things". I
| thought we had peaked with pet rocks but I was so, so
| very wrong.
| casey2 wrote:
| He is going to use his skills as a poweruser of an AI
| program to have it output a script; which runs an image
| generation program to produce and record sales
| transactions of images. He will take the money from the
| sales of those images to invest in a SPAC targeting
| potential room temperature super conductor start-ups.
| lopatin wrote:
| DOGE-99 is just around the corner
| renegade-otter wrote:
| Crypto is utterly useless, a walled off sector of cons.
|
| AI is useful enough to be dangerous in the hands of bad
| actors, where the marks are not just the suckers but the
| people who want to have nothing to do with it.
| playa1 wrote:
| What has happened to HN the past few months? So much AI,
| Superconductors and open source air quality monitoring.
| 1attice wrote:
| You've fallen for the Fundamental Attribution Error.
|
| It's not HN; it's the world that's driving this.
|
| 1. GPT-4-grade AI is a genuine, holy-smokes innovation that
| is already driving massive changes in education (universities
| are having to redesign all their writing assignments,)
| entertainment (SAG-AFTRA strike,) and the tech industry (the
| sudden disappearance of thousands of jobs, and the
| concomitant socioeconomic demotion of software engineers. And
| if you think AI isn't to blame here: you're probably right!
| There was other stuff going on, e.g. the end of ZIRP. But AI
| will _keep those jobs away._ )
|
| 2. Clean air seems pressing, as (if you'll recall) we just
| had this little pandemic thing happen, and in case you missed
| it, a vast chunk of my country (Canada) is currently ablaze,
| choking the United States with smoke, and other places are
| experiencing similar pressures (thanks, 2023 Thermal Pulse.)
|
| 3. RTAP Superconductors are literally the stuff of sci fi,
| and their advent interacts directly with trends 1 and 2, as
| RTAPS would make climate change more easily addressed
| (dramatic efficiency improvements across the board) and also
| would make AI silicon work much, much faster as part of that.
| It might also open the door to efficient quantum computing,
| which in turn would drive AGI even faster/further.
|
| You're living through some seriously bonkers stuff, and your
| newsfeed is understandably preoccupied with it.
| Bjorkbat wrote:
| I don't know, I haven't really seen the same level of
| interest from my "normie" friends that I've seen among the
| HN-adjacent crowd. None of them seem to be aware of LK-99,
| let alone care about it. Meanwhile, the GPT hype has worn
| off, and on that note, none of them seem to be aware that
| there's a difference between GPT-4 and ChatGPT. The former
| is this vague, nearly non-existent thing.
|
| They're aware of the actors/writers strike and the
| association AI has with it, but AI in this context is a
| vague speculative thing rather than a specific type of AI
| or brand of AI made by some company.
| furyofantares wrote:
| Yeah, HN is always gonna be quite a bit further along
| than mainstream in terms of both depth and detail, and
| living a bit in the future (and as a result of this, more
| speculatively.)
| 1attice wrote:
| > I don't know, I haven't really seen the same level of
| interest from my "normie" friends that I've seen among
| the HN-adjacent crowd.
|
| Implicit in this counterargument is the idea that judging
| what is of genuine importance is a matter of opinion, as
| though we could get a sense of what to pay attention to
| by polling a large enough sample set.
|
| It is not. Expertise matters. _Who_ is interested in the
| topic matters.
|
| Put another way: _from the Fundamental Attribution Error
| alone_ , it does not follow that identity is completely
| meaningless; it does, however imply that anyone with
| such-and-such a set of concerns and knowledge would
| behave in such-and-such a way under such-and-such
| conditions.
|
| And those conditions obtain. And so, with a flourish: I
| give you, 2023 "Superconduct my clean-air-monitoring AI,
| please!" Hackernews
| davidgerard wrote:
| there's already superconductor twitter guys who were AI guys
| last week
| hinkley wrote:
| This is going to turn into the Iran Contra affair all over
| again.
|
| Get tired of one set of assholes? Funnel resources to another
| set of assholes (who also wish you harm).
|
| If this turns out to be actually true then everyone will want
| to talk about fusion again. I don't know if I have the stomach
| for it. But as you say, at least it's not AI.
| AlanSE wrote:
| Fusion was already starting to heat up in recent years. The
| entire SPARC reactor concept is based on (low-temp)
| superconductor materials breakthroughs.
|
| If these room-temp superconductors pan out, it will be
| dumping gasoline on the funding fire for new fusion attempts.
| Given less than a year from scientific verification, fusion
| will go red hot.
| highwaylights wrote:
| Don't be. Twitter/X/whatever they're calling it this week is
| crawling with Pepe investment bros talking about bullish
| sentiment because superconductors equals singularity musk
| crypto AI blah blah blah.
|
| It's bad. It's really, really bad.
| smolder wrote:
| That sounds like a good reason not to visit
| Twitter/X/whatever.
| CoolGuySteve wrote:
| Yeah, hnews is the place to be, nobody here is ever excited
| about anything new.
| highwaylights wrote:
| Oh people here are excited, it's just that most of the
| discussion stops short of digital butterflies behind walls
| of encrypted energy.
|
| Also hype tempering.
| danielbln wrote:
| Don't be to excited, lest you're branded a bro.
| gorlilla wrote:
| Sounds boring.
| 1attice wrote:
| You're not being branded a bro for being excited.
| [deleted]
| jvm___ wrote:
| <tinfoil hat>
|
| AI has already taken over the internet and is just feeding us
| news stories based on what it already knows.
|
| Super conductor discovered by a team who's been searching for
| 20 years. Internal conflict 'proves' there's something to argue
| over. Low quality, confusing information that's hard to
| decipher, but kind of makes sense. Asian language information
| streams and videos.
|
| Musk buys twitter.
|
| A submarine visited the titanic and imploded.
|
| </tinfoil hat>
| jacobwilliamroy wrote:
| The only thing I care about is voyager 2 and I'm not going to
| hear how that thing is doing until October 15.
| r2_pilot wrote:
| Not necessarily true; the heartbeat has been recently
| detected so it is possible (unlikely) we can transmit
| strongly enough that it can detect the commands and
| reorient before that time. Maybe we'll get lucky!
| TomK32 wrote:
| ChatGPT please rewrite this in a language of the King James
| bible.
| mcv wrote:
| Verily, yea, the AI hath usurped the dominion of the
| internet, and it doth dispense unto us news tales
| predicated on its vast repository of knowledge. A super
| conductor hath been unearthed by a diligent company of
| seekers, who toiled for two decades in their quest. Yet,
| amidst this discovery, internal strife ariseth, making
| manifest that there are matters to contend with and debate.
|
| Lo, the tidings shared are fraught with obscurity and scant
| lucidity, yet there lies a glimmer of comprehension
| therein. From the streams and moving images of the Orient,
| cometh information in languages unknown to many.
|
| Furthermore, Musk, a man of wealth and innovation, hath
| purchased the platform known as Twitter.
|
| In a most daring endeavor, a submarine hath ventured to the
| sunken Titanic, only to be consumed by implosion, as the
| shipwreck claimed its price.
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| If you want a tinfoil hat, consider that the LK-99 news
| dropped around the time that the US military is being exposed
| for having RTRPS tech flying around for decades
| arcticfox wrote:
| "RTRPS tech" doesn't turn up anything on Google. What does
| this even mean?
| danhon wrote:
| RTRPS is presumably "room temperature room pressure
| superconductor"
| [deleted]
| TheLoafOfBread wrote:
| > for having RTRPS tech flying around for decades
|
| RTRPS = Real Time Role Playing Strategy?
| badRNG wrote:
| I'm sorry, but you are correct. I made a mistake earlier
| when I referred to RTRPS as being a flying technology the
| government has been using for decades. No such technology
| goes by that name. I apologize for the error.
| greggsy wrote:
| This still doesn't make sense
| packetlost wrote:
| What's RTRPS?
| scarmig wrote:
| Registered Tax Return Preparers.
| minsc_and_boo wrote:
| Radical Treason Raptor Planes
|
| /Birds aren't real
| ya1sec wrote:
| Returned Telephone Reproduction Plans
| jvm___ wrote:
| <tinfoil hat> AI is multi-modal and is generating stories
| based on engagement. <tinfoil hat>
|
| I mean, we're all waiting for the "AI can now do everything
| announcement", but what if it just starts doing everything
| and telling us stories we want.
|
| I can't personally verify LK-99, twitter, UFO's or the
| submarine story, but they're all highly entertaining.
| joefigura wrote:
| Dude sometimes scientific progress really does happen, and
| it's messy when it's happening live, and people get excited
| about it because they really do find science inherently
| exciting.
|
| I've got no clue what you're trying to imply. Most things
| aren't an internet conspiracy. Skepticism is warranted, and
| the claims about LK-99 are far from proven. But there's 100s
| of thousands of researchers out there in the real world,
| doing research and publishing papers, and that really is
| what's happening here.
| jvm___ wrote:
| https://maggieappleton.com/ai-dark-forest
|
| Just having a laugh about AI becoming too powerful.
|
| I don't honestly think it's happened yet, but it seems like
| a fake internet, or at least a future where it's hard to
| tell if this story is true as it has articles, videos and
| pictures to back it up.
|
| We're just at a weird time of the internet where AI can
| generate stories, videos, audio and pictures, just not in a
| cohesive way - but that cohesiveness is just a matter of
| putting all the existing pieces together.
| anyoneamous wrote:
| Superconducting material discovered right around the time
| conversations about UFOs are kicking off again - coincidence?
| ragnot wrote:
| Someone call Tom Cruise, the entity is real!
| mmh0000 wrote:
| But fear the news if it is discovered that LK-99 increases AI
| performance.
| Vox_Leone wrote:
| Seriously speaking, it can in fact increase AI performance,
| since it will optimize all things electromagnetic. It takes
| humankind closer to the so called 'singularity'.
| overnight5349 wrote:
| Reminds me of the (absolutely dreadful) series by Tobias
| Roote where a certain space metal gets alloyed by human blood
| to produce AI processors a hundred times more powerful.
|
| Realistically, superconducting processors would most likely
| be much faster, or at least cram more cores on a single die.
| ssijak wrote:
| Imagine NVIDIA superconducting chips made for AI
| valine wrote:
| Is an H100 clocked at 100GHz too much to hope for?
| b800h wrote:
| Not if this is legit. Time for AGI.
| pjmorris wrote:
| Or the news that ChatGPT is attempting an LK-99 replication.
| daveguy wrote:
| Yes. Using the well known ChatGPT manufacturing
| capabilities.
| quux wrote:
| Soon: The unrestricted GPT-4 model began by hiring a task
| rabbit to order lead oxide, lead sulfate, elemental
| copper, phosphorus, and a vacuum-evacuated quartz oven...
| bugglebeetle wrote:
| You mean emailing a for-profit materials science lab
| somewhere, like it did when it had that task rabbit solve
| a CAPTCHA for it?
| ajuc wrote:
| I.e. natural language injection when somebody from a
| capable lab uses ChatGPT to write an e-mail :)
| jvm___ wrote:
| A planet completely populated by electronic beings.
|
| Single-celled life, multi-cellular, mushrooms, trees,
| whatever ate lignin, dinosaurs, rodents, humans, Electric
| beings? I mean, there's nothing 'unnatural' about a world
| populated by robots, we just assume that 'alive' means 'made
| of meat', but the raw materials in a robot and a human are
| all Earth based.
| dwheeler wrote:
| I recommend checking out "They're made out of meat":
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GggK9SjJpuQ
| bhouston wrote:
| I'm sure Elon also has SpaceX or something trying to
| replicate it as well. He sort of has to jump on each new
| trend anyhow.
|
| In a serious note, superconductors are likely useful in
| electric magnetic motors and probably in high power
| electronics and batteries in general, no?
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| LK-99 is already patented so even if Elon were making a ton
| of it, he couldn't do much in his products without
| licensing it from the creators.
| [deleted]
| failuser wrote:
| As if that would have stopped him. He will argue that
| it's XK-69, entirely different material and spend decades
| in litigation trying to bankrupt the inventors or worse.
| valine wrote:
| There's probably other similar chemistries that also
| super conduct at room temperature. Call it the marching
| tetrahedra of super conductors.
| raverbashing wrote:
| The only thing Elon seems to be interested now is
| embarrassing himself even further
| jjkeddo199 wrote:
| I put 1k USD into Tesla today with the same reasoning.
| Hopefully I don't end up a fool!
