[HN Gopher] Observation of zero resistance above 100 K in Pb10-[...
___________________________________________________________________
Observation of zero resistance above 100 K in Pb10-[?]Cu[?](PO4)6O
Author : segfaultbuserr
Score : 749 points
Date : 2023-08-03 00:43 UTC (22 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arxiv.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (arxiv.org)
| pyeri wrote:
| As a lay person not graduated in STEM subjects, can someone ELIFY
| how is this research useful to society?
| beanjuice wrote:
| This exact paper is the newest progress on recent hype
| regarding a semi-trustworthy not-peer-reviewed study claiming
| 'superconductors at room temperature'.
|
| 'Superconductors at room temperature' are cool because they
| would answer questions like "How would we get solar power from
| [your local desert] everywhere else for free?" and "How are we
| going to use MRIs when the helium runs out?" as two examples.
| nmca wrote:
| I wish we had real money prediction markets. Afaict it would be
| legal to run such a business in the UK.
| parineum wrote:
| I remember seeing something like this that ran on bitcoin a
| while ago. It was completely user driven and lines were
| dynamically calculated by the action. I'm not sure how the
| resolutions to the bets were determined exactly, perhaps there
| was a requirement of a third party indicator of some sort, I
| don't recall.
| jesprenj wrote:
| Is this one also written in Word so it automatically loses LaTeX-
| credibility, as was commented under the first paper? (:
| ant6n wrote:
| Maybe some people wanna focus on the work and not on the geek
| cred.
|
| (I need to write some thesis like thing soon, like 15 years
| after my masters thesis that was written in latex, and do I
| really want to bother setting latex up again and futz with
| templates and fight for correctly positioned figures, or just
| use Word and be done with it?)
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > just use Word and be done with it?
|
| One don't "just" use word, and it's certainly never done
| with. Unless you found a room temperature superconductor and
| half the people will simply not care if you wrote it in a
| piece of paper (yet half will care... for some reason), you
| will have to spend all your time fixing formatting issues and
| keeping things on their correct state.
|
| I was stupid enough to write a paper in Word once. Given the
| choice, I will never repeat the mistake.
| chungy wrote:
| Give TeXmacs a shot.
| ramraj07 wrote:
| I would have said latex gatekeepers are the worst, but now I
| know eMacs geeks so no. Or was it vim? Can never tell!
| robotresearcher wrote:
| 'eMacs'? It's LaTeX that has the self-conscious
| capitalization!
| astrange wrote:
| There was a thing called an eMac once, it wasn't a text
| editor though.
| progrus wrote:
| It's real, it works, the Navy has a linked patent from 2017.
|
| The UFOs are a PSYOP.
| declan_roberts wrote:
| The Navy does have a patent for a "lead zirconate titanate"
| super conductor which does sound awfully similar to what's
| described in LK-99.
|
| https://phys.org/news/2019-02-navy-patent-room-temperature-s...
| drtgh wrote:
| From the same author https://doi.org/10.2514/6.2019-0869 ,
| 2019 Salvatore Cezar Pais
|
| > It is important for the PZT coating to undergo a polarizing
| (poling) treatment prior to RTSC enablement, so that optimal
| domain alignment is obtained within the ceramic coating, by
| subjecting the coating to a strong dc current electric field,
| slightly below the Curie temperature (approx.200 0C, but
| possibly as high as 360 0C, depending on PZT ceramic
| composition). Furthermore, to increase the probability of
| vibration in one particular direction, as well as to
| alleviate the brittle nature of the ceramic material, it may
| be necessary to make the 'metallic' wire coating out of a
| composite PZT and highly conductive polymer, such as
| p-Terphenyl [4]. Another option is to sandwich the PZT
| ceramic in between two layers of aluminum, resulting in a
| wire design which may be planar rather than cylindrical in
| nature. This composite coating design would amplify
| piezoelectrically-induced vibrations and possibly render them
| unidirectional.
|
| From LK99 rumors:
|
| > At the beginning of 2020, Ji-Hoon Kim continued to do
| experiments as usual, suddenly he found a huge peak, he
| repeated the test + looked at his notes. But didn't find any
| special points. He started looking through the lab videos. He
| finally realized that the tube of sample came out with cracks
| on the quartz tube, and he hit his elbow on the table while
| transferring the sample out to the electronic scale.
| Introducing oxygen at the right moment + a violent impact
| would change the structure of the lead apatite crystals being
| formed.
|
| May be something, may be nothing,
|
| S.C.Pais: "to increase the probability of vibration in one
| particular direction"
|
| S.C.Pais: "piezoelectrically-induced vibrations [ and
| possibly render them unidirectional]"
|
| LK99: "oxygen at the right moment + violent impact would
| change the structure of the lead apatite crystals being
| formed"
| yreg wrote:
| This person has an absurd patent track record
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvatore_Pais
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Man. I hope it isn't. That would be sad, all this was
| happening, and nobody had found the old study. Surely not.
| progrus wrote:
| Ding ding.
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| > The application claims that a room-temperature
| superconductor can be built using a wire with an insulator
| core and an aluminum PZT (lead zirconate titanate) coating
| deposited by vacuum evaporation with a thickness of the
| London penetration depth and polarized after deposition.
|
| > An electromagnetic coil is circumferentially positioned
| around the coating such that when the coil is activated with
| a pulsed current, a non-linear vibration is induced, enabling
| room temperature superconductivity.
| adrian_b wrote:
| Except for the fact that both materials contain lead, there
| is no resemblance.
|
| Lead is one of the best superconductors among pure metals,
| whose superconductivity has been already discovered 110 years
| ago, in 1913.
|
| Nevertheless, there is absolutely no relationship between the
| superconductivity of pure lead and the alleged
| superconductivity of lead zirconate titanate and the alleged
| superconductivity of lead phosphate doped with copper.
|
| They have very different crystal structures and behaviors of
| the free electrons (i.e. electronic band structures).
|
| Only if in the PZT samples used by the Navy there would have
| been some impurities, without the knowledge of the
| researchers, causing contraction of the crystal when
| substituting the big lead atoms, then there would have been a
| similar mechanism to what is claimed now.
|
| If this mechanism is proven to really work, then it could
| also work in other crystals with big ions, like lead or
| baryum, perhaps even in PZT.
| danbrooks wrote:
| Encouraging evidence that the recent work on room temperature
| superconductivity might be real!
|
| Still waiting for confirmation from multiple labs.
| wsieroci wrote:
| Could someone explain why this is important? What is the
| consequence of the existence of Superconductors like that?
| kvandy wrote:
| My understanding is that this unlocks future-tech... Post
| quantum computing, hyper efficient rail tech, fast charging
| batteries, etc. Pretty neat stuff, and even cooler to be able
| to follow this as it develops.
| [deleted]
| dgoldstein0 wrote:
| The biggest near future tech for superconductors: fusion power.
|
| One huge area of exploration for fusion power is tokamok
| reactor design, which requires a very strong magnetic field to
| confine plasma within a round shape - typically a torus, though
| I think I read of one spherical shell.
|
| I suppose these don't necessarily need room temperature super
| conductors, but cheaper and easier to manufacture
| superconducting materials to use as the magnets could make a
| huge difference. And I do wonder if allowing higher
| temperatures could aid in the operability of these future
| devices.
|
| https://spectrum.ieee.org/fusion-2662267312 is one I read about
| recently, using YBaCuO as the superconducting electromagnet.
| Definitely sounds bottlenecked on production of it.
|
| Fusion power, as any energy source that massively increases the
| amount of energy humans can harness, could be planet changing.
| coderenegade wrote:
| I think energy storage, motors / accelerators and weapons
| would come first. A superconducting linear motor would
| probably also make for a great cannon.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| If we are talking DARPA money, I think working out how to
| build IC sensors using this stuff would be much quicker to
| reach manufacturing then a large scale motor winding.
|
| I am sure defense folks would have a field day with new
| sensors with virtually no thermal noise.
| ssijak wrote:
| shooting satellites to orbit with cannons
| dgoldstein0 wrote:
| Yeah, you're probably right - fusion has a lot of hard
| problems to solve. But for it, cheaper superconductors
| could be the game changer we need. For these other
| things... We already have energy storage, motors, weapons
| etc. It's certainly reasonable to think we could build
| better ones but I'm more excited for fusion, as it has the
| ability to solve climate change and provide cheap
| electricity to the billions who don't yet have it at the
| same time, probably resulting in double digit economic
| growth in many places.
| n2d4 wrote:
| In the most ELI5 way possible, a superconductor is a material
| that doesn't lose any energy or produce heat when used as a
| cable/wire, and at the same time also a very strong magnet.
|
| MRIs and powerlines are more obvious applications, but
| theoretically you can do a lot of cool stuff (batteries with
| zero energy loss, heat-efficient computers, etc [1]). If true,
| LK-99 would allow these things to happen at room temperature
| instead of negative whatever degrees, making them much more
| useful.
|
| [1]
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_applications_o...
| booleandilemma wrote:
| I like this HN comment explaining it:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36978704
| daemontus wrote:
| I see a lot of _" This must be real, why would labs publish this
| if they don't think it's real, they have nothing to gain."_
| sentiment on HN lately. Or _" Researcher's career would be ruined
| if they falsely claim to replicate."_, and so on. I also want to
| believe! But I should add a bit of skepticism to the hype :)
|
| - "this could ruin their career": Depends. If they posted
| completely fake numbers or intentionally fake videos. Sure, that
| would be bad. But none of this is peer reviewed, and all of this
| can be retracted. A contaminated sample? Oops, retract. Bad
| measurement methodology? Oops, retract. Sure, _somebody_ will
| remember that you made the controversial paper in the first
| place, but as long as you are not provably fabricating, a lot can
| be attributed to "an honest error". There are tons of peer
| reviewed papers out there with errors that completely change the
| outcome. Does not mean the authors are "finished".