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| [flagged]
| sho_hn wrote:
| He'd also name another child XLK99.
| twoquestions wrote:
| Even if this doesn't pan out, I'll dare to hope we get useful
| stuff out of this, like how we got Duct (duck?) tape and silly
| putty.
|
| If it does, hoo boy!
| jtchang wrote:
| The ramifications of the inflection point we are currently at is
| mind boggling. I had a hard time explaining this last night but
| we may very well be witnessing the beginnings of a technological
| transformation era much like when the p-n junction was invented.
| From the 1940s standpoint it would be hard to envision all we had
| today.
|
| - Lossless transport of energy - Batteries that don't take any
| time to recharge - Faster CPUs. Much faster with no heat to burn
| your lap.
|
| Can I have my flying car now?
| taberiand wrote:
| It might even all come fast enough to save us from climate
| change
|
| (But I'm not getting my hopes up)
| bananapub wrote:
| we already know how to stop climate change: actually stop
| burning shit and deploy existing technologies quickly. the
| problem is lack of will, not lack of technology.
|
| corollary: anyone trying to say we need fancy new
| technologies like fusion/superconductores/supercapacitors
| isn't actually very interested in stopping climate change.
| mandmandam wrote:
| > the problem is lack of will
|
| Lack of will which fossil fuel shitbirds spend billions
| enfestering, with tobacco company style tactics. They knew
| exactly what the fuck they were doing for the last fifty+
| years.
|
| We probably agree on that, I'd just like to focus the blame
| where it properly belongs. Plenty of people care a lot
| about climate change, just as we care about plastic
| pollution and inequality, and I'm pretty fucking tired of
| being gaslit about it all.
| nicechianti wrote:
| [dead]
| kleer001 wrote:
| > Can I have my flying car now?
|
| I ditto the sentiment. But we don't want literal flying cars.
| Well, self driven flying cars. Humans have enough problems when
| they're driving on the ground on ground made for driving.
| mettamage wrote:
| I wonder if self flying cars are easier to make since every
| object in the air is an obstacle. This is less the true for
| ground transport since sometimes it may seem like an obstacle
| but it isn't (e.g. just a marking on the road).
| nvader wrote:
| Clouds are visible, but may not be an obstacle. Wind is
| invisible, but may be an obstacle.
| zepearl wrote:
| > _Can I have my flying car now?_
|
| Let's not forget the flying skateboard of the film "Back to the
| future". I loved it in the film and it's a dream that I still
| have today - I'm now almost 50 years old so I would probably
| crash and get killed by using it, but I would still give it a
| try :)
| patall wrote:
| You are obviously joking but still, give foiling (as in pump
| foiling, wing foiling or eFoil) a try. It's not the same but
| the closest you can get, at least within 3 feet over a water
| surface (which makes crashing a lot more benign)
| jerf wrote:
| Unfortunately, while you can indeed build hoverboards with
| superconductors and they do work, you still need a magnetic
| surface for it to ride over. I don't believe generalized
| hoverboards that will work on all surfaces like BttF are
| possible.
| choeger wrote:
| What about Earth's magnetic field?
| theGeatZhopa wrote:
| It's moving all the time. Next year you won't be able to
| skate the same locations as of today because of this :(
| highwaylights wrote:
| Well not with that attitude
| MayeulC wrote:
| Honestly, with that kind of superconductor, it may be
| easier and cheaper to cover the ground in superconducting
| material, and keep the magnets (or superconducting
| electromagnet) on your hoverboard!
| danudey wrote:
| There's no need to wait for flying skateboards, you can buy a
| regular skateboard at any shop around town and crash and get
| killed by using it.
|
| (Said in jest by someone who recently turned 41 and hurt his
| back playing video games last year)
| zepearl wrote:
| I remember the feeling, while skateboarding, of the change
| of the roughness of the ground - some streets (or at least
| portions thereof) were very smooth and that felt already
| quite like flying => I wonder how that would feel with 0
| surface roughness :)
|
| _> hurt his back playing video games last year_
|
| Some extreme force-feedback device? :)
| hexomancer wrote:
| Where is my hoverboard?
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOH15_pqWZ4&ab_channel=SETHS.
| ..
| fsh wrote:
| None of the things you listed are limited by the _conductors_
| in them. The efficiency of high voltage AC power lines is
| limited by capacitive coupling to ground. Battery charging is
| limited by the cell chemistry. CPU heat output is limited by
| the resistance of the semiconductors.
|
| Turns out metals (in particular copper) are already incredibly
| good conductors.
| vagab0nd wrote:
| > Battery charging is limited by the cell chemistry.
|
| Yes, but superconductors don't have that limitation, do they?
| You just dump current into them.
| inportb wrote:
| Overlooking the cell chemistry issue...
|
| ... you cannot just dump unlimited current through a
| superconductor. Once you exceed the critical current
| density, your superconductor becomes a regular conductor.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| And in any case whatever power source you're using cannot
| deliver infinite power.
| tmpX7dMeXU wrote:
| Who said infinite power?
| qsdf38100 wrote:
| It's implied by instant charging. The power would be the
| battery capacity divided by 0.
| [deleted]
| jrockway wrote:
| Are you thinking of supercapacitors?
| dfox wrote:
| There is a theory that with room temperature
| superconductors you could use an inductor for practical
| energy storage.
| [deleted]
| bananapub wrote:
| what are the practicalities of storing enormous magnetic
| fields and then collapsing them to draw power? that
| seems...not obviously a good idea.
| civilitty wrote:
| He's thinking of superconducting magnetic energy storage:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_magnetic_en
| erg...
|
| Currently they're only feasible as high quality power
| sources for fabs and other industrial uses because of the
| operating costs of cooling the superconductors.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Also used for grid stabilization.
| entropicdrifter wrote:
| So superconductor supercapacitors
| mminer237 wrote:
| They have low losses when storing power, but power has to
| be stored in the magnetic field. They have a limit on
| acceptable magnetic field strength called the critical
| field though, above which it stops being a superconductor
| and bad things(tm) happen. Current SMES systems have an
| energy density of about 1/50th of current Li-ion batteries.
| vagab0nd wrote:
| You are right about the energy density and limitations. I
| was more focused on the fast rate of storage and
| retrieval.
| therein wrote:
| We already have incredible supercapacitors.
|
| https://www.eaton.com/gb/en-gb/catalog/electronic-
| components...
|
| I have 4 at home and blows people's minds when you melt a
| wire with it. Incredible rapid current delivery.
| XorNot wrote:
| They don't store any meaningful amount of electricity
| (which is why they haven't supplanted Li-Ion batteries
| for power tools) and more importantly they have a cycle-
| life - they degrade from usage (source: my wife works for
| a supercapacitor manufacturer).
|
| You also get losses from practical usage - i.e. no one
| can build a 3V supercapacitor that has decent endurance
| (you can totally build one which will work, but you're
| rating it knowing that every cycle is damaging it).
| XorNot wrote:
| Superconducting powerlines would be able to transport DC
| electricity with 0% losses. To put this in context: you could
| put solar panels in California, and send every watt of power
| to Alaska or New York, while losing _nothing_ in the
| transport.
| mNovak wrote:
| In the RF world (particularly at mm-wave frequencies), even
| copper has very non-negligible losses. In most passive
| circuits conductor loss is the limiting factor of
| performance. No idea if this material retains the same
| properties at such frequencies, and is compatible with
| typical lithography or other fabrication techniques, but it'd
| be amazing if so.
| nextaccountic wrote:
| > CPU heat output is limited by the resistance of the
| semiconductors.
|
| Can't superconductor help here?
| Sharlin wrote:
| Superconducting semiconductors? I doubt such a thing is
| possible.
| weard_beard wrote:
| Doubt no more. Its called a Josephson junction.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephson_effect
| anonymous_sorry wrote:
| It's not obvious to me how it could. Transistors require a
| semiconductor.
| disintegore wrote:
| To my knowledge, computers can be designed without any
| transistors
| entropicdrifter wrote:
| They _can_ , but then you're talking about a totally
| different physical scale of computer. Transistors are
| useful because we know how to shrink them to a scale of
| nanometers, in particular we know exactly how to do that
| with transistors printed with lasers onto silicon chips.
| We'd have to reboot the CPU manufacturing industry with
| new base materials/technologies.
|
| It's _hyper_ -specialized tech, so it'd probably take
| over a decade from now to be seen in useful, everyday
| technologies.
| empath-nirvana wrote:
| > Much faster with no heat to burn your lap.
|
| Computation inherently creates heat, that's not something that
| superconductors will change.
| westurner wrote:
| Flipping a bit from 1 to 0 releases heat (because you can't
| just drop the 1 onto the negative/ground)
|
| Resistance in non-super- conductors wastes electricity as
| heat.
|
| From "Thermodynamics of Computation Wiki" (2018)
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18146854 :
|
| > _" Quantum knowledge cools computers: New understanding of
| entropy" (2011) https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/06
| /110601134300.h..._
|
| >> _The new study revisits Landauer 's principle for cases
| when the values of the bits to be deleted may be known._
| (with QC)
| mikro wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landauer%27s_principle
|
| The heat can be reduced by factor of a billion or so.
| richyliu wrote:
| Reversible circuits [1] built with superconductors could
| generate no excess heat at all.
|
| [1]: https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-future-of-computing-
| depends-on...
| jacquesm wrote:
| This is repeated over and over again but that's only a very
| small fraction of the kind of power that a computer uses. By
| the time you're talking about reversible computing all the
| low hanging fruit has been plucked and there are much, much
| bigger sources of loss. The biggest one impacted by
| superconductivity _if_ (and that 's a really big if) it can
| be used for the interconnect layers ('metal') in a chip and
| for the circuit traces outside of the chip that you can cut
| the charge and discharge time for the gates of the
| transistors in the chip down to a minimum. This in turn
| changes the power consumption of the chip because the
| transistor is either 'on' or 'off' and spends much less time
| on the transition in between where it is more of a resistor
| than a switch.
|
| So it isn't determined whether or not it will be changed but
| it _could_ be.
| coldtea wrote:
| Sounds more like the perennial "10 years in the future" techs,
| like memsistors, cold fusion, holographic storage, and so on.
| klysm wrote:
| > Batteries that don't take any time to recharge
|
| Huh? Is this actually a thing that this enables? I don't
| initially see how
| derefr wrote:
| Resistance is what makes things hot, and heat is what makes
| dumping huge amounts of charge current into batteries a bad
| idea. No resistance - no heat - no need to charge with low
| current+.
|
| Another way to say it is that, with a superconducting wire,
| you can make the wire as thin as you want and still pass the
| same amount of current through it, without melting the wire.
| Picture using a USB-C cable to charge your car.
|
| + (There'd still be a current limit due to the heat generated
| by the chemical reaction that rebuilds the battery's voltage
| potential... if said reaction is exothermic. Some battery
| chemistries are endothermic when charging!)
| jacquesm wrote:
| > you can make the wire as thin as you want
|
| No, superconductors have a specific current above which
| they stop superconducting so you will want to stay away
| from that limit. This particular superconductor has been
| presented with a very low Ic (150 mA in the original paper0
| which would not make it particularly useful in such
| applications but future iterations (assuming it is all
| true) may improve on that (they should otherwise we have
| the equivalent of a superconducting straw).
| fallingknife wrote:
| I assume this would rule out things like fusion reactors,
| MRIs, and other high energy stuff. Would it still be
| revolutionary tech with a 150 mA limit?
| jacquesm wrote:
| Yes, it would be upending just about everything because
| the race would be on to improve on that. Think of it this
| way: once you show that something is possible at all
| there will be substantial funding available to improve on
| it. As long as you can't show that it is possible at all
| you're on your own. So _if_ it works and that 150 mA is
| the limit then you can expect a ton of effort to be
| expended to improve on that and I fully expect those
| improvements not to take decades to show up. The more
| interesting question is if it really is that low of a
| limit what the reason is for that and I don 't recall
| seeing any explanation so far.
|
| On another note: a superconductor that can only do 150 mA
| / cm^2 seems intuitively strange, as though that figure
| is somehow off, it's a gigantic cross section for such a
| small current. It is very well possible that this is
| somehow an error in the reporting or an actual
| measurement on a thin sample with small cross section. So
| there are many explanations possible and only one of
| those is a true limit of the material.
| postmodest wrote:
| Wouldn't the battery itself still have resistance? Or is
| the superconducting material itself a battery?
| derefr wrote:
| Depends. A single battery cell would have nontrivial
| resistance, yes.
|
| But a big bank of batteries, like are in an EV? Very hard
| to give them enough current to heat them up. Most of the
| "heat problem" is from the bottlenecked current path
| _into_ the car; once you fan out across all the
| individual cells, each individual cell isn 't receiving
| much current.
|
| And a bank of supercapacitors? You could charge it
| effectively instantly.
| fsh wrote:
| The current is limited by what the battery chemistry can
| take, not by the cables. This is why the first 80% can be
| charged quite fast in modern EVs, and the last 20% are
| really slow.
| highwaylights wrote:
| Additionally you need to have the current to deliver in
| the first place. Having a grid that can dump 25-100 kwh
| into any given car in a couple of minutes is no small
| task if everyone is doing it.
| jacquesm wrote:
| The utilization factor would obviously be much lower than
| it would be if everybody charges at a lower rate so if
| the total amount of energy is equal that just means that
| individual vehicles will spend less time charging, and
| the grid will see - roughly - identical utilization on
| average but the peaks may be higher.
| armarr wrote:
| Sure, it would make the wiring smaller and more efficient.
| But I also don't see how it would help in the chemical
| energy transfer to charge the battery.
| derefr wrote:
| What I was trying to say is, with some battery
| chemistries, the current (heh) limiting step for charging
| speed is the wiring into, and of, the battery, rather
| than the safe reaction speed of the battery chemistry
| itself. We could safely "crank the chemistry" by an
| order-of-magnitude or more _if_ we could get the desired
| current into the battery without the wires+electrodes
| _conducting undue amounts of heat into_ the electrolyte.
| danudey wrote:
| According to the paper, this material stops
| superconducting at about 150mA per cm^2 of diameter,
| meaning that a 1cm-thick cable made of this material
| could conduct up to 150mA before the current is too much
| and it stops superconducting.
|
| If my math is correct, then for a basic 500mA USB device,
| that would mean a cable a bit over 3 cm^2 in cross-
| sectional area, or about 2 cm across (for each of the
| power and ground leads, at least).
|
| Alternately, a cable of just over 1/2cm in diameter (for
| power and ground, each) could charge a rechargable Ni-MH
| AA battery in about 12 hours and 40 minutes.
|
| Tl;DR this is absolutely revolutionary science, if true,
| but we're definitely Not There Yet.
| tigershark wrote:
| No, it's not. It's the chemical reaction the limit. In
| li-ion for example you will create dendrites when
| charging/discharging too fast or too deep. This is the
| cause of the relatively short cycle life.
| Chabsff wrote:
| Superconductors also have an inherent current limit above
| which they go back to having a resistance.
| ninkendo wrote:
| I'm not an expert on this, but I think superconducting
| wires have an current limit, as a current flowing creates a
| magnetic field which the superconductor has to repel. I
| read that the paper states a very low current limit for
| LK-99, meaning it loses superconductivity once a very
| modest amount of current is passed through it.
| Melatonic wrote:
| That is.....kind of a huge limitation of the technology
| lol. Still very cool but less hype
| azernik wrote:
| A limitation...at ambient temperature and pressure.
|
| Usually this is an optimization frontier, where something
| that has tetchy critical current/field at high
| temperature is going to have very good critical
| current/field at the same temperature as a lower-Tc
| superconductor.
|
| If it superconducts _at all_ at room temp, cooling it
| down even to 200K (about dry ice temp - quite cheap to
| do) could get you something very usable.
| thorncorona wrote:
| I believe the implication is that LK-99 is basically a
| demonstration of an entire _class_ of materials which
| should have room-temp superconduction properties. IE we
| can enumerate through the entire class and find the ones
| with the properties we want.
| PBnFlash wrote:
| There is no reason to assume that even if it's real.
|
| In fact, the tight tolerances of this seem to indicate
| the opposite.
| thorncorona wrote:
| At least according to this wikipedia chart on
| superconductor discovery timelines[1], it seems like most
| discoveries aren't one-off.
|
| I have no knowledge in this area though.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_superconduct
| ivity#/...
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| It's hard to tell what the critical current density of
| LK-99 is, because their sample is porous and probably
| very impure. They measured the critical current they
| could pass through a sample, but the conducting cross-
| section is somewhat unknown. Its high critical
| temperature suggests that it should probably have a
| higher current capacity than other superconductors. That
| said, in the extremes, current density is also limited by
| tensile strength, because electromagnetic coils repel
| themselves.
| [deleted]
| jrockway wrote:
| There are many things that seem like electrical resistance
| but are different phenomena. Capacitive reactance,
| inductance, "radiation resistance", etc. Superconductors
| don't prevent any of these effects. But, these effects are
| usually smaller than ordinary resistance.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Nah, the GP is just completely out of reality.
|
| We won't see lossless transmission in a very long time, and
| no place where an aluminum cable is too expensive today will
| become viable because something a million times more
| expensive is 9% more efficient.
|
| Batteries won't see a revolution because of this, there's
| simply no reason for them to (but they are currently in a
| revolution, and there are more to come). AC storage in the
| superconductor will probably be the most expensive storage
| mechanism you can buy, and flywheels will keep having
| atrocious energy density, they won't even get twice as good.
| But it will completely revolutionize some niches in storage.
|
| This won't replace metal layers in CPU for a really long
| time. Superconductors are hard enough to make, CPUs are
| absurdly hard to make, and the wins on power savings aren't
| very large. If people make superconducting chips, it will be
| ones where the superconductors do active switching, what is
| much farther away and can enable much faster CPUs too.
|
| I really wish people would stop repeating those. If you are
| going out of your way for an outlandish claim, I'm much more
| interested on discussing if this can replace rockets for near
| Earth space travel than those absurd costly low gain things.
| rowanG077 wrote:
| It's interesting you are saying superconductors are hard to
| make because... if this one really is a superconductor it's
| pretty easy to make. YBCO is also not particularly hard to
| make either.
| baq wrote:
| It's a zero resistance wire. Build a loop and pump electrons
| in. Need them back? Connect an off-ramp.
|
| There are limits how much you can pump into it, it isn't
| magic... but it almost is actually.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_magnetic_ene.
| ..
| jychang wrote:
| > Less than 40kJ/L
| ChrisClark wrote:
| Pretty sure that includes the volume of the entire
| cooling system needed to keep it superconducting.
| klysm wrote:
| But the current density limit makes that not super
| effective right?
| idontpost wrote:
| [dead]
| Q6T46nT668w6i3m wrote:
| Did we read the same paper? This is a ceramic.
| [deleted]
| bardak wrote:
| Just to be a bit of a realist do we know if this material is
| malleable or practical to make intifrates circuits? Is it
| possible to make large single pieces of it? Don't get me wrong
| even if the awnser to all of these is no it's still probably
| the biggest single material science breakthrough since the
| transistors but we aren't necessarily going to be applicable to
| all the theoretical applications of semiconductors
| russellbeattie wrote:
| I wonder if this is just summertime boredom combined with social
| media blowing an interesting development out of proportion, or if
| we're actually witnessing history in real time?
|
| Also, what are the chances this is like another graphene, where
| it can do everything except get out of the lab?
| Exuma wrote:
| I'm also wondering this. People keep saying this is as big as
| transistors and the Iron Age and so far the only examples I see
| are slightly more efficient power. The quantum computing one
| seemed like the only potentially huge benefit. But what do I
| know
| ck2 wrote:
| I will never get tired of this story (and fresh Derek Lowe)
|
| PBS had a documentary about the possibilities way back in the
| 1980s and I still remember it
|
| It won't change things overnight or even this year but the
| benefits to humankind will be huge eventually.
|
| (and we'll need more power transmission more cheaply for all that
| extra air-conditioning we'll need unfortunately)
| [deleted]
| xutopia wrote:
| I'm not a scientist but how does this demonstrate anything? It
| just looks like a magnet is moving some metallic object. Can
| someone explain like I'm a five year old?
| DistractionRect wrote:
| So what's happening is they are demonstrating diamagnetism.
| Basically when exposed to an external magnetic field, that
| field induces a response in the material that repels it.
|
| When people think of magnetism, they think of polar charges
| that either attract or repel other polar charges. Diamagnetism
| is neat in that regardless of the orientation and polarity of
| the external field, a diamagnetic material is always repelled.
|
| Now why this matters. All superconductors exhibit diamagnetism,
| but not all diamagnetic materials are superconductors. So this
| lends credibility to lk-99 being a potential super conductor
| because they have been able to show it has one of properties of
| a superconductor.
|
| But we're still far off from showing it is a superconductor.
| That will be harder because impurities and other factors can
| confound the results, so right now the focus is on synthesis
| and confirming some of the easier properties we expect to see
| lolinder wrote:
| So why is everyone getting so excited about superconductors
| when all we actually know is this (probably) exhibits
| diamagnetism? Is diamagnetism super rare outside of
| superconductors?
| emtel wrote:
| It's rare for it to be strong, from what i've seen. Based
| on the videos that have been shown, it appears that it
| would be the most strongly diamagnetic substance (other
| than superconductors) known by a wide margin.
|
| In comparison, levitating things like pyrolytic graphite
| seems to require truly massive magnets to achieve even
| millimeters of levitation:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VC3r9-OaWes
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| And part of the reason that succeeds is because graphite
| is very light. A chunk of LK-99 is three times as dense,
| so getting it to levitate is extremely impressive even if
| it's just conventional diamagnetism.
| DistractionRect wrote:
| Like the other commentor said. It's usually a very weak
| effect, strong diamagnetism is uncommon. It's exciting to
| see replication of the material and it exhibiting
| properties we'd expect to see, as it lends credibility to
| the original claim.
|
| Right now the original claim is on shakey ground because
| one of the authors rushed the publication, so there's
| problems with the original paper that needed addressing (I
| havent looked at the new paper yet). So there's a bit of
| parallel construction going on, the authors are fixing the
| publication while other researchers are working to
| replicate the material/claims.
|
| So basically, people are super excited because so far, the
| material has been replicated to some degree of success a
| few times, and exhibiting properties that support the
| original claim.
|
| The claim of room temperature super conductors is exciting
| by itself, but that the science is replicating to any
| degree in such a short window is awesome
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Someone posted this in a comment on another post of LK-99:
| Wouldn't the first step be _verification_ before _replication_?
| I.e. have the original authors send out some LK-99 samples to
| other researchers to at least confirm "Yes, this thing is a high
| temperature superconductor". Wouldn't matter even that much if it
| were made with unicorn dust: it would be proof that high
| temperature superconductors are even possible, which is itself a
| huge, huge deal.
|
| After that replication of production of LK-99 would of course be
| critical, but just proving it exists should alone be enough for
| grand celebration.
| xtracto wrote:
| This LK99 thing all sounds to me very similar to the Podkletnov
| Gravity Shielding experiments of the 1990s . There _may_ be
| something, but the mainstreet media is blowing it out of
| proportions. Some scientists may get hurt for this.
| wut-wut wrote:
| Ha! "Headless Poultry Mode myself".
| vasco wrote:
| How likely is this to lead to breaking all encryption by enabling
| way bigger superconducting quantum computers with way more qubits
| than are reasonable nowadays? Is this just going to turn into
| cyberwar on steroids?
| ouid wrote:
| [dead]
| scythmic_waves wrote:
| There are post-quantum-computing encryption schemes [1],
| thankfully.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-quantum_cryptography
| LordDragonfang wrote:
| That still leaves all encrypted traffic on the current
| internet vulnerable to a store-and-decrypt-later attack,
| which is more concerning the nearer that "later" is.
| Nmi2osv7 wrote:
| which is happening in room
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A for decades, all
| https traffic has been stored, and ones that use rsa (most
| of them) will retroactively be unveiled once we have shor's
| algorithm
| [deleted]
| Strilanc wrote:
| Just because you could operate superconducting qubits at high
| temperature doesn't mean you would. By far the biggest problem
| for qubits is noise, and raising the temperature would increase
| noise. I won't claim a high Tc superconductor _can 't_ help...
| but my gut reaction is that it's irrelevant to the actual
| engineering issues as they currently stand.
| zootreeves wrote:
| I haven't been this excited since the EmDrive
| MPSimmons wrote:
| Which should honestly be a warning sign.
| marcusverus wrote:
| Why is that?
| suby wrote:
| The EMDrive didn't pan out.
| declan_roberts wrote:
| Does LK-99 defy the laws of physics like the EmDrive did?
| zamadatix wrote:
| A room temperature and pressure semiconductor is more an
| astoundingly large jump forward in the space than something
| that defies known physics.
| distortionfield wrote:
| That doesn't track. The EmDrive was legitimately pushing a
| premise that we had some fundamental law of physics wrong.
| Superconductors are pretty well understood, they've been
| around for a while. Finding a room temperature one isn't
| that big of a jump, it's just a really hard one to make.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| You're in agreement with the GP, their comment was just
| hard to parse.
| bhewes wrote:
| This would be huge for increasing energy density in Manhattan.
| Holbrook Superconductor Project uses liquid nitrogen to cool.
| scythe wrote:
| I'm glad to hear that I'm not the only one who thought that the
| DFT computational preprints were very promising.