|
| - "they have nothing to gain": Oh, they absolutely do. While
| "science should be fully objective", funding agencies very much
| aren't. Obviously, just like VC funding, science funding is not a
| complete coin toss. But having "the right" team and background is
| often as important as the idea itself. One way to get the right
| background is to "touch shoulders with the giants" and one way to
| get the right team is to be highly visible and attract talent.
|
| So overall, if LK99 is _eventually_ shown to be a superconductor
| by someone else, you have a lot to gain, even if your own initial
| study is not perfect.
|
| Let's say your team synthesised something. It looks like LK99 and
| it has _some_ properties that are not really superconducting but
| at least a bit unusual. This clearly isn 't what you hoped for.
| Now, do you run a bunch of other controls to see if it is some
| form of contamination, process error, combination of both... or
| do you publish a vague click-bait paper on ArXiv and hope that
| other results will somewhat align with yours?
|
| Finally, I'm not claiming this paper or any other paper
| intentionally published untrue or misleading results. Just that
| scientists are also people. They have FOMO, they follow trends,
| they see what they want to see. As always, big claims require big
| evidence, and so far we don't really have that. But that does not
| mean there isn't some truth to the big claims :)
| jpambrun wrote:
| A contaminated sample that materially change the composition
| but still yield a superconductor would be a novel finding.
|
| An error in manipulation leading to an external communication
| on something this high profile is sure to affect your career.
| It's like a biologist claiming to have found evidence
| extraterrestrial life and having to retract. I think I would
| consider hara-kiri..
| daemontus wrote:
| But the thing is... except for the original authors, none of
| these papers so far _really_ claim to have a room-temperature
| superconductor, right? They claim "simulated band structure
| with low Fermi level", or "unusual levels of diamagnetism",
| or "almost zero resistance up to -100degC (but lack of phase
| transition)", etc.
|
| Yes, retracting these is still shameful, but it's not a "we
| found extraterrestrial life" claim. It's a "we received weird
| signals from a nebula that we don't understand so far" claim.
|
| And yes, a lot of supporting but inconclusive evidence is
| still supporting evidence. My point is not that (most)
| scientists would risk lying about replicating a
| superconductor, but rather that uncertain or inconclusive
| results with a solid chunk of plausible deniability in a
| rapidly evolving environment go a long way towards being "in
| the room where it happened".
| jpambrun wrote:
| This is not my area of expertise, but as a former scientist
| (at least at the PhD and postdoc level) I would not stake
| my credibility on something without being 1000% sure on a
| normal day, let alone when the topic is extraterrestrial
| life or room temperature superconductors.
|
| Also, it's not true at all the retraction have no
| consequences. It is an indelible mark of shame.
| cthalupa wrote:
| I wouldn't bet on LK99 being a RTAPS but "Replicating a
| bunch of weird shit that we don't really understand that at
| least somewhat align with the possibility" really isn't a
| damning position to be in when the starting point is "The
| team says they only get a working sample about 10% of the
| time and everyone else is working off of pretty meh
| instructions on how to replicate"
| [deleted]
| lifthrasiir wrote:
| I'm very much conservative about this paper because while the
| graph in Fig. 3a says $T_c^{zero}$ being 110 K, the "zero"
| resistance is actually only 1e-5 O (!) and even if the sample is
| possibly superconducting its critical temperature would be much
| lower than 110 K anyway. I'm aware of the difficulty in obtaining
| larger samples, but the label in that graph is really misleading
| regardless.
| nukros wrote:
| The random jumps in the resistivity around 250 K suggests that
| there is very bad contact resistance or a possible alternate
| current path. The drop in resistance doesn't look like a
| typical phase transition (it is very broad in temperature). My
| guess would be that the voltage leads are not very well
| connected to the region of the sample that the current is
| flowing through. This could actually give a drop in the
| measured voltage (and therefore "resistance") even though the
| actual resistance is increasing as the sample is cooled. It
| would be interesting if they also included two-point resistance
| across the current leads.
| segfaultbuserr wrote:
| One of the authors commented in their previous video pre-
| announcement that they suspect it was a probe cleanliness
| problem, which they would investigate later.
| throwawaylinux wrote:
| Is this kind of thing typical for experiments working to
| confirm such significant results, or is there a mad rush to
| publish?
|
| Do you really get a lot of prestige from confirming
| somebody else's result? I would have thought the risk to
| reputation from sloppy work would far outweigh it (see: the
| cold fusion shenanigans).
| ianai wrote:
| Probably a lab that confirms any piece of it will get a
| significant share of attention and acclaim.
|
| I heard the research group got scooped by a former
| researcher. Former researcher outed them before they were
| ready for all the relevant questions. Not a particularly
| good thing to do for a career to out colleagues like
| that.
| agnosticmantis wrote:
| In this particular case I'd be less cynical as even
| laypersons are anxious to know what's the result. So it's
| natural that scientists that have the lab equipment are
| rushing to replicate or falsify the results.
| throwawaylinux wrote:
| > Probably a lab that confirms any piece of it will get a
| significant share of attention and acclaim.
|
| Why is that though? They're taking a discovery that
| somebody else came up with, and (mostly) follow a recipe
| they're given.
|
| I mean if they were synthesizing a theorized substance or
| significantly improving its production, or measuring an
| effect that was previously undetectable by known
| instruments and experiments then those things would
| deserve acclaim on their own.
|
| Not saying they aren't good scientists and labs working
| on this or reproducing is worthless, the reward just
| doesn't seem big enough not to be meticulous about it. If
| you're right then you'll be one of the dozens of labs
| that reproduced it and all credit goes to original
| discoverers. If you're wrong you'll be the ones who
| bungled the experiment and share just about equal blame.
| soerxpso wrote:
| It demonstrates efficiency and ability to do something
| complicated and challenging under time pressure. Maybe it
| shouldn't be considered a big academic achievement, but
| it's definitely an impressive practical achievement.
|
| I don't think that being wrong looks bad. There are a lot
| of understandable ways to be wrong, and it's not like any
| of these labs are being dishonest about their level of
| confidence (you can't really be "wrong" if you're not
| overcommitted to a stance).
| throwawaylinux wrote:
| It's having these suspected dirty probes that they
| haven't investigated yet which is in particular what I'm
| talking about though. Since they made no particular
| experimental or theoretical breakthrough here, I just
| would have thought they would want to be meticulous about
| confirming an unexpected result. As you say, the point is
| to show their experimental capabilities.
|
| > I don't think that being wrong looks bad. There are a
| lot of understandable ways to be wrong, and it's not like
| any of these labs are being dishonest about their level
| of confidence (you can't really be "wrong" if you're not
| overcommitted to a stance).
|
| I'm not in the field, but I would have thought it would
| look pretty bad if they were wrong and their experiment
| had obvious sloppy practices.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_fusion apparently that
| sunk a few reputations.
|
| I completely understand a private rush to replicate for
| the purpose of building on it and making new discoveries,
| but just to put rush out a confirm paper? I suspect it's
| less about demonstrating actual efficiency and ability
| and more about the paper mill.
| saithound wrote:
| It is hard work, but relatively easy work proportional to
| the possible rewards, and has very few downsides:
|
| 1. An early preprint provides instant press coverage for
| the researchers, their lab and the entire university.
| Such opportunities are rare: I worked in academia full-
| time for decades, and never had an opportunity to do some
| fixed amount of well-understood work that guarantees an
| appearance in the national press. Such an appearance is
| very useful in inter-departmental politics, not to
| mention when dealing with government organizations
| staffed by non-researchers. E.g. if "biggest newspaper in
| country X" reported about your research, that by itself
| ensures that you won't have to apply for "shitty academic
| visitor visa to the UK", but can credibly apply for a
| "global talent, go straight to indefinite leave to
| remain" one instead. And if the effect turns out to be
| real, and you managed to reproduce the effect while lots
| of others tried and failed, that's going to look really
| good on the grant application where you have to explain
| why your lab is the best place to spend money earmarked
| for superconductor research. This is unlike other
| replication papers, which are not usually the "gets
| reported on national media kind, or even "many others
| tried and failed" kind, but usually the "nobody else
| cared" type.
|
| 2. The article will definitely garner some citations.
| Even if LK-99 does not pan out, there will be many many
| survey articles written about what's unfolding right now,
| and they will all definitely cite the earliest
| replications. Moreover, it doesn't matter if your first
| preprint has shit writing: you'll still be cited if the
| final version gets accepted 4 months from now, after many
| rewrites. This is unlike most random "reproduction"
| papers, which are unlikely to get published, much less
| cited. So reproducing LK-99 is in fact a good way to
| increase h-index.
|
| 3. As long as you don't do anything fraudulent, there's
| very little career risk involved with being fast-and-
| loose in a preprint. If LK-99 pans out you're definitely
| in the clear. If it doesn't, well, as every second
| comment here mentions, materials science is difficult,
| honest mistakes are easy to make, even reproducing
| results is incredibly finicky and hard. It's not like
| your lab was the only one making anomalous observations.
| Chances are nobody's going to care if you were involved
| in a false positive replication. In fact, probably
| nobody's going to read and scrutinize your whole
| publication list when hiring or promoting you, but
| they'll definitely care about your citation metrics. This
| is unlike most other reproduction papers, where you
| wouldn't get many citations even if you managed to
| publish, because nobody cared.
|
| All in all, dropping everything else and working on this
| right now is a good strategy, even for investigators in
| prestigious labs that would otherwise not bother with
| reproduction papers.
| jacquesm wrote:
| In science the fights are so fierce because the stakes
| are so small...