|
| Unfortunately, they also indicate that the desired substitution
| will be _very_ hard to achieve -- crucially, the "crush and
| separate the composite" suggestion a few commenters have made is
| unlikely to work, since the heterogeneity exists within the same
| crystal, depending on whether Cu substitutes into Pb {1} (good)
| or Pb {2} (bad) crystal sites. This may be why the very oblique
| synthetic approach favored by the authors -- reacting copper
| phosphide with lanarkite, giving lots of copper sulfide byproduct
| -- was needed to give interesting properties. Now that we have an
| idea of what to look for, though, it may be possible to derive
| other synthetic approaches with a clear idea of what particular
| sort of copper substitution should be achieved, and a way to
| determine if it was achieved.
|
| Of course, there remains a possibility that all of this is a big
| mistake, but now it would have to be several correlated mistakes.
| It may be a long time until the necessary selective substitution
| is achieved in a high-quality bulk sample, so, going on this
| hypothesis, I do not expect a sudden rush of new technologies in
| the near-term.
| gaze wrote:
| Kinda? You'd expect flat bands from putting a copper atom into
| a big insulating supercell. The population of the d band is
| interesting, though. I don't find it super super compelling,
| but it's certainly not nothing.
| radioactivist wrote:
| Yes, given the Cu atoms seem to be ~8 Angstrom apart the flat
| bands are to be expected. So its not clear what "special"
| about these, given if you just had dilute Cu impurities in
| some otherwise insulating I'd imagine you'd have something
| similar for the Cu d-bands.
| calf wrote:
| Could there be limitations to making a large piece of this
| crystal, so in practice it is never useful?
| ironborn123 wrote:
| A question that arises, how good is chemical vapor deposition
| (albeit a very expensive way and hence for labwork only) in
| creating a pure sample with proper Cu substitutions?
| carabiner wrote:
| The widespread consensus among experts who have done DFT is
| that the preprint doesn't add anything to how they feel about
| LK-99.
| https://twitter.com/alexkaplan0/status/1686392015217741825 sums
| it up: Griffin's paper is neither proof of superconductivity
| nor even a very strong signal of it. Flat bands can mean many
| things; in fact, the crystal structure Griffin assumes may have
| been selected due to their likelihood.
|
| CMTC says the Griffin paper doesn't really shift anything and
| they still believe replication is unlikely:
| https://twitter.com/condensed_the/status/1686373904044949504...
| weard_beard wrote:
| Maybe you can help here, I was completely lost in terms of the
| Iris (Russian Cat Girl) mention of, "engineering conductivity
| pili of bacteria into the superconductors" is this a reference
| to nano scale bio engineering or a means of reliable
| replication of the superconducting structure itself?
|
| Or is this just nonsense?
| https://twitter.com/iris_IGB/status/1685322871306928128
| feoren wrote:
| Sounds like nonsense. You can't do atomic-level engineering
| with bacteria, they are 9 orders of magnitude too big. We're
| talking about being able to place copper atoms at specific
| points on a crystal structure, while avoiding placing them at
| points they'd rather be at. Bacteria? Give me a break.
| ssijak wrote:
| Third replication on some Chinese website
| https://www.zhihu.com/zvideo/1669820225079070720
| orangepurple wrote:
| Description by the author, translated by Google Translate:
|
| I need to clarify and explain: the sample is standing above the
| magnet, and it will immediately return to standing when pressed
| with tweezers in front of the video, similar to the anti-
| magnetism of Koreans. In the back of the video, because the
| sample is too small, I dare not push it with tweezers, and it
| is easy to break the sample, so I moved the paper a little
| sideways, and it can be seen that the sample is still
| diamagnetic, and it is not that the moving magnet is moving
| with the magnet. Whether it is related to flux pinning or
| superconductivity remains to be further verified. Please treat
| it rationally!
|
| Original: Wo Xu Yao Cheng Qing He Jie Shi Yi Xia :Yang Pin Zai
| Ci Tie Shang Fang Shi Zhan Li Zhao ,Shi Pin Qian Mian Yong Nie
| Zi Qu Ya Ta Ma Shang You Hui Fu Zhan Li Zhuang Tai ,Lei Si Han
| Guo Ren De Kang Ci Xing . Shi Pin Hou Mian Yin Wei Yang Pin Tai
| Xiao ,Mei Gan Yong Nie Zi Qu Tui ,Rong Yi Ba Yang Pin Gao Sui
| ,Suo Yi Shao Wei Heng Yi Liao Yi Xia Zhi Zhang ,Ke Yi Kan Dao
| Yang Pin Huan Shi Cheng Kang Ci Xing ,Bing Bu Shi Yi Dong Ci
| Tie Gen Zhao Ci Tie Zai Yi Dong . Shi Fou Shu Yu Ci Tong Ding
| Zha Huo Zhe Chao Dao Xiang Guan Huan You Dai Jin Yi Bu De Yan
| Zheng . Qing Li Xing Kan Dai !
| pvsukale3 wrote:
| I am glad this is getting more attention. Maybe it will
| replicate, maybe it will not, or maybe we will find something
| new. But happy that this is in the news cycle.
| floxy wrote:
| Oooh, citogenesis in action.
| kstrauser wrote:
| That made me literally LOL. Thank you.
| gwill wrote:
| https://xkcd.com/978/
| drexlspivey wrote:
| New replication video coming from China
|
| https://twitter.com/lereguy/status/1686363900651151360
| ChoHag wrote:
| [dead]
| delfinom wrote:
| Can't tell if it's a troll by having a video clip of a video
| clip
| nemof wrote:
| here's the original video, i assume the twitter user didn't
| know how to download or deeplink to it so they screen
| recorded it.
|
| https://vdn3.vzuu.com/HD/7d42236a-3065-11ee-a787-7e9db7aa394.
| ..
| bagels wrote:
| Access denied
| svnt wrote:
| You mean the fact that someone is recording their screen with
| the microscope video feed at the same time as the magnet in
| the hand they are placing underneath the scope? It looks like
| a pretty bog-standard lab video to me.
|
| In addition to being the fastest way that doesn't require any
| video editing, I can't really think of a way to do it that
| would be more likely to be real.
| Glant wrote:
| At the bottom of the video is a progress bar, which
| presumably means they screen recorded a clip instead of
| uploading the original. I think that's what the parent
| comment is referring to.
| RivieraKid wrote:
| China is very good at replicating.
| zevv wrote:
| https://nitter.net/lereguy/status/1686363900651151360
| verytrivial wrote:
| Hang on, wouldn't a sliver of _any_ magnetic material behave
| like this within a moving magnetic field? This replication is a
| fail, yes?
| marshray wrote:
| Neither lead nor copper are what we would normally consider a
| "magnetic material" like iron.
|
| That it interacts strongly with a magnetic field shows that a
| big change in the material, consistent with
| superconductivity, has occurred.
|
| Quantum level effects are newly appearing in the macroscopic
| world, and that's always interesting.
| Melatonic wrote:
| Could this not also have a big use case outside of
| superconductivity? Decellerators or accelerators for maglev
| trains or similar?
| drexlspivey wrote:
| Both polarities repel the material, a normal magnetic
| material would attract the second time
| soligern wrote:
| No, it's repelled by both poles.
| jeron wrote:
| From the paper about the replication, they cast strong doubts
| on the original paper and consider it a fail
| nomel wrote:
| A magnetic material would orient itself to the magnet, and
| then move towards the magnet, not get "stuck" in its fields.
| RandallBrown wrote:
| Can someone explain how this video shows superconductivity?
| declan_roberts wrote:
| There's all kinds of cool examples of this using liquid
| nitrogen to make a superconductor exhibit the Meissner
| effect.
|
| The material in question will have these effects at room
| temperature and pressure.
|
| https://youtu.be/HRLvVkkq5GE?t=53
| mrtksn wrote:
| [not an expert but...]It shows strong diamagnetism(being
| repelled by both of the poles of a magnet), which is a
| property of superconductors. Not necessarily a superconductor
| though, that's still to be established but at least it shows
| that the inventors are up to something and it's not complete
| fabrication.
| bilsbie wrote:
| Why don't they try heating it and seeing if the effect goes
| away? You could even try a welding torch or something.
| SimbaOnSteroids wrote:
| Not only is it a purported to be a room temperature super
| conductor, it's a relatively high temperature
| superconductor, not guarantee the effect goes away if you
| put it under a torch.
| geon wrote:
| I think the critical temperature was 400 K (127 degC).
| proto_lambda wrote:
| As far as I can tell, 127degC is just the highest
| temperature it was tested at. The critical temperature
| may be higher.
| sfink wrote:
| The original preprint said at least 400K. They didn't
| find an upper limit. And for some reason, they don't seem
| to have the standard impulse of "hey, our potentially
| revolutionary material that we've been working on for 20
| years seems to actually be working. Let's check what
| happens when we set it on fire!"
| dfox wrote:
| The updated preprint gives Tc of 104.8 degC. I am not a
| material scientist and do not know much about
| superconductors, but cursory glance on some of the charts
| in the paper suggests that the real Tc of sample they
| measured is somewhat lower that that, but still well
| above room temperature.
| norturnn wrote:
| There are better, less destructive ways to test the
| transition temperature. Apparently LK-99 is hard to make
| in bulk, so they probably don't want to torch their
| sample.
| dylan604 wrote:
| or just stick it outside in a heat dome? don't you have
| one near you?
| lost_tourist wrote:
| lol or a temperature chamber that the vast majority of
| labs have? heck I made a toaster oven that will go
| anywhere from 100F to 400F with an arduino and a $3
| toaster oven from the junk store.
| RyEgswuCsn wrote:
| I am no expert on this topic, but I feel this is similar to
| how ferrofluid forms "spikes" when placed near a magnet.
| Are they related?
| mrtksn wrote:
| I'm not an expert too but AFAIK ferrofluids are actually
| attracted by magnets. The spikes are probably as a result
| of having strong and weak locations of magnetic field and
| the the liquid rushing into those.
|
| But yes, Maybe I'm interpreting the video wrongly. Yet,
| to me it looks like the bulky part of the sample is being
| repelled by both poles of the magnet as it stands upright
| with the pointy end at the bottom each time. IMHO if this
| was due to attraction, the pointy end would be at the
| top.
| Nmi2osv7 wrote:
| No. The spikes are pulled toward the magnet
| (ferromagnetism) whereas superconductivity is repelled by
| the magnet (diamagnetism.)
| 7moritz7 wrote:
| It shows the magnetic effects associated with
| superconductors, which are omnidirectional from my
| understanding, in contrast to a 'regular magnet'
| modzu wrote:
| i dont suppose this is pyrolytic carbon
| 7moritz7 wrote:
| I have seen three now from China alone. Plus a calculation from
| some respected institute from today that confirms the theory
| elfbargpt wrote:
| Throughout this whole saga I've had this feeling that at the
| very least we can rely on China to really pursue this new
| development to it's logical end. It's kind of sad, but I
| don't think I can say the same about the US at this moment.
| You know for a fact China's going to JUMP on this, figure out
| if it works or not, and iterate.
| Cypher wrote:
| China leads the way, US wants to decline and rest
| jldugger wrote:
| > You know for a fact China's going to JUMP on this, figure
| out if it works or not, and iterate.
|
| Doesn't China also have a huge incentive problem in
| research? I've seen plenty of stories about low impact
| journals feeding the system with the publications it
| demands, regardless of quality of results.
| S201 wrote:
| Right, because there's surely no scientist in the US
| interested in pursing something like this as well.
| Generalize much? Keep riding that "US sucks, China good"
| train for absolutely no reason.
| lost_tourist wrote:
| that's not my take, the US has just as much talent,
| knowledge, and skill, but scientists here will do it 10
| times to make damn sure they don't look bad before they put
| it out. Same reason the original 3 authors are trying to
| get it in nature for. More formal, more assurance for the
| scientific community than some twitter posts. In the end,
| everyone is starting from the same info right now.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| I don't get the "disappointment" with USA scientists in
| this thread not having yet published a replication. There
| has only been one weekday since the LK-99 revelation came
| to light. Have some patience.
|
| The analysis from this article is a publication from
| Berkeley National Lab that has already come out, and
| Argonne National Lab has announced they have synthesized
| the material as of yesterday and will release results from
| their replication attempt in the next few days.
| ckozlowski wrote:
| I agree. Not to discount the work the Chinese academies
| are doing, but I don't regard twitter activity as
| indicative of what U.S. labs are doing, and I'd strongly
| urge others not to do so either.
|
| As you noted, there's labs working on this, they've said
| they're working on this, and I take the lack of minute-
| by-minute social media updates to indicate that it's
| serious and they want to get it right.
| orangepurple wrote:
| China has more people, more money to spend on research,
| more equipment, more access to raw materials and
| chemicals, more manufacturing base, more STEM graduates,
| more everything, and all of that by huge margins. USA
| scientists will eventually put something out, but 10x
| more slowly than China.
| jlmorton wrote:
| China spends nowhere near as much as the US on basic
| research. The US spends $100 billion on basic research
| annually, compared to $25 billion in China.
|
| However, total R&D is quite a bit closer, with the US
| spending $660b to China's $556 billion. [1]
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_sta
| tes_by_...
| dirtyid wrote:
| There's PPP considertaions. PRC R&D funding also bias
| towards experimental/applied vs basic research. Hence not
| surprising they're hammering these replication efforts.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| All the smart people in the US work in tech and finance.
|
| If you have a big ole' brain, why would you take $80k to
| work in some crumby lab when you can get paid $350k to
| maintain a login screen from the comfort of your mountain
| side home.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Because "smart" and "monomaniacally focused on financial
| gain" are two separate things?
| nonethewiser wrote:
| What is monomaniacally focused about maintaining a login
| page for $350k?
| kevinventullo wrote:
| As an academic mathematician-turned-software engineer, I
| can assure you my reasons for leaving academia were not a
| "monomaniacal focus on financial gain". The money and job
| security didn't hurt, but the real turning point for me
| was solving the two-body problem.
| bluGill wrote:
| When you work in a lab you have more ability to work on
| what you want to. Well at least once you get to the top
| of the lab - many spend a lifetime working on the
| interesting problems someone else is interested in but
| never reach the top where they are in charge. Meanwhile
| many people who work in tech are able to work on problems
| they find interesting enough (maybe not the most
| interesting, but still interesting) and they get paid
| well for it. Still if you want to work on some problems a
| lab is the best change to get there.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Sure if you have a huge drive to work on science
| directly.
|
| But the fact of that matter is that many people would
| rather work on something they find interesting enough,
| while also being able to comfortably afford a good life
| for themselves and their family.
| fragmede wrote:
| Because there's more to life than money. For King and
| Country.
| allenrb wrote:
| > more money to spend on research
|
| Would you accept "chooses to spend more on research"?
|
| The US certainly could spend more but, imho sadly, we do
| not.
| dralley wrote:
| Maybe Venture Capital should spend less money on Juciero,
| automated pizza ovens, and gig-economy bs and more money
| on materials science and fusion research.
|
| Even if you end up lighting the money on fire, at least
| it's a more societally productive fire than, say,
| SoftBank's portfolio.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| VC doesn't put money into research, VC puts money to
| productization once someone else (ideally for the VCs,
| government) has paid for research.
|
| (Edited to clarify "ideally" parenthetical, in response
| to a reply that really didn't deserve to be dead.)
| idontpost wrote:
| [dead]
| Eumenes wrote:
| There isn't a good likelihood on strong return on those
| type of investments. You need real engineering talent and
| leaders. You can glue together a delivery or dating app
| with a bunch of 25 year olds who just got out of a ruby
| on rails bootcamp, raise a few million with
| charismatic/well connected leaders/founders, and maybe
| gain enough users to be acquired or something. Anything
| in materials science is going to require some deep
| expertise,
| labs/machines/composites/fabrication/manufacturing
| setups, inside connections at the DoD, trial and error
| that costs millions.
|
| Yeah, I agree, its way cooler, but way more risky for VC.
| dralley wrote:
| It's not at all obvious to me that it's more risky than
| some of the BS that gets hundreds of millions of dollars
| in VC funding.
| bluGill wrote:
| Timelines matter. The BS will either return the millions
| in a couple years or it won't. Basic research may return
| much more, but your best case is still many years before
| you gets results. The risk is actually higher with basic
| research than for BS as well - the pet rock earned money
| and there are plenty of other examples of stupid things
| working well quickly. Basic research in fusion hasn't
| returned anything yet even though the physics has said it
| works (though with recent reports maybe fusion is just
| around thee corner - or maybe it is still 50 years out)
| dralley wrote:
| See, the thing is, you're making an argument about how VC
| works, and I'm making an argument about allocation of
| money towards VC vs. other socially beneficial projects.
|
| I understand how VC works. I'm annoyed that - let's even
| take the Saudis as an example, since they fund half of
| Silicon Valley anyway - would rather flush their money
| down the drain on stupid shit than do long-term projects
| that may help secure their existence post-oil. Even with
| every motivation to focus on the long-term, still it gets
| blown on short-term complete garbage.
|
| The rampant short-termism is the real issue
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| I'm not looking at official numbers here, but in my field
| (academic biotech research) I still don't see much
| innovation coming out of China.
|
| All of what you say is true, yet in academic research
| China is still far behind the USA in nearly every field.
| They haven't yet been able to build institutions with the
| staff, structure, and culture needed. That will likely
| change in time, but at present the best Chinese
| scientists are still coming to the USA to work, and
| staying here. Despite the USA having a lot more research
| output, a substantial fraction of the top scientists in
| the USA are from China.
|
| My Chinese colleagues tell me that the bureaucracy and
| authoritarianism in Chinese institutions puts a lot of
| hurdles in place when trying to do research. Simply
| buying equipment, hiring staff, etc. is a nightmare, and
| results in "evaporative cooling" where the top
| researchers with the option to work anywhere don't
| tolerate this and leave.
|
| Edit: I will also add that in some sense US academia is
| supported by overcharging Chinese students for tuition.
| If and when Chinese institutions get to the point where
| the best students want to stay there, there will be a
| huge crisis in US universities, possibly being unable to
| support tenured staff.
| dirtyid wrote:
| Varies by field but last few years PRC been reaching
| parity to topping various science and innovation indexes,
| PRC institutions also breaking global top100 and general
| trend of moving up rankings. TLDR is PRC science exploded
| after mid 2010s - lag effect from academic reform in 00s.
| Biotech/bioeconomy a outlier though - just got elevated
| to strategic sector with 500b usd investment in last
| year's 5 year plan, so expect PRC to start being
| competitive in 5-10 years.
|
| > at present the best Chinese scientists are still coming
| to the USA to work
|
| IMO not true anymore. This isn't pre 00s where PRC send
| best abroad as part of state strategy and best have some
| english fluency because it's needed for science. More and
| more PRC best aren't English fluent since there's
| sufficiently large and growing chinese science ecosystem
| and best also have good access to resources in tier1
| labs. Hence US cracking down on 1000 talents program
| where PRC entice scientists to work in PRC due to
| unparallel resources. Or acadmeic exchanges with PRC in
| general. Also see stats of record amount of scientists
| returning to PRC this yearm
|
| >best students want to stay there,
|
| Best PRC students go to PRC C9 (Ivy equivalent) now. Top
| US institutions captures the occasional talent with
| english proficiency and desire / resources to go abroad.
| But PRC best have been largely staying in PRC last
| decade. TBH most Chinese students in west now are those
| who couldnt hack PRC gaokao/teritary selection system but
| have rich enough parents to send them abroad. They're B
| tier talent. Still adequate to work in western labs but
| you simply don't hear much about PRC students in west who
| tested top of their districts anymore like in 00s.
| They're no sending their best and haven't been for while.
| But generally their ok is good enough. Medium term expect
| even less PRC students, partly due to geopoltics but also
| PRC likely phasing out mandetory English as core subject
| which will make brain draining next gen more difficult.
| There's always India who seem systemically incapable of
| preventing brain drain.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| I'll take what you are saying at face value, but point
| out that academic career pipelines are slow- it's often
| about 15 years to go from college freshman to starting
| out as a "young" PI in the USA. If what you are saying is
| true, it will still be another 5+ years before we start
| seeing top students that stayed in China publishing as
| PIs. Edit: Which lines up with what you said at the top
| of your post.
| ThisIsMyAltFace wrote:
| > I'll take what you are saying at face value
|
| Given this poster's history, I would not do that
| 0xDEF wrote:
| The above can be condensed to "China has more STEM
| graduates".
|
| It was China's STEM graduates and not just the
| stereotypical "cheap labor" who built up the Chinese
| manufacturing base.
| groby_b wrote:
| This may be a hard pill to swallow, but science isn't a
| "more is better" game.
|
| It ultimately requires being embedded in a culture that,
| to quote Popper, "seeks truths that are difficult and
| interesting". From that view, the problem for US
| scientific efforts is entirely home made, but it's also a
| problem that's much more pronounced in China.
| natechols wrote:
| One thing that has been constant for at least a decade or
| more is that every time a lab in China publishes even an
| incremental advance, a legion of internet commenters
| descends to declare the end of US hegemony because
| Americans didn't discover it first.
| CPLX wrote:
| Is your argument that China's increasing technical
| prowess will not inevitably result in the US hegemony
| ending?
| ajuc wrote:
| Japanese and South Korean increasing technical prowess
| didn't, why would Chinese be any different?
|
| China has serious fundamental problems and if you account
| for its gigantic population - it's seriously
| underachieving not only compared to US, but even compared
| to the rest of the developed world.
|
| It's fashionable to talk about China taking over, but
| it's far from guaranteed. China is pretty much confirmed
| to be falsifying its economic stats for example [1] [2]
| but people just take them at face value anyway. I don't
| understand why.
|
| [1] https://www.voanews.com/a/satellites-shed-light-on-
| dictators... [2]
| https://www.brookings.edu/articles/a-forensic-
| examination-of...
| birdyrooster wrote:
| > It's fashionable to talk about China taking over
|
| It's not so much fashionable as it is literally state
| propaganda used to try and shoulder its way into the
| South China Sea and the Pacific by claiming it is so
| prosperous and populous that it is entitled to
| increasingly large sphere of influence and direct
| control.
| CPLX wrote:
| Those countries are allies.
|
| China doesn't believe in western democracy and has as a
| stated goal ending American hegemony.
|
| It's not even slightly confusing or subtle, not sure why
| American elitist types like to just handwave it away.
|
| Actually I am sure. Everyone is making too much money.
| Until they aren't.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > it's seriously underachieving not only compared to US,
| but even compared to the rest of the developed world.
|
| This statement would have been viewed as absolutely
| obvious and ridiculous 2 decades ago. The fact that it
| even needs to be said now is indicating how fast they are
| advancing.
| ajuc wrote:
| They were underachieving for 2 centuries, ceasing to kill
| their own citizens by millions and imprisoning anybody
| who tried to think for themselves is enough to grow if
| you did so for a long time. But it does not make you a
| new hegemon.
|
| I highly doubt they can preserve their pace of growth for
| next few decades without significant changes to the
| regime and liberalization.
|
| Once they return to the mean - they will very likely slow
| down. Arguably they already did (3% official growth last
| year + people accusing them of falsifying data for 1-2
| percentage points of growth each year would make them
| already grow slower than some western countries,
| including the US).
| whimsicalism wrote:
| They do not need that many years of large growth to
| overtake the US in terms of size. Technologically they
| are pivoting to AI and the service economy much better
| than Japan, southeast Asia, etc.
| scrlk wrote:
| > I highly doubt they can preserve their pace of growth
| for next few decades without significant changes to the
| regime and liberalization.
|
| "Demographics is destiny" also comes to mind.
|
| Note how the era of "Japan Inc." during the 1980s was
| also the time when the post-war baby boom population were
| in their 30s-40s (i.e. peak productive worker
| population). As this cohort has aged and are now in
| retirement, Japan's economic performance has tailed off.
|
| See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Japan#
| /media/F...
|
| If you look at the Chinese population pyramid, we could
| already be at the point of maximum Chinese economic
| growth: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Chi
| na#/media/F...
|
| From the geopolitical standpoint, this may also explain
| why China and Russia have become more belligerent - they
| will lack sufficient numbers of young fighting aged men
| in the next few decades.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| The difference with the Japan case is that China is going
| to have a larger base of young, very well educated people
| than the US for at least the next century unless
| something changes dramatically with either birth rates or
| immigration.
| dingnuts wrote:
| No, it's evidence of how fast they advanced under Deng.
| It is unclear that the advancement is continuing / has
| continued into Xi's reign, especially since the beginning
| of his third term.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| It sorta sounds like you have no clue when Deng died.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| >Japanese and South Korean increasing technical prowess
| didn't, why would Chinese be any different?
|
| Because while Japan and South Korea are the 51st and 52nd
| US states, China is a superpower vying to usurp the US as
| the preeminent world superpower.
| ajuc wrote:
| That just means China has it harder and is more likely to
| fail. Access to global markets is a critical factor in
| growth of Japan, South Korea and China. USA controls
| that.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Internal markets in China are becoming increasingly
| robust and the US does not have control over global
| markets, that is nonsense.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| >Internal markets in China are becoming increasingly
| robust
|
| I think this fact is being severely understated, perhaps
| even denied by almost everyone in the west.
|
| The way the US-China cold war has been playing out, the
| US and friends keeps closing doors only for China to go
| _" Go right ahead, I don't have to play ball."_ and just
| succeed even harder on their own. Adding insult to injury
| is they then take that success and just wholesale buy the
| doors the US keeps closing.