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Typically a valid comment in academia at large, but not
| when high-temperature superconductors are the subject of
| the fight. If these claims pan out, these guys may be the
| next Andy Viterbi or Ray Stata.
| Qem wrote:
| > I heard the research group got scooped by a former
| researcher. Former researcher outed them before they were
| ready for all the relevant questions. Not a particularly
| good thing to do for a career to out colleagues like
| that.
|
| Either this or they tried to deny proper authorship to
| the guy, that antecipated the publishing in self-defense.
| It's early to point who was the party at fault, without
| proper investigation.
| peyton wrote:
| Spec sheet says 10 uohm is as low as their probe goes.
| pythonguython wrote:
| I believe certain it is near impossible to actually measure
| truly zero resistance. Instead, a sudden drop near Tc, combined
| with the meissner effect is what confirms superconductivity.
| segfaultbuserr wrote:
| The resistance curve stopped at 1e-5 O because it has nearly
| reached the resolution limit of their instrument. Using 4-wire
| Kelvin sensing, the measurement current was 1 mA, the voltage
| read-out across the material was around 1 to 10 nanovolts -
| this is around the scale that some of the world's best general-
| purpose voltmeters can measure down to. The authors assumed
| that the negligible voltage drop, combined with the abrupt drop
| and flattening of the resistance vs temperature curve is
| already a convincing-enough indication of superconductivity.
|
| Hopefully more rigorous testing will be done by one of the
| teams later.
| lifthrasiir wrote:
| Which is indeed their argument. But in that case they haven't
| proved that $T_c^{zero}$ = 110 K, they only proved that
| $T_c^{zero}$ < 110 K. (And I should also note that
| $T_c^{zero}$ doesn't imply the actual critical temperature
| $T_c$, while the title strongly suggests so.)
| amelius wrote:
| Curious, why didn't they use a larger current for the
| measurement?
| segfaultbuserr wrote:
| Who knows... Too afraid to damage their only sample?
| kurthr wrote:
| Well, it's at a 1mA test current (I'm assuming a 4 point probe
| to mitigate contact resistance) so 10u Ohm would give a 10nV DC
| signal. That's a pretty small voltage signal and comparable to
| a fairly standard chopper stabilized instrumentation amp rms
| noise at room temp near DC.
|
| I'm not sure whether higher currents are all that reasonable.
| Cooling the precision amp is an option to reduce the noise
| figure, but at that point you'll want optical isolation and
| battery supply too.
|
| https://www.analog.com/media/en/training-seminars/tutorials/...
| guraf wrote:
| [flagged]
| kurthr wrote:
| Yeah, I ran low temp STM/BEEM systems in UHV for 4 years at
| JPL's MDL.
|
| I assume you know what that means. Even today low frequency
| nV signals are still hard. Did you know you can do zero-
| bias tunneling sensing?
| robbiep wrote:
| Glorious to watch
| throwaway849755 wrote:
| A comment above says they are using
| https://www.qdusa.com/products/ppms.html with the DC 4-wire
| option.
|
| All my instincts would prefer they were using the AC 4-wire
| option, given any reason to question results, and/or issues
| with contact effects, etc.
| kurthr wrote:
| Thanks! That's great information. We had to make our own,
| but it's good to see that there are decent off the shelf
| systems. I agree that contact resistance on these tiny
| samples has got to be a huge issue (can they use mercury?).
| However, what I've seen suggests that even the low
| frequency AC measurements are more complex due to
| capacitive coupling effects. However, narrow bandwidth
| lock=in should improve noise... the equipment still just
| claims 10u Ohm.
| tines wrote:
| Isn't it a faux pas to put the degrees-symbol after the unit K?
| extraduder_ire wrote:
| It's incorrect, yes. (about as incorrect as saying you're "1.8
| degrees meters tall") But also, that's "U+2218 RING OPERATOR"
| on the page, not "U+00B0 DEGREE SIGN" but that may just be a
| typo.
| Nifty3929 wrote:
| Yes
| tnecniv wrote:
| Clearly K is an element of some kind of algebraic structure
| here
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| Ah yes, K, the Potassium Constant
| mmastrac wrote:
| I'm impressed that Pb10-[?]Cu[?](PO4)6O is completely
| representable in Unicode.
| ibic wrote:
| So this almost means the holy grail has been found or we are
| pretty close?
| gandik wrote:
| This is _so_ reminiscent of what happened after Fleischmann &
| Pons. Labs attempting to replicate saw this property, or that
| property, but never the whole, unequivocal picture.
|
| Here we have a room temperature superconductor that isn't a
| superconductor at room temperature. A sample that has no measured
| Meissner Effect at any temperature. And the authors admit that
| some (many?) of the samples tested out as semiconductors.
|
| Also, they don't happen to mention how they measured resistance.
| 1mA current, yes, but what equipment? And what setup? Micro-
| measurement of resistance is _hard_. We really need to know more
| about that.
| rsfern wrote:
| I agree with your first points, but the methods section states
| (somewhat unclearly) that they used this 4 point probe setup
|
| https://www.qdusa.com/products/ppms.html
|
| I have more questions about that, like why not calculate sheet
| resistivity instead of just showing that the resistance hits
| the noise floor?
| segfaultbuserr wrote:
| I agree that the setup is not satisfactorily documented.
|
| > _but what equipment?_
|
| But at least this individual question is actually included in
| the paper. It was the _Physical Property Measurement System_
| (PPMS), manufactured by Quantum Design Inc. From the photo, one
| can clearly see that the DC resistance test fixture was used.
|
| https://www.qdusa.com/products/ppms.html
| crote wrote:
| To me the biggest difference is the _three_ theoretical papers,
| including from very reputable sources, all showing that a)
| there is indeed something weird going on with this material and
| b) due to the unusual configuration it is going to be tricky to
| manufacture.
|
| Fleischmann & Pons was never supported by theory and was
| essentially a "we measured something and have no idea what is
| going on". LK-99 is more of a "the theory says something
| interesting will probably happen, and we believe we measured it
| in some samples but can't reliably reproduce it".
| carabiner wrote:
| I read more about F&P and wow, there are striking similarities.
| The duo probably weren't fraudsters. No intentional deception
| in their work was ever found, so not like Hendrik Schon. They
| were basically forced to make their results public by their
| university, but it was very premature and they should have
| waited ten years. They were 100% legit, top researchers in the
| field before all this, and well after the scandal many
| scientists continued research in avenues initiated by F&P's
| original experiments (with little success). I can totally see
| LK-99, once it fails replication in a month, leading to more
| research but probably not yielding the holy grail.
| highwaylights wrote:
| I see. So what you're saying is that if we replace the
| palladium with LK-99 then cold fusion is back on?
|
| You know, because hype.
|
| This is, as the kids say, very bullish.
| hindsightbias wrote:
| I'd be happy if it just makes UFOs in focus.
| homeslice23 wrote:
| [dead]
| nyc_pizzadev wrote:
| Worth noting that the sample used did not produce a Meissner
| effect, but was still superconductive at ~100K.
|
| > To further verify the superconducting properties, we conducted
| magnetic measurements on the sample, but unfortunately, no
| obvious Meissner signal was observed, indicating that the
| superconducting volume fraction of the sample may be very small.
| The preparation of high-purity samples are still a challenging
| task.
| klimt wrote:
| This is one of my key takeaways as well. It's a shame they
| didn't include their magnetization measurements, even if it
| didn't confirm superconductivity. The first conclusive paper
| will have to demonstrate a superconducting transition in both
| electrical resistivity and magnetization.
| moralestapia wrote:
| I really really wanted this to be true just so we can all take a
| look at how much wrong some things are in academia and science
| nowadays.
|
| Plenty of "knowledgeable" people and research groups put out a
| lot of discrediting (and actually ignorant) statements about
| this, a lot of them with a dash of xenophobia in the mix.
|
| Congrats to the people that actually push science forwards!
|
| Haters gonna hate but no one will remmeber them, ever.
| superposeur wrote:
| Question for the cognoscenti: supposing that LK-99 superconducts
| with T_c = 110 K, how significant a discovery would this be?
| I.e., does it establish a brand new class of high-T
| superconductors, or is it merely one unremarkable member of a
| known class? Further, does it offer advantages over other high-T
| superconductors such as ease of fabrication or cost?
| scheme271 wrote:
| To add to the other reply, it'd be a new class especially since
| it would be at standard pressure. I think the current highest
| Tc SC at standard pressure is at much lower temperatures.
| Frankly, there's probably a lot that you can do with a
| superconductor that you can cool with liquid nitrogen even if
| it can't carry much current or handle high magnetic fields.
| Moving from liquid helium cooling to liquid nitrogen alone
| significantly reduces the cost and complexity of your cooling
| system.
| AnnikaL wrote:
| Don't YBCO superconductors already work at liquid nitrogen
| temperatures?
| cthalupa wrote:
| It's a brand new class.
|
| The material cost is lower than most superconductors - it's
| lead and copper - but no one has any idea on fabrication, yield
| size, etc., now, so no good answers there.
| superposeur wrote:
| Thanks.
| soligern wrote:
| In the observations, this sample they tested did not exhibit the
| Meissner effect at room temperature. Which means it's not the
| same thing the original team discovered?
| Levitating wrote:
| They stated no "obvious" Meissner effect was detected.
|
| Possibly because the sample includes too many impurities.
| downWidOutaFite wrote:
| A 110k superconductor would not be revolutionary since we already
| have some in that vicinity.
| belltaco wrote:
| First, at a minimum it validates that the researchers found a
| novel rare superconductor at ambient pressure, and are not
| frauds.
|
| Second, the new mechanism of superconductivity may lead
| scientists to explore other materials with similar properties
| that may work better.
|
| Third, the synthesis may not be completely spot on yet. It has
| been just 4 days of attempting replication, and this result is
| pretty good in that context.
| slavetologic wrote:
| That's what I'm not understanding about this frenzy. Seems like
| this already kind of exists?
| internetter wrote:
| The original report is billed as a "room temperature
| superconductor" (iirc up to 28c). If it is indeed a
| superconductor at room temperature, it would be the first of
| it's kind and enable functional usages for superconductors
| previously impossible.
| dgoldstein0 wrote:
| The original claim was Tc of 127c - above the boiling point
| of water.
|
| Plenty of reason to doubt it though. Of course I'm hoping
| it's real.
| internetter wrote:
| Wow, that's crazy! I guess I missed the 1 in front. I'd
| say the more I read the more optimistic I become. Fingers
| crossed!!