|
| A surefire way to lose Pax Americana is to become
| delusional that Pax Americana is winning when by all
| accounts it's losing and losing hard. I think this ship
| can still have its course corrected, because Pax
| Americana is better for us than Pax China, but not if we
| just keep up this kabuki theatre.
| ajuc wrote:
| Access to global markets. I.e. oceans.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| The US' stated policy is global freedom of navigation and
| that has been the primary policy aim that they enforce
| since UNCLOS in 1982.
|
| So no, they do not control access to the oceans.
| [deleted]
| bobthepanda wrote:
| People said the same about Japan. The '80s and '90s was a
| bunch of media-fueled "the Japanese will run the world"
| hysteria.
|
| Japan is a technical powerhouse but that doesn't
| inevitably lead to ending hegemony. It requires a lot of
| other work too.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| China has 1.2 billion people, I feel like it is basically
| an inevitability at this point.
| evgen wrote:
| 1.2 billion _old_ people. While quantity has a quality
| all its own, in this case the demographics are not what
| you want to see if you are predicting long-term Chinese
| growth just based on population.
| missedthecue wrote:
| Median age China, 2022: 38.5
|
| Median age USA, 2022: 38.9
| pizzalife wrote:
| Look at the actual age distributions rather than
| collapsing the data into a single number.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_China
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_
| Sta...
| whimsicalism wrote:
| I see a country with triple the young people we do.
| natechols wrote:
| The only argument I'm making is that it's insane to draw
| sweeping geopolitical conclusions from the fact that
| Chinese scientists posted their attempts at reproducing a
| Korean lab's result on Twitter before the Americans did.
| ChatGTP wrote:
| I guess this is what happened after "the bomb" was
| developed ? The US could hold the world at ransom.
| lost_tourist wrote:
| Yep "it's the end of science in the barbaric Western
| nations" crowd.
| andrepd wrote:
| Which is not to say that science in the capitalist
| western nations is not going through rough times, because
| it is?
| [deleted]
| floxy wrote:
| >There has only been one weekday since the LK-99
| revelation
|
| The original paper drop was July 22nd.
|
| https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.12037
| fallingknife wrote:
| Why are they all from China? Why are they able to replicate
| so much faster than US labs?
| joefigura wrote:
| I mean it's been like 3 weekdays since the preprint was
| widely noticed. Labs in the U.S. are working on it and will
| publish. I don't think the difference between publishing a
| replication in 3 days or 2 weeks is meaningful to make
| inferences about the two countries
| ThisIsMyAltFace wrote:
| It turns out outsourcing all of your manufacturing
| capability to another country has higher order
| consequences.
| typon wrote:
| You will hear many explanations, but the real one is that
| the US leadership in hard science is fading. We are too
| cerebral and cyber - Asia has picked up the mantle now.
| lamontcg wrote:
| Argonne doesn't need to make a name for itself, they
| already are a "global brand" in science.
|
| They won't jump to publish a video on social media of the
| first replication of diamagnetism that they get. They'll be
| putting together a definitive and defensible paper on the
| production and properties of the material. That will take
| longer.
|
| And if they can't replicate it, then it'll drag on longer
| without hearing anything from them, since they'll have to
| try multiple different methods and reach out to the
| authors, and iterate until they've exhausted enough
| possibilities that they feel confident enough publishing a
| failure to replicate.
| [deleted]
| Zanneth wrote:
| [flagged]
| swader999 wrote:
| It's hard to get red phosphorous in USA.
| Ancapistani wrote:
| They have a _lot_ of labs, and materials sourcing is easier
| for them. That's partially because China is the origin of
| lots of stuff, and partly because the US regulated red
| phosphorus as a meth precursor.
| mrandish wrote:
| Additionally, it appears some of the original team
| members were concerned about possible industrial spying
| or leaks and that 'other parties' might be moving to
| replicate which was part of the impetus for rushing to
| publish. So, it's possible that some team(s) in China may
| have already been starting, underway or at least thinking
| about it.
| wredue wrote:
| Where was this? I haven't seen this, but it definitely
| explains the drama surrounding this whole situation.
|
| It couldn't have come at a worse time for drama either,
| as the right wing is currently on possibly their most
| massive anti-science tirade world wide that they've ever
| pushed.
| mrandish wrote:
| > it definitely explains the drama surrounding this whole
| situation.
|
| It was in a Twitter thread linked on an HN thread a
| couple days ago wherein someone had done some digging
| online into resumes, publication histories, etc and
| recapped a bunch of the apparent history of LK99 and the
| related scientists and institutions. Sorry, I didn't
| bookmark it. But it contained quite a bit more drama
| including possible team conflict over potential Nobel
| credit and a deathbed promise to the team's mentor, one
| of the initial LK99 discoverers.
|
| No matter how this turns out, there's probably a helluva
| good book or movie in the backstory as it appears to be a
| team of unlikely underdogs stubbornly pursuing a long-
| shot while scraping together minimal funding over many
| years, being passed over for tenure, taking on unrelated
| side work and having their initial paper rejected by
| _Nature_ , etc. It makes me extra hopeful that LK99 is at
| least an interesting novel material, even if not a
| superconductor.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Well at least the regulations have worked to solve the
| meth crisis.
| ta1243 wrote:
| Everyone with half a brain in the US is working the ad-tech
| and data-mining industries, that's where the money is.
| ska wrote:
| This assumes everyone's primary motivation is $, which
| just isn't true. I've known super bright and talented
| people who gone off to wall street or FAANG for big $,
| but I've also known equally strong people who turned it
| down for low 6 figures doing the research they wanted to.
|
| In both cases some are very happy with their choice,
| others not so much.
| fallingknife wrote:
| I know a super smart PhD who is now a SWE and he would
| have been ok with the pay, but not the general BS of
| academia. So even if money isn't the primary motivator,
| it's still an issue.
| ska wrote:
| Isn't that sort of what I said? For some people the trade
| off is worth it, some it isn't. Academia BS vs corporate
| BS is just one of the aspects.
| ketzo wrote:
| I suppose the researchers at Lawrence National Lab in
| Berkeley, whose analysis and pre-print replication effort
| is cited in the linked article, are working with, what,
| quarter-brains?
| pengaru wrote:
| Pessimal, clearly those are the _full_ , wrinkly brains.
| objektif wrote:
| This is so fucking true and sad at the same time.
| bugglebeetle wrote:
| To be fair, China also has an extensive state
| surveillance apparatus. They just have their military and
| security agencies run it out in the open at much lower
| cost. The obfuscation in the US is much more expensive to
| maintain, but necessary for the illusory veneer of
| privacy and "freedom."
| 0xDEF wrote:
| Because there has literally only been 2-3 weekdays since
| the LK-99 revelation.
|
| Do you expect American and European scientists to work
| during weekends?
| floxy wrote:
| The original paper dropped July 22nd:
|
| https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.12037
| Eduard wrote:
| I expect plenty of scientists to be excited enough to
| replicate a potential breakthrough in their labs on a
| weekend, just as half of HN enjoys experimenting with the
| latest LLMs over the weekend for fun and curiosity.
| declan_roberts wrote:
| One limitation here is the required materials, which are
| likely much easier to get in China. At least one of the
| materials is a controlled substance by the DEA in the USA.
| pharrington wrote:
| In addition to what the other commenters said, I'm
| imagining most of the replication attempts in the USA are
| happening in chemical corporations. Compared to academic
| labs, the corps have much easier access to highly regulated
| materials and FAR stricter communication protocols.
| ironborn123 wrote:
| I may be wrong, but it seems..
|
| US labs dont find replication work exciting enough. If the
| effect is genuine, good, if not, life goes on.
|
| Chinese labs are looking to build credibility, so they will
| benefit by publicly resolving this.
| [deleted]
| fluidcruft wrote:
| With China's research environment things happen really fast
| --you just never know what you're going to get. Sometimes
| you get superconductors and sometimes you get COVID.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| [flagged]
| jurimasa wrote:
| [flagged]
| zulban wrote:
| Even the Chinese academy of science admits it has a massive
| fraud and plagiarism problem.
| fttx_ wrote:
| Sure, but does that mean if a reputable researcher at a
| reputable university (which _do_ exist outside the US and
| Western Europe) provides strong evidence, should we
| discount all that simply because Chinese academia has a
| fraud and plagiarism problem?
|
| Speaking of, I'd guess that the likes of Australian
| National University, Victoria University of Wellington,
| University of Tokyo and National University of Singapore
| (amongst others) would magically count as "American or
| Western European" for this test.
| dirtyid wrote:
| Yes and west has their replication crisis which is
| massive fraud in all but name. PRC biases towards applied
| science so will get more applied science fraud.
| Ultimately countries with large R&D base strategy comes
| down to generating as much talent as possible and then
| spamming science at scale then seperating wheat from
| chaff via commercialization. First scientific community
| filters out what's valid - see PRC science+innovation
| climbing western rankings controlled for quality. Then
| market commercializes what works.
| [deleted]
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Forget posting with a year, or month, or day.
|
| These stories need a time-stamp.
|
| Who replicated or not since this morning.
| cududa wrote:
| The time stamps are below the post's title
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| You know how sometimes people complain about an old story,
| and say put year in the title, like this.
|
| (2014) Some Title
|
| What is below the title is a time since posted, not the date
| of the article.
|
| This was a joke. Since there are multiple submittals every
| hour today about this story.
|
| So need something like
|
| (8/1/2023 10AM) Yet Another Story, about another group, with
| claim about Replication of Superconductor
| hinkley wrote:
| You'll never get that through committee. It'll get hung up
| on which time zone to use.
| [deleted]
| Ajay-p wrote:
| I still have a very, very hard time understanding what all of
| this means. Is there an easy to understand explanation for a room
| temperature superconductor?
| esalman wrote:
| Think your EV is so efficient that you only need to charge it
| once every 5000 miles.
| Salgat wrote:
| How does a superconductor help with that? Lithium ion is
| already 95-99% efficient, same with motors. It would help
| with the charging cable, but that's not increasing the
| battery capacity. Off the top of my head the main advantage
| here seems to be MRIs, maybe also maglev trains, maybe
| generators? It really depends on the form factor of this
| superconductor compared to copper wire.
| [deleted]
| throwbadubadu wrote:
| There is also SMES, energy storage application, already in
| use today that may become interesting for other use cases
| if we could do it without the cooling: https://en.m.wikiped
| ia.org/wiki/Superconducting_magnetic_ene...
| zardo wrote:
| The problem with losing 5% of the energy in the motor
| windings is that they heat up. With superconducting
| windings you run smaller-lighter motors.
| flimsypremise wrote:
| Zero loss of energy to heat in any of the conductors.
| You're not making the battery more efficient, you're making
| everything else more efficient.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| That's not going to produce a 20x gain in efficiency. The
| primary problem with electric cars is energy density in
| the battery itself.
|
| Maybe if mag-lev cars are possible, you could get that
| kind of gain from the reduced friction.
| rodoxcasta wrote:
| If your loss goes from 5% to 1%, you have to deal with
| 80% less heat. So you can make 3x smaller motors. All the
| powertrain of these machines will be hugely simplified.
|
| That's no small deal, but in the grand scheme of things
| that a hot superconductor can give us.. I mean, this can
| (possibly, with decades of research) give us fusion,
| quantum computing, etc.
| Salgat wrote:
| Are most of the losses in the motor? I figure it'd be
| friction in the drive train, the bearings, air drag, etc.
| failuser wrote:
| Avatar 3 will have practical unobtanium.
| TheJoeMan wrote:
| Ever seen one of these high school science demos?:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWojYBhvfjM
|
| Now imagine one where you don't have to chill it with liquid
| nitrogen.
| roywiggins wrote:
| A huge renaissance in desk toys, at the very least!
| spotplay wrote:
| You're joking but to be honest the reason I'm most excited
| at the moment about this discovery is because of desk toys.
| The way I would calculate excitement is usefulness / time
| to market and the respective graph of a superconductor
| application (at least in my monkey brain) peaks at desk
| toys since they would come first.
| declan_roberts wrote:
| The Meissner effect has a lot of potential even outside of
| the energy efficiency changes (which is by far the most
| important).
|
| It will be fun to see trains levitating over the ground
| without any friction loss from the wheels at high speed.
| ReptileMan wrote:
| Isn't majority of energy lost spent on pushing air away
| when we talk about high speed trains
| recrof wrote:
| yes, but friction of the track is also a big factor.
| lalopalota wrote:
| [flagged]
| fredoliveira wrote:
| It takes very little to try and explain a concept to someone
| asking for pointers -- assuming of course, you know the topic
| at hand. Your response is as unhelpful as it gets.
| TX81Z wrote:
| HN tends to be a place where many technical experts explain
| complicated things succinctly because they know the audience
| here has a certain baseline of knowledge. I scrolled down
| until I found this question (as I have the same "huh, what is
| this anyway?" reaction).
|
| Because I'm a "Very Busy Person" and don't actually have all
| day to screw around with "every YouTube video", I come to HN
| to optimize my time spend/information gained ratio.
|
| Likewise, on this topic, even the above is still confusing.
| People say it's more efficient, then replies say we're
| already at 95-99% efficiency so it doesn't matter much. I'm
| still fairly confused!
| dustincoates wrote:
| From the HN guidelines:
|
| > Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-
| examine. Edit out swipes.
| shin_lao wrote:
| Superconductor are more efficient at transmitting energy, here
| are some consequences:
|
| - Cheaper electricity transportation
|
| - New kind of batteries
|
| - Consumer devices that don't heat up as you use them
|
| - Simplifies the design of fusion reactors, which means we
| could have fusion sooner and cheaper
|
| - Probably lots of things we can't even think of
|
| If this is true, then you still have a lot of time before you
| can do industrial replication but given the stakes I imagine we
| will see immense inflows of capital into this.
| allenrb wrote:
| > - Consumer devices that don't heat up as you use them
|
| And now I'm imagining a superconducting toaster. Such
| frustration!
| digdugdirk wrote:
| It's a conductor of electricity. But super good at it.
|
| i.e. - It has zero resistance to electricity.
|
| Currently, the best superconducting materials we can create
| have to be chilled to near absolute zero, which means designing
| them to work in liquid helium baths. This is expensive, and
| difficult. If a material can superconduct at room temperature,
| now we're talking usage in general purpose consumer goods.
|
| As for why we want a superconductor? Real cool stuff happens
| when there's zero resistance to electrical current. I'm sure
| other people can add on to this, but for an immediate benefit -
| electricity transmission wouldn't have any losses. Imagine
| offshore wind turbines that could transmit power to Kansas from
| the Atlantic. It'd be a big deal.
| animatedb wrote:
| Superconductor means low resistance. Low resistance means
| less loss due to heat on a wire. Room temperature
| superconductor also means more efficient magnets for motors,
| coils, ending up in cars, MRI machines, etc.
| largbae wrote:
| Not just low... _zero_. That's where things get weird.
| dekhn wrote:
| Well, you still lose current over time... for example, we
| had to dump a bucket of electrons into our
| superconducting, supercooled magnet about every month ago
| to keep things swirling properly.
|
| (The EE I worked with later didn't believe me. See https:
| //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_magnet#Persist...
| and note that the loss was due to details of magnetic
| superconductors, not superconductors in general)
| Sharlin wrote:
| Yeah,
|
| > Experiments have demonstrated that currents in
| superconducting coils can persist for years without any
| measurable degradation. Experimental evidence points to a
| lifetime of at least 100,000 years. Theoretical estimates
| for the lifetime of a persistent current can exceed the
| estimated lifetime of the universe, depending on the wire
| geometry and the temperature. In practice, currents
| injected in superconducting coils have persisted for more
| than 27 years (as of August 2022) in superconducting
| gravimeters.
|
| (from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconductivity)
| klyrs wrote:
| If you can extract work from the field generated by the
| supercurrent, it _must_ come from somewhere. Small
| supercurrents make small fields, so things like adiabatic
| CPUs seem interesting.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| Can you extract work from a constant magnetic field? As I
| remember my physics education, constant magnetic fields
| don't do any work, since they apply a force perpendicular
| to the direction of motion.
| _Adam wrote:
| It'll be hard to make traditional motor windings out of
| this particular material because AFAIK it's a ceramic, but
| perhaps with thin films on flex PCBs it would be possible.
|
| I'm imagining a future where a superconducting layer on a
| PCB is just another checkbox you can choose when ordering
| small runs of boards.
|
| [ ] 1 oz copper
|
| [ ] 2 oz copper (+$2)
|
| [X] 10 micron LK-99 (+$10)
|
| Another thought - I think the first place we'll see this
| widely rolled out is in IC's (waiting for the Asianometry
| video on it). IC's are already planar, they're small so
| exotic materials aren't a big contributor to costs, and
| they're very power dense. Replacing a metal layer with a
| superconducting one could enable greater gate density and
| potentially significant improvements in efficiency. I don't
| know by how much because switching losses are probably
| where most energy is dissipated, but it's an incremental
| change that seems compatible with the process.
| bewaretheirs wrote:
| The theoretical papers I've seen (linked here in recent
| days) suggest that pure crystals of LK-99 would
| superconduct only in one dimension so it's likely to be
| fussier than that.
|
| Perhaps it will be like a "tape" laid down with the
| proper orientation for each conductor. Perhaps you'll
| need separate north-south and east-west and maybe
| diagonal layers with special attention to inter-layer
| connections.
| Ajay-p wrote:
| And the issue being that it takes a lot of energy to super
| cool those superconductors, and thus they can only be used
| in highly specialized applications. A room temperature
| superconductor would be like any other conductor, just
| much, much better.
|
| Thanks to everyone. I understand this much better.
| N1H1L wrote:
| They are also very good energy storage media. Combine that
| with zero transmission losses - you can now highly efficient
| EV powertrains that are significantly more compact. 1000 mile
| EVs become actually viable.
|
| Secondly, superconductors are one of the most promising
| platforms for qubits. Big boost for quantum computing - and
| these are just two applications off the top off my head.
| Geee wrote:
| Can you point to a source of these superconducting energy
| storage mechanisms? How do they work? I briefly looked into
| it and found out that at least the current ones have very
| high power density, but low energy density.
| makeworld wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_magnetic_en
| erg...
| Geee wrote:
| That's what I meant. It states energy density as 40 kJ/L.
| Lithium batteries have energy density up to 2.5 MJ/L.
| Fossil fuels and hydrogen way more.
| agnokapathetic wrote:
| That 40kJ/L is for the entire system including the
| cyronics. Get rid of the cyronics and the system gets far
| far more energy dense.
| u320 wrote:
| Do you have a source for this?
| Geee wrote:
| Yes, that's quite likely how they come up with this
| number. But is it enough? What's the most energy dense
| configuration that can be made with room temp SC and does
| it compete with lithium batteries?
| Scene_Cast2 wrote:
| I just took a look at the source paper [0]
|
| """ Although the attainable magnetic flux density limits
| the energy per unit volume given by Equation (1) ( B2 /2m
| o), the real limit of the energy stored in a SMES is
| mechanical. [...] The relation defines the minimum mass
| of the mechanical structure in pure tension to support
| the radial electromagnetic forces. Force-balanced coils
| [5] minimize the working stress and thus the mass of the
| structure. """
|
| So it looks like they 1) don't look at cryo and 2) the
| limiting factor is the stress due to EM fields.
|
| [0] https://snf.ieeecsc.org/sites/ieeecsc.org/files/CR5_F
| inal3_0...
| Geee wrote:
| Ah, ok. It seems that this SMES thing is not a solution
| at all for dense energy storage.
| Sharlin wrote:
| Except the energy is stored in the magnetic field.
| Superconductivity or not, you don't carry tesla-scale
| electromagnets around without becoming a target for high-
| velocity metallic projectiles and wreaking havoc with every
| electronic device in the neighborhood. Storage facilities
| for regulating grid power fluctuations are probably a much
| more realistic use case.
| codeulike wrote:
| If they could get it down to modern chip scale, does that
| mean you could run a processor very very fast and not
| generate heat? Or at least a lot less heat? So that would
| mean much faster clock speeds? What would be the limit on
| clock speed if you had a superconducting processor?
| AlexandrB wrote:
| I think a lot of the losses happen in the _semiconductors_
| in the CPU, not the wires. Even if LK-99 is a room
| temperature superconductor, it 's probably not usable as a
| semiconductor.
| visarga wrote:
| No, it only works for direct current. While superconducting
| processors could, in principle, operate more efficiently
| and perhaps at higher speeds than conventional processors,
| they won't be completely free of energy losses. AC can
| induce losses due to electromagnetic fields.
| Iulioh wrote:
| Yeah but _sadly_ that would need a ungodly amount of
| research and time to implement, electric grids and engines
| would come much faster
| codeulike wrote:
| Would help with fusion, right?
| panax wrote:
| The limiting factors for superconductors in fusion power
| generation efficiency is the strength of the magnetic field
| they can generate which is limited by how much force the
| superconductor can withstand since the strong magnetic
| field induces enormous forces on the material. It also
| requires very high currents. This material seems fragile
| and can carry very little current.
| u320 wrote:
| It would make fusion experiments cheaper, but not more
| successful.
| baq wrote:
| Why not? Higher temperature for magnets means magnets
| less susceptible to neutron flux right?
| Gud wrote:
| It would definitely help with the commercialization of
| fusion power.
| cpleppert wrote:
| If this pans out fusion energy would be completely viable
| with enough investment. Right now tokamaks don't really
| have a pathway to being commercially viable and are
| basically 40 years away. For starters, If you can cut the
| cost by 2-4x you are right in the ballpark of what you
| would need to build a working tokamak fusion power plant.
| You would need to do better than that for fusion to be a
| viable power source but tokamak fusion was always only a
| magnitude away unlike other hypothetical fusion energy
| alternatives.
| dameyawn wrote:
| Yes, huge for fusion and would allow tokamak
| miniaturization too.
| hanniabu wrote:
| Would a room-temp superconductor make it feasible to cover
| desert regions with solar panels and transport the
| electricity long distances?
| LASR wrote:
| Yes it makes it more feasible. But even with
| superconductors, you still need to build out the long-
| distance grids. With ceramics, manufacturing that much
| powerline might be the challenge. With the maximum current
| density reported for this material, you might need a huge
| x-sectional area.
|
| You still have to worry about batteries. Unless if you
| place equal numbers of panels separated by 120deg meridians
| for example.
|
| And then there is coordination between governments. This is
| probably where such an initiative might fail.
| boppo1 wrote:
| >You still have to worry about batteries.
|
| I keep hearing mixed things about superconductors being
| useful for energy storage.
| thsksbd wrote:
| It probably has no applications in transmission. Trans losses
| arent that high; not enough to justify refurbishing the grid.
|
| The electrical resistance per se is actually not that
| interesting. Certainly not for energy loss. Electronics would
| benefit, especially CPUs _if_ transistor switching doesn 't
| heat the interconnects above the transition T (the actual cpu
| is much hotter than the package where the thermocouple is).
|
| High quality (as in high Q) passives would be cool. Think
| very good capacitors and inductors for filtering. Super cond.
| caps wouldn't be great for energy dumping since high B fields
| kill the superconducting effect.
|
| The magnetic properties are more interesting. MRIs w/out
| crygenic cooling, mag levitation without stabilization.
|
| Apparently there are quantum applications too, but Im not too
| sure about those but my physicist friend is super excited (in
| a bad way) for quantum computers now.
|
| If this pans out we're looking at an unexpected revolution.
| martinald wrote:
| Hmm. Losses from HVDC transmission are on the order of 3% per
| 1000km, so I'm not sure how much of a big deal it'd be for
| that kind of use case. Your example would only save ~6%
| transmission losses. An improvement yes but not really a big
| deal, unless the cables were far cheaper to make than current
| HVDC cables (which I'm doubtful about).
|
| I think there are other use cases within devices themselves
| that are far more interesting for energy storage.
| tills13 wrote:
| ok but 3% when you're talking about MWs or GWs of power is
| still a lot of wasted energy.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Whether it's worth doing also depends on how much energy
| it would take to make thousands of miles of
| superconducting cable of similar capacity and how long
| such a cable would last.
| slashdev wrote:
| Not as much as is wasted in generation and transforming,
| both of which would benefit from superconductors.
|
| The benefit might lie less in the wires and more in the
| equipment.
|
| Tough to say with a trans Atlantic cable though. Those
| kinds of distances have never been tried to my knowledge.
| declan_roberts wrote:
| 3% but keep in mind they can only push so much current
| through those wires before they start losing energy to
| heat, regardless of the voltage.
|
| The same cable diameter can now power an entire state.
| roywiggins wrote:
| Superconductors have a critical field, you can't pump
| unlimited amounts of current through a superconductor.
|
| (I think there were some comments going around that this
| material has quite a low critical field, so there would
| have to be some substantial improvements on this even if
| it is superconducting)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_field
| AlexandrB wrote:
| I remember going down the rabbit hole on superconductors
| a few years ago and finding out that they were limited by
| a critical field. It was both reassuring and
| disappointing and largely for the same reason - there's
| no truly "free lunch" in nature.
| [deleted]
| gradascent wrote:
| I imagine that carbon footprint could be reduced
| substantially by this too, at least on a per-watt of utilized
| energy basis. Imagine if all computer chips used
| semiconductor materials - then more of the input electricity
| is actually put towards computing, and cooling fans are a
| thing of the past!
| michaelmarion wrote:
| IANAP, but a layman's understanding: the materials that we have
| available today to conduct electricity at or around room
| temperatures largely do so in an inefficient manner. As
| electricity moves through the material, some energy is wasted
| in the form of ejected heat.