| kamranjon wrote:
| Is my understanding correct that 100k at ambient pressure is
| pretty special on its own?
| downWidOutaFite wrote:
| YBCO and BSCCO are superconductors around 100K at ambient
| pressure. Unfortunately their brittleness limits their
| practical use. Maybe LK-99 will have better mechanical
| properties.
| adrian_b wrote:
| Unfortunately no.
|
| In this paper it is mentioned that the fact that the
| material is very fragile made it difficult to obtain pieces
| of a consistent size and form for measurements.
|
| Moreover, from the results of the theoretical papers it is
| suggested that perhaps this material would work best as a
| monocrystal, with anisotropic conduction properties.
|
| That could still have very important applications, but not
| for making cables or coils.
| modeless wrote:
| An entirely new category of superconductor could well be
| revolutionary even at this temperature, for several reasons. It
| could be the first one of a family with variants that go up to
| room temperature. It could be cheaper to produce or have other
| desirable properties for commercial applications. And it could
| lead to advances in theory that would allow prediction of other
| unknown superconductors.
| brianpan wrote:
| This is not about 110K, this is about trying to verify the
| results related to LK-99.
|
| The LK-99 that is room temp superconductive seems quite
| difficult to produce at this early stage. But these researchers
| were able to produce their not-as-good version of LK-99 and at
| least verify very close to superconductivity at 110K. This
| makes the LK-99 room temp superconductivity claims that much
| more plausible.
| TillE wrote:
| Exactly. There are too many unknowns to draw any kind of real
| conclusions, but everything so far still supports a position
| of cautious optimism.
|
| What we know is that LK-99 looks pretty interesting. Is it a
| room-temperature superconductor? Maybe!
| ur-whale wrote:
| And now for a slightly different take on the much-discussed room
| temp. superconductors:
|
| on the off chance that this LK-99 stuff is actually going to be a
| thing, how should that influence my investment portfolio over the
| course of the next five years?
|
| Should I buy lead mining stock ?(joke, obviously, but you get the
| point).
| dougmwne wrote:
| It would bias our energy markets towards electric and away from
| fossil fuels. But due to climate change, there's already a lot
| of pressure to go in this direction.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I don't understand the physics, but it _feels_ like a truly zero
| resistance conductor would violate some law of thermodynamics or
| something.
|
| Is a superconductor truly zero impedence or just very very very
| low? Because I'm seeing a lot of these graphs with something
| like: "0.00001ohm" as the y-axis floor.
| klyrs wrote:
| Key point, resistance is the real part of impedance. The
| imaginary part, or inductance and capacitance, are not zero in
| a superconductor.
| thehappypm wrote:
| Ask yourself this question: Why does resistance occur at all?
| Why is it that electrons moving through a material cause them
| to heat up? What is actually happening to cause that?
|
| At micro levels, like molecules bouncing around in a gas,
| collisions are lossless. What makes electrons moving through
| materials different?
| daxfohl wrote:
| Similar to how a magnet works. A magnet can hold something
| forever, so seems like a violation of thermodynamics. But
| "holding" isn't work, it's just force. (Which is still kinda
| spooky, admittedly) Similarly, conducting itself isn't work,
| it's just conduction.
| huthuthike wrote:
| It's a lot less spooky when you consider that your desk can
| hold your coffee mug forever. It's exerting force on the mug,
| but not doing any work.
| flavius29663 wrote:
| even more so as the mug literally levitates above the desk,
| the atoms of the mug are not really touching the atoms of
| the desk.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| The atoms do touch, by interacting electrically--which is
| the physical definition of how anything touches anything.
| yongjik wrote:
| Not an answer, but if you think superconductor is weird, look
| up superfluid, now that's going to make your head spin.
| 55555 wrote:
| Thanks for the interesting new thing. If they suffer no loss
| in kinetic energy and a wave can move forever, could we use a
| circular pool of superfluid as an an energy storage
| mechanism?
| n2d4 wrote:
| Maybe, but it's probably easier to just use a
| superconductor for the same: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
| Superconducting_magnetic_energ...
| yongjik wrote:
| Well, the whole thing must be at liquid helium temperature,
| so probably not practical ...
| alex_suzuki wrote:
| Superfluids have been around for ages - we call them beers.
| LightMachine wrote:
| why there are no good videos of superfluids in action in the
| whole internet?
| fragmede wrote:
| I thought https://youtu.be/2Z6UJbwxBZI was pretty good,
| even if it's low res from being a bit dated.
| 55555 wrote:
| there's not a single high-quality video anywhere. Science
| YouTubers need to get on this
| marcosdumay wrote:
| The electrons are always moving in some direction. What a
| superconductor does is "just" making an electron pull others
| with it, making a cascade effect that biases the movement
| permanently.
|
| There is no work or state change, so no reason at all to
| conflict with the 2nd law of thermodynamics.
| [deleted]
| _ph_ wrote:
| Yes, as others already said, superconductors are zero
| resistance. Which is easy to check if you have enough of the
| substance to run meaninful currents through it. There might be
| miniscule amounts of resistance for contacting and impurities,
| but the resistance doesn't grow e.g. with wire length.
|
| So how is this possible? The explanation is acutally reasonably
| easy, but requires the strangeness of quantum dynamics. One
| basic principle of quantum dynamics is, that at least most
| things are quantisized. Especially energy of a state comes in
| discrete amounts. That is the reason we have orbitals of
| electrons in atoms. They can only take very specific values,
| which creates these separate orbitals. There is no in between
| state, they have always to absorb or emit exactly the amount of
| energy which is the difference between orbitals when moving
| between them. Which is a very easy effect to literally see:
| take glowing phosphors as you find them on your watch etc.
| These are transitions bound to a specific photon energy. With
| red light, you cannot "charge" them, as red photons have to
| little energy, and you can only absorb single photons. Any
| green or blue light would work though. And whatever light you
| used to "charge" them, they always glow in the precise same
| color, coming from their destinct energy state.
|
| The resistance an electron encounters while moving through a
| conductor is also quantisized. In superconductors we have a
| situation like trying to charge a watch dial with red light:
| the amounts of energy an electron could release cannot be
| absorbed by the material. And an interaction would require
| this. The consequence is: no interaction, no resistance.
|
| The situation is like trying to buy a $1 bottle of water with a
| $100 bill. That could turn out to be impossible, because no one
| is willing to give you back $99, and you can of course not pay
| $100 for the bottle. So even when having the money, you can't
| buy the bottle.
|
| This is, in a very naive way, the principle how
| superconductivity and superfluidity work. The trick now is to
| prepare the conditions which allow for superconductivity. One
| way is to make things increadibly cold. All metals become
| superconductive, if the temperature is close enough to 0. But
| that is with single digit degrees or below, even fractions of a
| Kelvin. Konsequently it was a huge sensation when the first
| complex substance was presented which showed the effect at
| larger temperatures. Since then the hunt is up to find better
| substances.
| Jyaif wrote:
| Fascinating.
|
| Let me get this straight: If you have a piece of phosphor,
| you can't heat it up with red light, regardless of the amount
| of red light you shine at it? If so, does the red light
| bounce off? Go straight through?
| _ph_ wrote:
| Yes, it will of course absorb or reflect the red light like
| any stone would, but to "charge" its luminiszence you need
| at least green light - blue works great. That is, why you
| never could charge your watch dial with incandescent light,
| but any white LED will work great because their light
| usually contains a lot of blue light. Fun fact: though it
| is calles "phosphorescence" all those colors don't contain
| any Phosphor, that Phosphor isn't phosphorescent :p An
| error in early naming.
| ramraj07 wrote:
| MRI machines work using superconducting magnets as does the
| LHC. So you better believe it buddy.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Why do MRIs need zero resistance vs incredibly low
| resistance?
| scythe wrote:
| The current is ridiculously large and would lead to an
| unacceptably high power consumption and thermal expansion
| with the resistivity of even a good metal (copper).
| thelazyone wrote:
| I think it's a fair question. I guess the answer is
| "because we have superconductors, and no material with
| 'very small resistance' instead".
|
| Also note that while there is zero resistance you still
| have parasitic currents and general interaction with the
| rest of the environment. So no perpetual motion for us
| today!
| jacquesm wrote:
| Even a 'very small resistance' would likely be
| prohibitive. Pure silver for instance is an excellent
| conductor, but when you're talking about the last little
| bits it's _orders of magnitude_ difference between that
| and a superconductor, and those orders of magnitude
| difference in resistance translate into orders of
| magnitude more current. So even a small resistance would
| cause your MRI machine to have a resolution so low as to
| be unusable.
| jychang wrote:
| Actually, there are infinite orders of magnitude between
| the resistance of silver and that of a superconductor.
| [deleted]
| obrix wrote:
| MR imaging is possible with permanent magnets and
| resistive (copper wire wound) magnets at low field
| strengths, below 0.35T or so. Above that the heating of
| the magnet windings becomes excessive and it would be
| very difficult to maintain a stable enough field
| strength.
|
| Superconducting magnets are very nice as long as there is
| no quenching. The material used for conductors must be
| mechanically stable and perform consistently from one
| production batch to another. One reason why current high
| tc superconductors are not popular...
| stcredzero wrote:
| _The material used for conductors must be mechanically
| stable and perform consistently from one production batch
| to another. One reason why current high tc
| superconductors are not popular_
|
| I was going to ask: Why don't we use the current high
| temperature superconductors, and start building grid
| interconnects? I guess part of the answer lies in the
| cost that would be incurred because of the mechanical
| properties of the existing superconductors.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| The current best "High temperature", standard pressure
| superconductor only works at -150ish degrees Celsius.
| That's not as bad as cryogenic superconductors, but it is
| still a blocker for large scale use.
| wbl wrote:
| The more you crank up the field and gradients the better
| resolution you can get. Being able to take MRI of a beating
| heart depends on that sort of thing.
| userbinator wrote:
| To create very, _very_ strong magnetic fields.