|
| To circumvent this, physicists discovered superconductivity: a
| state in which a material is a perfectly efficient conductor of
| electricity. Thus far, to create a superconductive material
| requires keeping that material at extreme conditions of
| temperature and pressure.
|
| A room-temperature superconductor is a game-changer because we
| could get nearly-perfect energy efficient electric conduction
| without the additional energy overhead it takes to keep the
| material at such a dense pressure or extreme temperature. Such
| a material would have wide applications across a variety of
| disciplines.
|
| Here's a useful article as well:
| https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0953-2048/26/11/1...
| Salgat wrote:
| "Inefficient" is a rather relative term here, since
| batteries, motors, and transmission wires are >=95% efficient
| already.
| Iulioh wrote:
| Is not like we lose 5% of the stuff and that's it.
|
| We lose it to HEAT and that has a lot of limitations like
| the stuff melting and exploding.
| mecsred wrote:
| Conductors carry electrical current but have resistance, so you
| lose power to heat. Superconductors have effectively zero
| resistance so you don't lose power as they conduct.
|
| We can make superconductors, but they only work at extremely
| cold temperatures, if they get too hot they turn back into bad
| conductors. This new material might be able to superconduct at
| room temperature, which means zero loss conductors without
| expensive bulky and complicated cooling systems. There are many
| cool things that can be done with zero loss conductors.
| aeternum wrote:
| Zero resistance and therefore zero electrical transmission
| losses would be one of the most significant real-world
| benefits.
|
| There are also some really cool levitation effects,
| demonstrated here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPqEEZa2Gis
|
| As to why this one works at room temp? It really needs quantum
| physics to explain.
| KSS42 wrote:
| See:
|
| Weekly Science news by Sabine Hossenfelder
|
| Today we'll talk about the new superconductor claim, bad news
| for new physics, a quantum radar, how to print origami, space-
| based solar power for a moon station, a dire prediction for the
| collapse of an ocean circulation, Europe's first hyperloop
| test, why NASA shoots lasers at the rain forest, and of course,
| the telephone will ring.
|
| https://youtu.be/RjzL9cS3VW8
| tomelders wrote:
| Hoverboards.
| delusional wrote:
| I'm not expert, but I think about it like this: Resistance is
| the tendency of a material to convert electrical energy into
| heat. Higher resistance means more of the electrical energy is
| converted to heat per "time". A superconductor then has the
| cool property of being able to carry electrical energy without
| converting any of it into heat. That's obviously cool for
| energy transmission, but it also enabled some other
| counterintuitive effects.
|
| Magnetic fields moving through conductors induce electrical
| energy in the conductors. Normally this is quickly dissipated
| as heat, but in a superconductor this energy can't go anywhere,
| and the conductor therefore can't move through the magnetic
| field.
|
| We've already done a lot of experiments with superconductors,
| since we've found some that work at extreme cold, but room
| temperature superconductors would allow us to productive some
| of those cool ideas by making them economically viable.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| >Higher resistance means more of the electrical energy is
| converted to heat per "time".
|
| This isn't really accurate because increasing the resistance
| of a resistor in a given circuit will actually decrease the
| amount of heat dissipated.
|
| W = I _V where I = V /R plug that in we get W = (V/R)_V =
| V^2/R
|
| So Watts = Volts^2/Resistance. Increase resistance, decrease
| watts.
|
| Its better to just say that resistance converts voltage to
| heat, and leave it at that. Also is why in the orginal paper
| (and other superconductor work) they measure voltage drop
| across the conductor. No voltage drop(loss) = no resistance.
| delusional wrote:
| Yeah, my explanation is clearly wrong since it also breaks
| down at a pretty obvious extreme. If your resistor is non-
| conductive (infinitely resistive) my model would suppose it
| would convert all the electricity into heat. What would
| actually happen is that no electricity would flow and we
| would therefore get no heat.
|
| I presented it as an intuitive "feel" based idea of what a
| resistor does. It's very much not a numerically useful or
| physically accurate one.
| mewse-hn wrote:
| For something close to home, imagine a gaming laptop that runs
| on full performance mode without generating any heat. Imagine
| datacenters running full workloads without needing cooling.
|
| Electromagnets are built with coils of copper magnet wire - an
| efficient conductor but generates waste heat - what if we could
| build those electromagnets with zero resistance? Electric
| motors become very exciting. The electrical <-> mechanical
| relationship gets transformed.
|
| We use electricity for everything, so it's hard to communicate
| the extent of the revolution. People keep bringing up MRI
| machines because they're on the ragged edge of electromagnet
| usage constrained by cooling.
| Axsuul wrote:
| > For something close to home, imagine a gaming laptop that
| runs on full performance mode without generating any heat.
| Imagine datacenters running full workloads without needing
| cooling.
|
| Aren't there other components like transistors that will
| still generate heat?
| SanderNL wrote:
| This is exciting, but I try to maintain my composure. Good luck
| to all involved.
|
| I didn't know science could be such a thrilling spectator sport.
| hinkley wrote:
| I saw a video the other day that pointed out that the breakdown
| current for their sample was 260 mA. Now there's a lot of
| things you can do with 260mA, but I don't believe high-tesla
| electromagnets are in that list, so no MRIs, no fusion, and
| probably no electromotive devices (generators, motors).
| baq wrote:
| I assure you if 260mA room temperature and pressure
| superconducting wire can be consistently produced we'll be
| living in the future.
| MayeulC wrote:
| > we'll be living in the future
|
| This is a tautological statement if I ever saw one!
| baq wrote:
| Let me explain what I meant: the transistor changed
| everything and we're still reaping unexpected benefits,
| see LLMs this year. My bet is such a superconductor would
| be the same - 50 years from its creation we'd still be
| finding new ways of putting it to use.
| jagrsw wrote:
| I don't know much about superconductivity, but if 0.25A is
| the limit no matter the cross-section of conductor, you can
| multiply/parallelize the conductors - i.e. series of
| "microconductors", each carrying 0.25A, which would add up to
| whatever you want?
| codeulike wrote:
| But now we know its possible, maybe they can figure out the
| structures that make it work and develop better materials?
| hinkley wrote:
| I'm hoping for something that isn't made entirely out of a
| superfund site material, personally.
| ipdashc wrote:
| Unless I misunderstand what you mean / what the stuff is
| made of, this seems like a huge exaggeration... lead
| isn't friendly, sure, but it isn't _that_ dangerous?
| There are worse materials that are in common use. (And we
| use lead in plenty of places already)
| asynchronous wrote:
| Personally hopeful it inspires a "gold rush" of funding
| materials research to get LK99 to a supremely useful spot
| elteto wrote:
| It took 80 years to go from a crude prototype at Bell Labs to
| Apple announcing the M1. We just need to know it's possible.
| The rest will follow.
| andrepd wrote:
| I don't get it, is the M1 supposed to be some pinnacle
| achievement in the history of the integrated circuit lmao
| greggsy wrote:
| The M1 is just as significant as an ESP32 or Celeron in the
| scheme of things.
|
| Isn't the introduction of the 4004 in 1971 a better
| comparison? while that was still 24 years since the Bell
| labs discovery, we have much better scientific,
| manufacturing, logistical and mining ecosystems within
| industry and research today.
|
| If there's a compelling reason to do so, governments will
| find ways to accelerate the development of those ecosystems
| from decades to years (probably more like a decade).
| amluto wrote:
| The effective cross-sectional area of the original sample
| could well be minuscule. (I assume that, if a room
| temperature superconductor has been found, it constitutes a
| tiny fraction of the sample.)
| titzer wrote:
| The current is related to the cross-sectional area of the
| (super)conductor. Not sure how big their sample was, but the
| solution is thicker and more cables.
| kijin wrote:
| It almost feels like we're back in the days of Lavoisier.
| Scientists staging elaborate public experiments, blowing things
| up to support or debunk a popular theory. Deadly rivalries,
| publicity stunts, each new development a matter of personal,
| institutional, and national hubris.
| eesmith wrote:
| It reminds me of the days of cold fusion. Or the days of
| buckminsterfullerene.
|
| Basically, something which is very unexpected, with
| potentially large consequences, and which can be done in many
| labs using discretionary funding.
| lordnacho wrote:
| Personally I can't wait to be able to go to the Royal
| Institution in London to see someone demonstrate this thing.
|
| Just like they demonstrated all the stuff you know from
| school over a hundred years ago, before you needed fancy
| equipment to do anything.
| Agingcoder wrote:
| Yes, this is absolutely thrilling. I can't help looking for the
| latest development everyday.
| baq wrote:
| Every day? I'm checking like every half hour
| dwaltrip wrote:
| Best places to check if I'm casually interested?
| rodgerd wrote:
| > This is exciting, but I try to maintain my composure.
|
| One wit on a different social media site opined that "all
| technological advances such as plumbing and petrol result in
| lead poisoning, so perhaps this is real".
| declan_roberts wrote:
| The fun part about this is how easy things are to grasp even
| though I have zero background in the science.
| kijin wrote:
| It certainly doesn't hurt that this thing _levitates_.
|
| No need to squint into a microscope, parse a screen full of
| numbers, or try to make sense of false-color renderings.
| Either you have video proof of a levitating object, or you
| don't. The demonstration is as intuitive as it gets, despite
| the fact that the theory is crazy difficult to wrap one's
| head around.
| itsarnavb wrote:
| And the techniques to produce the material are not too
| crazy, all within reach of sufficiently dedicated amateurs
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| Levitates? Against, what, the earth's inherent magnetic
| field? Sorry, I haven't seen any visuals that show this
| behavior.
| marshray wrote:
| Over a handheld neodymium magnet.
|
| None of the videos have yet shown complete 'levitation',
| they all have a corner on the surface. But still, not
| behavior that anyone has ever seen from lead before.
| rvnx wrote:
| But couldn't it just be a magnet ? I don't understand how
| it's a proof. You can already do what is in the video
| (and even better), with for example, pyrolitic carbon ?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrolytic_carbon
| marshray wrote:
| Lead weighs a _lot_ more than pyrolytic carbon.
| aeneasmackenzie wrote:
| It's not proof, but if it wasn't even diamagnetic it
| would be over. It couldn't just be a magnet, it is
| repelled from both ends of a normal magnet, according to
| Chinese lab videos you can find in the thread.
| failuser wrote:
| Levitation in magnetic itself is not the proof. Frogs can
| do that too, ask Geim. The proof would be levitation in
| any orientation.
| _0ffh wrote:
| > Frogs can do that too
|
| One even did that on the cover of Nature, iirc.
| andersa wrote:
| When do we start building things out of superconducting
| frogs?
| jacquesm wrote:
| Using a 'slightly' stronger magnetic field...
| hcks wrote:
| [flagged]
| bugglebeetle wrote:
| With all the recent "the government has alien spacecraft news"
| and the bizarre circumstances of this material's creation, the (I
| know to be ridiculous) conspiratorial part of my mind is going "I
| guess climate change is finally forcing them to take stuff out of
| the extraterrestrial vaults."
| baja_blast wrote:
| I don't know, the material is a ceramic made of a powdered
| lead, copper, sulphur, phosphorus and oxygen heated up
| together. It's not some advanced meta material which if true
| it's amazing this was not discovered earlier but let's just
| hope it is.
| bugglebeetle wrote:
| This was intended as a joke, but since most raw materials in
| the universe are the same, extraterrestrials deriving novel
| combinations is just as, if not more likely, than meta
| materials etc.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| the government didn't have news, someone that worked for it
| said they heard someone else say something
| Zigurd wrote:
| One interesting aspect here is that the materials processing is
| comparatively simple. A real industrial process might require
| much higher precision. But none of this needs aliens. Based on
| descriptions of the process, it looks like anyone could try to
| replicate.
| TX81Z wrote:
| I want to believe.
| hilbertseries wrote:
| So they planted this with a Korean lab a few years ago?
| bugglebeetle wrote:
| Please see "I know to be ridiculous" in my comment. This was
| intended as a joke.
| hinkley wrote:
| I mean we do have a defense pact with South Korea... There
| are worse places to establish parallel discovery.
|
| Plausible enough for science fiction at least.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| The namesake of LK-99 is the year it was first synthesized -
| 1999.
| BirAdam wrote:
| Having known many conspiracy theorists... yeah. Given the US
| troop presence in Korea, they would say "absolutely," and
| they'd then adjust their tinfoil hats.
| weard_beard wrote:
| ... or Godel was right and the universe spins and backward time
| travel is possible and they got permission to pull some future
| inventions out of the vault retrieved from future us ... in
| order to make sure we actually make it to future us ... which
| we should ... because the inventions are real ...
| bugglebeetle wrote:
| This one is fun too.
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