| crote wrote:
| They don't!
|
| MRI scanners work just fine with regular electromagnets, or
| even plain old normal magnets. However, work better with
| stronger magnetic fields. In practice normal magnets end up
| being extremely large and heavy, and electromagnets end up
| using massive amounts of power. Both options are also
| limited in their field strength because getting enough
| _stuff_ close together is tricky.
|
| A superconducting magnet is an electromagnet which is way
| smaller and uses orders of magnitude less power. For
| extremely high field strength MRIs they are the only viable
| option, and for regular MRIs they are often the best
| option.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Because the resistance is the limiting factor in how strong
| a magnetic field can be made in a given volume using the
| conducting material.
|
| Copper across an area of 1 cm ^2 does about 300A, compare
| with https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8047038/
| for what some superconductors can do.
| yreg wrote:
| That's not an answer to that question.
| robotresearcher wrote:
| Link says 90 MA per cm^2, or 30,000X more than copper.
|
| Gulp!
| patrec wrote:
| I think you are missing a zero.
| robotresearcher wrote:
| You are right!
|
| 300,000X more than copper.
|
| Typo converting from brain to screen. I should have used
| exponential notation and the mistake would have been more
| obvious.
| distortionfield wrote:
| It doesn't though, that's what's so tantalizing about it. It's
| counterintuitive but as I understand it, the current best
| theory of superconductor behavior properly conserves mass and
| energy and the math says a room temperature one should be
| perfectly possible. It's just not been found. And yes, it's
| truly zero resistance as far as we understand the concept of
| "resistance".
| wwarner wrote:
| Here's Brian Keating interviewing Jorge Hirsch from UC San Diego
| and Inna Vishik of UC Davis [0]. Prof Hirsch was/is a leading
| critic of the U Rochester papers, but thinks that LK-99 could
| work.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQnDatnAWP4
| mrandish wrote:
| For comparison, per this Wikipedia page
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-temperature_superconducti...)
| currently, the highest temperature, ambient pressure
| superconductor is around 138 K (-135 degC).
|
| I'm no expert but based on my limited understanding, this result
| (if confirmed) while far from room temperature would still make
| LK99 a pretty interesting discovery in the SC world. And once a
| new SC like this is validated there are often methods discovered
| to improve the temperature or optimize other traits.
|
| To me, the positive news here is that (if confirmed), at least
| LK99 isn't "nothing". Together with the recently released
| simulation studies indicating LK99 may have interesting SC-like
| properties, this causes me to increase my personal Bayesian SWAG
| estimate on LK99 (or a related descendant) eventually being a
| meaningful step toward room temp superconductors.
| gabesullice wrote:
| Agreed. Looking at the timeline on the Wikipedia page, a new
| 100K ambient pressure SC material is nothing to scoff at.
|
| It means LK99 is about as good as the other materials, at
| minimum. _However_ , its chemical composition is different than
| any of the other materials on the chart (i.e. it is lead
| based). That probably means there's lots to learn and new
| phenomena to be understood and optimized.
|
| Furthermore, if this lab could achieve these results in a
| matter of weeks, perhaps labs with more exotic equipment and
| dedication will be able to get better results, raising the bar
| even higher.
| dr_zoidberg wrote:
| > It means LK99 is about as good as the other materials, at
| minimum. However, its chemical composition is different than
| any of the other materials on the chart (i.e. it is lead
| based)
|
| While what you say is correct, let's not forget that lead
| _is_ an elemental superconductor. With a Tc of 7K, it's only
| bested by niobium (9K) and diamond (11K) as an elemental
| superconductor.
|
| Yes, cuprates and ceramics were ruling high-temperature SC so
| far, but it's not like lead was entirely unexpected in the
| superconducting world.
| jjallen wrote:
| Exactly. These are literally the first attempts to replicate
| a poorly explained production process. Things are only going
| to get better over time as the materials increase in purity.
| These are other labs seeking publicity partly.
|
| I for one think that this will turn out to be a major
| breakthrough based on the meta facts (decades of development
| for one) and not the actual science.
| [deleted]
| distortionfield wrote:
| The doping agents used in synthesis seem like interesting
| pathways towards finding something more stable and reproducible
| in their cook
| rwmj wrote:
| It's always interesting to discover a new class of materials
| that make high temperature superconductors even if they haven't
| discovered a room temp one.
| jcranmer wrote:
| Looking at the key temperature-resistivity graphs, this feels
| like the data doesn't support the conclusion that there's a
| superconductor here. The temperature-resistivity graphs of
| superconductors I've seen all have a fairly steep cutoff--a
| sharp, vertical line at critical temperature. The log-scale here
| complicates my intuition, but what I see is a gradual transition
| into noise range. Also, the graphs I've seen have also
| demonstrated that the critical temperature varies with applied
| magnetic field. Here... there's no apparent variation in apparent
| critical temperature.
|
| I'm sorry, but this result just feels to me like people are
| assuming that the material must be a superconductor and are
| analyzing all the data under that assumption rather than asking
| the question "is this a superconductor?"
| Klaus23 wrote:
| The gradual drop could be the result of a mixed sample where
| different parts of the material show superconductivity at
| different temperatures. As more of the sample becomes
| superconducting, the resistance will gradually decrease until a
| superconducting path is created between the probes and the
| resistance reaches zero.
| evancox100 wrote:
| Not a superconductor expert, but resistance exponentially
| decreasing with temperature is not a normal phenomenon in most
| cases!
| bandrami wrote:
| Most semiconductors have a thermal regime where that happens,
| it's just a relatively small regime, I thought?
| [deleted]
| adrian_b wrote:
| Here the resistance decreases in the opposite direction, so
| it cannot be explained by changes in the concentration of
| free carriers, like in semiconductors.
|
| In metals, the concentration of free carriers is constant
| and the resistance decreases towards lower temperatures
| because the mobility of the free carriers increases, i.e.
| there is less friction between them and the crystal
| lattice, because the vibrations of the latter have a
| smaller amplitude. However this does not lead to any
| exponential decrease of the resistance.
|
| The weird current dependence on voltage and temperature
| that can be seen here is most likely caused by an
| inhomogeneous sample that is composed of many small domains
| with different electrical properties.
|
| Moreover, the material may be anisotropic, so extra
| variability is added by the random orientations of the
| microcrystals that compose the ceramic sample.
| bandrami wrote:
| Thanks; I managed to read GP comment backwards somehow.
| evancox100 wrote:
| I should probably be fired for my prior answer because
| things like pn-junction diodes can definitely have an
| exponential-like dependence on temperature.
|
| In my head I was thinking of pure elements, like bulk
| metals. But there definitely could be more interesting
| things going on in the sample, like diode formation
| (internally or at the contacts) or weird doping profiles.
| That may be part of why it's hard to measure the
| properties!
| adrian_b wrote:
| Intrinsic semiconductors or the semiconductors that are
| lightly doped with impurities have temperature ranges
| where the concentration of the free charge carriers
| increases exponentially with increasing temperature, like
| in the NTC (negative temperature coefficient)
| thermistors.
|
| This causes a decrease in resistance towards higher
| temperatures, so it has nothing to do with any
| explanation for a decrease in resistance towards lower
| temperatures.
|
| The diodes have increasing inverse currents towards
| higher temperatures, which also has nothing to do with
| any explanation for increasing currents towards lower
| temperatures.
| adamsmith143 wrote:
| The proposed mechanism for superconductivity in lk-99 is pretty
| different so that may be confounding your interpretation of
| those graphs.
| gilbetron wrote:
| On log-scale, a line will be an exponential in a linear curve.
| Here we have a curve on log-scale arcing down, which means it
| drops faster than exponential, which is, more or less, a cliff-
| like dropoff.
| 46Bit wrote:
| https://nitter.net/condensed_the/status/1686895266329174016
| claims a linear representation of the same data. Still no
| convincing discontinuity visible.
| IsTom wrote:
| Makes the dip around 250K even more visible.
| pja wrote:
| That is a fantastically weird temp / resistance chart.
|
| Would semi-conductor like properties result in something
| like this - thermal noise pushing electrons into the band
| gap?
| segfaultbuserr wrote:
| > _The log-scale here complicates my intuition_
|
| Logarithmic plots are a device of the devil. - Charles Richter
| keyle wrote:
| > In conclusion, we successfully synthesized the compound
| Pb10-xCux(PO4)6O, and observed the zero resistance above 100 K.
| However, the Meissner effect has not been observed yet in our
| samples, which suggests that the superconducting volume is
| relatively low.
|
| In conclusion, ... nothing?
| DistractionRect wrote:
| It's likely that impurities in the bulk of the sample are why
| we aren't seeing the Meissner effect. Seeing super conductivity
| though is extremely promising.
|
| We've seen a sample be super conductors at 110k ambient
| pressure, diamagnetism, and (unconfirmed) flux pinning. So it's
| likely there's something here, but right now the main hurdle is
| synthesis. It's difficult to make and there's no clear path to
| consistency, purity or scale.
| ayakang31415 wrote:
| It's definitely something, rather big something, to observe
| zero resistance above 100k
| awwkaw wrote:
| Not compared to the claim of zero restance up to 400 K.
|
| But with how difficult the samples production seems to be,
| maybe we will get 400 K superconductors still
| userbinator wrote:
| I completely ignored the authors (as I usually do) and started
| reading it, noticed the slightly odd phrasing, and then chuckled
| at "mad great efforts" and then "a very excited news" a short
| while later before looking at the authors and realising the
| country of origin.
| elromulous wrote:
| ELI5, if these folks confirmed zero resistance at room temp and
| atmospheric pressure, isn't that confirmation of the original
| paper?
|
| Edit: I read 100 K as 100degc. Mea culpa.
| mcqueenjordan wrote:
| 100 degrees kelvin is about 338 degrees Fahrenheit below room
| temperature.
| elromulous wrote:
| Duh. Thanks. I think my brain must have transposed that K to
| C.
| mcqueenjordan wrote:
| I also did that the first time when reading the abstract.
| Very relatable. "It's on the front page of HN, so it must
| be a remarkable result," my subconscious seemed to assume
| on my behalf. ;)
|
| Fool me once...
| matsemann wrote:
| Thanks for making it even more confusing by introducing
| Fahrenheit, haha. ;)
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Reliable production of the material is an engineering problem. If
| it can just be shown to work once, then the goal will be to mass-
| produce it in useful forms and structures.
|
| Replication has been partially successful, exhibiting remarkable
| new results that are already worth celebrating.
| boringuser2 wrote:
| The most compelling evidence offered thus far is from actual
| scientists that have reviewed the LK-99 paper and determined the
| scientists involved aren't very good at science.
| hamilyon2 wrote:
| Why is western mass media silent? They always pick up emerging
| stories like that, but not in this case for some reason
| crote wrote:
| Western media isn't silent. It has been showing up in the
| science section of mainstream media for a few days now, with a
| healthy dose of skepticism around it.
|
| It's in the New York Post, on CNET, on CNBC, the Washington
| Post, Wired, New Scientist, Popular Mechanics, and plenty more.
| Just because CNN isn't covering it 24/7 doesn't mean the
| western mass media is "silent".
| hamilyon2 wrote:
| Good to know. So it means that the particular subset of media
| I am paying attention is silent. Thank you for the correction
| tomohelix wrote:
| Summary of events so far:
|
| The claim: Room temp (~300K) superconductor exists and we got it!
|
| The replication attempts: The production method is so poorly
| documented only a fraction of the samples being made shows any
| interesting properties. And among those interesting ones, results
| varies. Very few, if any, attempt actually completely shows the
| entire spectrum of properties and behaviors of a true
| superconductor at room temperature yet. But those kinds of
| experiments take time so it isn't an indicator of problem.
|
| My take: It is probably something interesting but not well
| understood. Best case scenario, the original sample in the Korean
| lab probably won the synthesis lottery and is actually a true
| room temp superconductor. Worst case scenario, we got another
| class of high temp (warmer than liquid nitrogen but cold enough
| that applications are limited) superconductor but nothing
| revolutionary since at this point, it is pretty conclusive that
| there is something interesting with LK-99.
| adrian_b wrote:
| While the production method of the original Korean authors is
| poorly documented, the synthesis method used for this paper is
| described in a very detailed way, also mentioning a few
| alternative steps that have been tried, but which caused
| failures in obtaining the desired structure.
|
| While their synthesis method works very well for something
| improvised in a couple of days, it requires significant
| improvements, because the samples are very inhomogeneous, which
| greatly complicates the measurements and the interpretation of
| the results.
|
| I believe that the properties of this material will not be
| completely elucidated until someone grows a monocrystal of it,
| but developing a process for this might take months, if not
| years.
| jjallen wrote:
| What is this supposed to be a summary of? The temperature at
| which this team observed zero resistivity was much much colder
| than room temp.
| s0rce wrote:
| Most papers are so bad its nearly impossible to replicate the
| synthesis.
| adrian_b wrote:
| Not this one, which has a very detailed description of the
| synthesis, including what has worked and what has failed.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| I'd note they claimed to try the synthesis over 1000 times to
| arrive at their best sample. They admit to not being physicists
| and being more experimental chemists. If there is anything
| here, which at minimum seems they've found something
| interesting. The theoretic research published recently
| supporting their claims coupled with the discussion that the
| apparently superconducting material is less likely to form it's
| probably (IMO, IANAP) a process that requires substantial
| refinement but holds a claimed experimental and theoretically
| demonstrated potential to be a room temperature normal pressure
| superconductor as claimed. There seems to be a lot of "their
| work is sloppy" and "their method isn't refined" as a proof of
| a negative, but it's just proof that science is done in many
| ways by many techniques and no one is sufficient, but everyone
| is necessary.
| [deleted]
| jcranmer wrote:
| > Worst case scenario, we got another class of high temp
| (warmer than liquid nitrogen but cold enough that applications
| are limited) superconductor but nothing revolutionary since at
| this point, it is pretty conclusive that there is something
| interesting with LK-99.
|
| I don't think that's the worst case scenario. The worst case
| scenario is that there is actually nothing interesting with
| LK-99, and everything we've seen that suggests otherwise is
| experimenter bias heaped on top of experimental error. I'm
| actually surprised by the sheer lack of people commenting in
| the more-or-less-perma-LK-99 threads who show skepticism of the
| results.
| blueprint wrote:
| > The worst case scenario is that there is actually nothing
| interesting with LK-99, and everything we've seen that
| suggests otherwise is experimenter bias heaped on top of
| experimental error.
|
| well while we're one-upping each other I'm pretty sure the
| worst case scenario is some lk99 synthesizer actually creates
| a black hole which gobbles up the planet.
| anonuser123456 wrote:
| An lk99 synthesizer creating a false vacuum decay would be
| worse.
| blueprint wrote:
| true! or an lk99 synthesizer accidentally generating the
| waveform of Never Gonna Give You Up
| bluGill wrote:
| sure, but that is unlikely. If massive black holes opened
| up in labs then it would have already done so. Probably by
| chance in the dinosaur age.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| What if thats where all black holes come from and thats why
| we haven't found any aliens? Just a misfortune reality that
| "accidental blackhole" is lower on the tech tree than fast
| space travel.
| [deleted]
| DrBazza wrote:
| > I'm actually surprised by the sheer lack of people
| commenting in the more-or-less-perma-LK-99 threads who show
| skepticism of the results.
|
| HN is supposed to have a high signal-to-noise for comments.
| I'm skeptical about this. I think it's the modern Pons +
| Fleishmann, but I won't post that on every thread because it
| contributes nothing. There's more insightful, and interesting
| comments about chemistry than anything I can write that would
| add to the discussion.
| tomohelix wrote:
| Personally, I think we are past the point of this being
| nothing. There have been multiple confirmations of at least
| something unexplained going on. Maybe all of them are wrong
| but honestly, that is more of an extraordinary claim than
| saying this is something interesting, just not a full on room
| temp superconductor.
| Analemma_ wrote:
| I understand why a lot of people think this, but I don't
| think we can say that with confidence yet. Cold fusion
| "replicated successfully" multiple times in the 80s too.
| dmarchand90 wrote:
| The big difference is that standard theoretical
| techniques have indicated the compound to be promising
| from an electronic structure point of view and confirmed
| that it would be tricky to synthesize just right.
|
| Cold fusion always was dependent on new physics to be
| discovered
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Wasn't the problem with Cold Fusion that it did NOT
| replicate, and thus got sullied with a bad reputation, so
| nobody wanted to touch it.
|
| Then decades later, it's still kind of open question.
| Aren't there some studies still going on, more on the
| down-low since it has such a bad reputation. Kind of like
| the super-conductor, have to keep it quiet and make
| really sure before publishing.
|
| Sabine did video on Cold Fusion that was pretty
| interesting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbzcYQVrTxQ
| rrssh wrote:
| There were positive and negative results, just like in
| this case.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Some stuff replicated. It was clearly not cold fusion.
|
| Some people made a career studying the kinds of
| sonoluminescence needed to explain what that experiment
| saw. (And AFAIK, nobody found a use for the theory yet.)
| gus_massa wrote:
| In the cold fusion experiments, they were measuring an
| exess of heat. That's very difficult to measure, and some
| noise or experimental error can confuse the people.
|
| No one measured a huge flow of neutrons, that were
| expected to be generated by the fusion and are more easy
| to distingish from noise.
| nwiswell wrote:
| There are now several authentic videos of bits of rock
| (lead apatite) appearing to do things around magnets that
| they have no business doing.
|
| Maybe there's a lot of smoke and no fire, but there's
| videographic evidence of _something_ weird going on.
| wahern wrote:
| Unfortunately, we live in the age of TikTok. Videos on
| their own bring no more credibility than written text;
| they no longer evince a substantively greater investment
| of resources. I'm more inclined toward the cheerleading
| section of the LK-99 audience, but watching the videos I
| realized now is a perfect opportunity to apply
| recalibrated B.S. detectors.
| drexlspivey wrote:
| This doesnt pass the smell test. Why would multiple
| independent labs fake their videos? What's the conspiracy
| here? There is no upside, we will know in a couple of
| weeks if it's real or not.
| ekianjo wrote:
| > Why would multiple independent labs fake their videos
|
| Why would different newspapers spread hoaxes? Yet it
| happens...
| Larrikin wrote:
| Which hoax specifically was completely fabricated by the
| newspapers and spread by multiple newspapers? State run
| media obviously doesn't count.
|
| Poor source checking and then issuing a retraction is not
| the same as a conspiracy among the papers to make
| something up completely.
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| why would you respond to the question with an unrelated
| question instead of answering directly?
| drexlspivey wrote:
| newspapers get paid by the click
| wahern wrote:
| I didn't mean to insinuate that anybody faked anything.
| Just that video evidence on its own isn't per se any more
| credible than if they unambiguously made the same claim
| in writing. The technology for making fake or misleading
| videos is easy to come by, so why mentally lean on the
| fact that they were videos at all? Our answers wrt
| likelihood of truthfulness simply lie in provenance and
| other indicia of credibility that would be shared with
| claims in any other trivially falsified medium, like
| writing. Why, indeed, would multiple seemingly non-
| cooperating supposed researchers make the set of claims
| that have been made?
|
| I don't think anything was faked, nor did I think
| anything was faked before videos began appearing. But
| that's precisely why this is an opportune time to
| exercise recalibrated judgment in not allowing the
| videographic character to inflate my cautious enthusiasm.
| imtringued wrote:
| If it takes X weeks to do research and someone publishes
| results before that time, then the conclusion that the
| results are suspect is warranted and is in no way a
| conspiracy theory.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Thats because Cold Fusion does work, its just useless. It
| loses energy.
|
| You need Muons, a negatively charged particle that is 200
| times heavier than an electron. They replace electron in
| the atom. Two Muon-replaced atoms of hydrogen can fuse at
| room temperature.
|
| The problem is that muons a very expensive to produce and
| decay quickly. So you spend more energy producing muons
| than you get from fusion.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muon-catalyzed_fusion
| Affric wrote:
| Reading this paper they're pretty restrained. They got zero
| resistance but didn't get everything they were looking for.
|
| This material is fascinating and I love the interest and
| good debate it's generating.
|
| Sometimes it feels like we missed so many golden ages but
| we might still get to experience something world changing
| before our eyes and understand what it means.
|
| Real technological progress and societal improvement breed
| optimism. This could be the start of something big. Even if
| it isn't it reminds us why we are still searching for
| theorised technologies.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| It's not that extraordinary.
|
| When people rush to replicate an experiment, everybody with
| a positive result has something to publish very quickly,
| and everybody with a negative result need a lot more time
| to be certain of it.
|
| The kinds of results we are seeing are very hard to get by
| chance or due to bad experimental setup. But as a rule, we
| can't really differentiate a real thing from random noise
| in as little time as have passed.
| bluGill wrote:
| But that people have a positive result at all to publish
| is extraordinary. If this isn't a super conductor at this
| point that is probably even bigger than a superconductor
| - it means there is other physics we are not aware of to
| investigate.
|
| At this point I've changed to this is probably true, but
| I don't know how big it is. (if it is true but impossible
| to produce at industrial scale it is not revolutionary)
| jseip wrote:
| "It's not that extraordinary."
|
| How is that possibly true? LK-99 is already amongst the
| highest-temperature superconductors ever found (with that
| claim substantiated by at least two independent research
| teams as of this moment).
| whimsicalism wrote:
| I don't know if you work in this field, but you are
| putting way too much faith in what has been reported so
| far
|
| People are way, way overconfident. Most people in the
| field would not be willing to put it at >50% odds at this
| point.
| eric_cc wrote:
| > Most people in the field would not be willing to put it
| at >50% odds at this point.
|
| Do you have a source for this claim? It sounds like you
| just made it up.
| scarmig wrote:
| There's not going to be a poll on it or anything.
|
| But, for what it's worth, as both an LK-99 optimist and
| as someone who has worked in the field and who still
| talks to people in it, most people in it seem to put the
| chances well below 50%.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Of course not, there hasn't been some survey of materials
| scientists on LK-99. This is my impression given my
| familiarity with the field
| marcosdumay wrote:
| If you push it, all the diamagnetism videos people
| published about reproducing it could be created by some
| weird and unlikely distribution of ferromagnetism on the
| sample. Except for the one that nobody knows where it
| comes from, that could easily be a fabrication.
|
| That leaves the original, that is clearly diamagnetism,
| but still could be misleading in many ways.
|
| We don't know how many labs are working on replicating
| this. So we have no idea how unlikely mistakes we should
| expect to see.
| singularity2001 wrote:
| So having a very strong diamagnet isn't interesting or is
| there still reason to even doubt that part?
|
| Only one of the four labs that completed replication has
| claimed to have found diamagnetism, but how could that
| video be explained otherwise?
| SanderNL wrote:
| It's good to keep an open mind both ways, but "skepticism"
| without either interesting or convincing arguments is IMO
| just as useless.
|
| We all know there is a good chance it turns out to be a dud.
| We all know cold fusion/emdrive/superluminal experiments
| turned out to be duds. We all _know_ this.
|
| I wonder what news do "skeptics" have to bring to the table.
| Nothing a skeptic has to say changes anything. We are all -
| except for the handful of actual experts here - amateurs at
| best, but probably ignorant peasants. Just about anything we
| have to say about it is just noise. I'd favor the positive
| noise, but that's just me.
|
| Imagine being at a football game: "This game could easily be
| lost! Ah, see, another pass failed. Don't get your hopes up!
| Please don't cheer, please wait until the very last moment
| and then wait another hour to have administrative
| confirmation. Then wait two weeks. Then you may cheer, but
| only modestly."
| matkoniecz wrote:
| > It's good to keep an open mind both ways, but
| "skepticism" without either interesting or convincing
| arguments is IMO just as useless.
|
| skepticism is an useful filter
|
| > I wonder what news do "skeptics" have to bring to the
| table.
|
| reminder of "We all know there is a good chance it turns
| out to be a dud. We all know cold
| fusion/emdrive/superluminal experiments turned out to be
| duds. We all know this."
|
| not everyone knows this
| HelloMcFly wrote:
| > not everyone knows this
|
| I actually think far more people know this than done; it
| wouldn't surprise me if it truly is practically
| "everyone" on Hacker News.
|
| But what is the expectation here? Must every comment
| thinking about the possibilities or being excited by
| incremental evidence of support be prefaced with a note
| of skepticism? Must we engage in such ritualistic
| behavior in order to be seen as anything other than
| hopeless scientific romantics? I must pour a bucket of
| cold water on my own head before feeling even an ounce of
| optimism? Optimism carries the possible - even likely -
| cost of disappointment, and in the wrong company can
| create the same in others. Pessimism is beneficial, but
| it doesn't have to be worn on one's sleeve at all times
| lest it sap joy and color from the world. This is a
| community of enthusiasts, we can be enthusiastic without
| also being hopeless idiots lurching from one false
| discovery to the next.
| SanderNL wrote:
| Thank god for the skeptics. I might have gotten enthused
| about something. Can you imagine the implications of
| that? My god, please tell me someone is going to _stop_
| me from being mildly entertained before it gets out of
| hand.
|
| Agents of reason, please enlighten us with your eternal
| negativity so that we may perceive clearly the folly of
| our excited ways.
| [deleted]
| stephencanon wrote:
| Why would skeptics waste their time commenting on LK-99
| threads? There are much better things to do.
| bluGill wrote:
| Because this is potentially a big deal. Skeptics who
| understand they can be wrong will want to follow this, but
| they don't want to get their hopes up.
| highwaylights wrote:
| Waiting to see either way just like everyone else, but..
|
| _> I 'm actually surprised by the sheer lack of people
| commenting in the more-or-less-perma-LK-99 threads who show
| skepticism of the results._
|
| .. really? You're surprised by this?
| Tade0 wrote:
| > I'm actually surprised by the sheer lack of people
| commenting in the more-or-less-perma-LK-99 threads who show
| skepticism of the results.
|
| You're not seeing them because every thread with a
| significant percentage of sceptical voices trips the HN
| flamewar detector, which goes off when there are more
| comments than upvotes.
|
| I've counted three threads where this happened. It's the
| reason why the front page wasn't plastered with LK-99 news.
| sparrowInHand wrote:
| So, the accurate term for scientific debate on HN is a
| cold-flamewar?
| gus_massa wrote:
| Sometimes the mods remove the automatic "flamewar"
| penalty. Sometimes the add manual penalties.
|
| My guess is that they are triying to keep in the front
| page only the last 1 or 2 articles that has an important
| update and enought discusion.
|
| You can send them an email asking for clarification.
|
| (I don't expect they have hard rules about this, only
| some general principles and hopefuly good judgement
| calls.)
| doingtheiroming wrote:
| There's plenty of skepticism. It's the zero-cost position
| here. But there are good and bad skeptical positions. The
| good one involves people attempting to replicate and
| publishing results whether positive, negative or somewhere in
| between. The bad one consists of sitting in forums and
| threads being, "the voice of reason".
|
| If there's a real problem, it's that we have still not made
| publication of negative results sufficiently attractive.
| That's still a problem throughout science and one we
| desperately need to address since it is what would let us
| think more clearly in situations like this.
| api wrote:
| > The bad one consists of sitting in forums and threads
| being, "the voice of reason".
|
| I refer to these folks as the "boring universe brigade."
| The heuristic seems to be that if it's in any way exciting
| it's probably bullshit. It's a blind overreaction to
| memetically-optimized pseudoscience.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| Well, that position is right 99.9% of the time.
| api wrote:
| By that logic a rock is right 99.9% of the time. I just
| asked one whether LK-99 will replicate and it said
| nothing.
|
| Reasonable skepticism is always warranted. I think this
| thread is talking about reflexive cynicism and
| instantaneous dismissal.
| scarmig wrote:
| pg: "Being too cynical will cause you to miss out on the
| most important phase changes."
|
| Defaulting to "no" might get you the right answer the
| majority of the time, but it also makes you miss the
| times that "yes" is correct. And correct things that are
| a radical departure from the status quo are probably the
| most important and useful to get right.
|
| Skepticism is good (it's still ambiguous whether LK-99 is
| anything at all), but pessimistic cynicism is not the
| same thing.
| abracadaniel wrote:
| The brain loves an excuse to apply a noise cutting
| heuristic. There was an article a while back about that
| being a problem for general physicians, where the problem
| is usually simple, but very very rarely something
| serious. A doctor can appear good when they get it right
| 99% of the time, but they might achieve that by
| defaulting to "you're fine, here's some
| (ibuprofen/antibiotic/antihistamine/etc)". Thus, their
| actual job is to identify that 1% with reasonable
| accuracy.
| poopbutt7 wrote:
| How can we forget that- 34 years ago- Pons and
| Fleischmann made a claim that was incorrect! /s
| mads_ravn wrote:
| Isn't it just a reasonable application of the
| "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence"?
|
| And I say this as someone really hoping that this is
| true, since I assume this would be great news for
| renewable energy (and we really need great news on that
| front)
| jacquesm wrote:
| > The bad one consists of sitting in forums and threads
| being, "the voice of reason".
|
| You put it perfectly. I'm mostly skeptical and very
| guardedly optimistic because _something_ seems to be
| happening. But I 've very carefully marked each and every
| one of my comments with 'assuming this is true' or 'if this
| is true' to avoid the impression that I'm already
| convinced. I'm not. But I'm on the side of everybody
| getting their hands and their lab gear dirty: they are the
| ones doing the work and they are the ones who put their
| time (and sometimes their reputations) on the line. That
| starts off with the original Korean team but also goes for
| everybody else that has rolled up their sleeves and gone to
| work. Those people have an audience now, thanks to all
| these connected media and it's great to see the scientific
| process acting out in the open for a change where everybody
| gets to see how the sausage is made.
|
| Meanwhile the Debbie Downers have probably never seen the
| insides of a lab and have never made anything, they're just
| taking the default position because it doesn't require any
| work at all and has the highest likelihood of being true.
| But I very quietly hope that they're wrong and I also hope
| that if they are wrong that they will own it. Unqualified
| negativity is just as dumb as unqualified positivity, it
| just looks smarter, but it isn't a sign of intelligence.
| SantalBlush wrote:
| I think the unqualified negativitiy is based on a common
| misunderstanding of the scientific process, that if one
| finds any shortcoming in a result--be it applied or
| theoretical--one can throw the entire work in the trash
| under the pretense of falsification.
|
| But this is wrong. Science is about weighing the totality
| of evidence, and refining that evidence in one direction
| or another over many iterations.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Indeed, lots of progress was salvaged from failed
| attempts. In a way _all_ of science is a continuous
| refinement of our model of how things really work by
| finding how it definitely doesn 't work.
| stonemetal12 wrote:
| I think it comes down to a lack of knowledge. I was pretty
| skeptical of the original claim, since RT has been a goal for
| a long time and no one has achieved it . So far all the repro
| attempts I have seen mention temps around 100K. I don't
| follow SC so 100k sounds "really cold" to me. It matches with
| my shallow understanding of SC "it is really cold". Maybe
| that is really warm in SC land. Either way there hasn't been
| a near freezing repro so I have grown more skeptical of the
| original claim.
| cthalupa wrote:
| 100K is very cold. But if this result pans out, it's a very
| good thing for the possibility that LK99 really is an
| RTAPS.
|
| There are a lot of explanations as to why they might not
| see bulk superconductivity at room temp - impurities in the
| sample (or the impurities being the SC) being the big one.
|
| If LK99 is a superconductor at all, but not a RTAPS, it
| would be quite strange for the South Korean team to have
| made a mistake. It's quite difficult to accidentally cool
| something down to 100K, and if they were just getting false
| positives on their testing for superconductivity, it would
| be a massive coincidence that it happened to actually be
| one at 100K.
|
| We're also seeing a lot of videos that show strong
| diamagnetism - this doesn't mean it's a superconductor, but
| all superconductors are perfect diamagnets. We have some
| unverified videos that seem to show things beyond just
| diamagnetism, with the material being stable in suspension
| over a single magnet, which a regular diamagnetic material
| cannot do. These pieces of material are too small to have
| been cooled down to 100K and stay there for the duration
| shown, as well as no frost appearing, etc., which would be
| quite difficult at that temperature in an environment with
| any humidity.
|
| I think the bigger concern is around whether or not this is
| a valid result at all - the Real Deal scientists discussing
| it seem to have mixed thoughts there, particularly around
| the noise floor of the instrumentation equipment, etc. Some
| say that that doesn't matter, others say that it does,
| particularly since we don't see the kind of on/off drop you
| would in other superconductors, etc.
|
| At worst, this replication attempt's result is from a
| misunderstanding of how their equipment works in this
| condition. At best it provides evidence in favor of LK99
| being an RTAPS.
| 23B1 wrote:
| We skeptics have just grown tired of arguing (with everyone,
| on everything, all of the time)
| 46Bit wrote:
| Agreed. Even the 100K zero-resistance claim isn't holding up
| to scrutiny
| https://nitter.net/condensed_the/status/1686895266329174016
| https://nitter.net/condensed_the/status/1686901855358427136
| https://nitter.net/condensed_the/status/1686832552252784641
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| You're right that this is the worst case scenario, but each
| interesting replication or semi-replication, even sloppy
| replication, or theoretical model erodes at that.
|
| Being perma-skeptic is as bad as being a perma-fanboy
|
| Anyways your memory is really short. Don't you remember how
| when it first came out (not even a week ago) everyone was
| hollering that it was fake?
|
| Inb4 "extraordinary claims...": there is no _fundamental_
| reason for superconductivity in general to be impossible at
| RT.
| jcranmer wrote:
| > You're right that this is the worst case scenario, but
| each interesting replication or semi-replication, even
| sloppy replication, or theoretical model erodes at that.
|
| Not really. The ur-example of the worst-case scenario is
| cold fusion, and as we were reminded by somebody [1] early
| on, is that the first replications of the Fleischmann-Pons
| experiment were actually successful to some degree. Those
| initial replications were later retracted when it was found
| that there was experimental error that could observe the
| same phenomenon, and other replication attempts were
| reporting outright failure instead of partial success.
|
| > Anyways your memory is really short. Don't you remember
| how when it first came out (not even a week ago) everyone
| was hollering that it was fake?
|
| Your memory is really short. The first thread was 8 days
| ago [2], over a week ago. I've just been perusing those
| comments quickly, and there's very few accusations of it
| being fake. The dominant sentiment is along the lines of
| "big, if true" or "please let it be true", and there's only
| a few top-level comments casting any shade on its
| plausibility. But the threads since the weekend have
| largely seemed to cast aside even the limited skepticism
| once opined.
|
| [1] I'd love to credit them, but sorry, trying to dig out
| which comment out of several hundred splayed out across the
| various early threads was the one I remembered is more work
| than I can devote at the time. Edit: credit is
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36884183, thanks to
| segfaultbuserr for finding the link.
|
| [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36864624
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| Yeah apologies, I was seeing lots of hot takes that it
| was fake on other platforms (like Twitter)
| segfaultbuserr wrote:
| > _I 'd love to credit them, but sorry, trying to dig out
| which comment out of several hundred splayed out across
| the various early threads was the one I remembered is
| more work than I can devote at the time._
|
| It was posted by curiousObject at [1]. I upvoted that
| thread and participated in that discussion (including
| adding extra information on why cold fusion experiments
| were inherently problematic), so I have the link.
|
| As the submitter of the current paper, I'm cautiously
| optimistic based on the recent theoretical and
| experimental results. But I strongly agree with you that
| a repetition of cold fusion's initial false-positive
| replication "success" is a real risk.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36884183
| HelloNurse wrote:
| Fortunately, observing a levitating fleck of diamagnetic
| material is far less error prone than measuring heat or
| neutrons in a messy cold fusion experiment.
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| Exactly this.
| matkoniecz wrote:
| > Being perma-skeptic is as bad as being a perma-fanboy
|
| Not really?
|
| Perma-skeptic will be far more accurate than perma-fanboy.
|
| Depends on context but for example believing every get-
| rich-quick scheme will get you robbed by scammers, while
| perma-skeptic will miss very occasional actual opportunity.
|
| Obviously catching and exploiting great opportunities would
| be even better, but of these two perma-skeptic is better.
| jacquesm wrote:
| > Perma-skeptic will be far more accurate than perma-
| fanboy.
|
| That's not accuracy, that's statistics. Once you bias for
| the expected outcome the perma skeptic will be just as
| often wrong or right as the perma optimist. They have no
| information about the thing they are talking about, they
| only have information about that expected outcome based
| on previous observations. If they _had_ information about
| the thing itself they wouldn 't be wrong for those things
| that turn out to be true (but then, I guess they wouldn't
| be perma skeptics to begin with). So, a perma skeptic
| misses all of the real stuff and a perma optimist misses
| all of the bad stuff. Neither shows intelligence.
| fallingknife wrote:
| Perma optimist has more fun, though
| jacquesm wrote:
| That's a fact.
| atoav wrote:
| I read through this thread and I can't help to feel
| reminded of the discussion about cryptocurrencies. So many
| people that _want to believe_ , rational people that try to
| explain why it _has_ to work when there is just not enough
| information right now. As if we believing it will change
| the outcome of the replication everybody that doesn 't
| believe is shunned and called a heretic. Suddenly people
| that studied social sciences try to explain to me (a
| certified electrical engineer) why this is a big deal,
| because they saw a few videos on youtube about it, with
| theories of how this solves all energy problems that are so
| far removed from practical reality that this can only
| become a let-down.
|
| Note: I am cautiously optimistic myself, but damn, just
| wait and don't overhype it.
| kolinko wrote:
| As for crypto, tgere is nothing to believe in - it's
| doing well after 14 years.
| atoav wrote:
| You mean cryptography? Yeah, thanks to let's encrypt we
| are now reaching widespread adoption of TLS. You barely
| see any http websites anymore thanks to that.
| jfk13 wrote:
| You know perfectly well that's not what they meant.
| kaba0 wrote:
| Cryptocurrencies on the other hand don't seem to be doing
| all thar well. Their hype-phase is definitely over and
| not many actually useful use cases remained.
| atoav wrote:
| Sure, but I am against the idea that from now on "crypto"
| has to be forever referenced to some ponzi schemes that
| provide no actual value.
| eric_cc wrote:
| > I read through this thread and I can't help to feel
| reminded of the discussion about cryptocurrencies.
|
| Same. Some people are simply wired to be perma-skeptics /
| perma-bears / perma-negative. This community is still
| full of people who truly don't grasp how world changing
| bitcoin is. They are in complete denial, most often
| parroting unoriginal talking points that they've been
| handed from others.
|
| It's easier to bypass deep thinking and deep learning and
| just imitate being an expert. It takes courage to admit
| being ignorant.
|
| I'll be the first to admit that I'm not an expert in
| superconductors. I doubt most people in this thread are.
| But they are parroting and making ignorant predictions -
| just like crypto.
| cthalupa wrote:
| I'll not take a personal stance on crypto in this
| comment, but it's really a stretch to try and compare the
| two.
|
| No one debates that there are significant and important
| uses for RTAPS. Lots of people debate if there are
| significant and important uses for cryptocurrency.
| atoav wrote:
| As I said I feel reminded of the _discussions_ , I did
| _not_ compare this scientific finding to crypto-assets
| per se. What I _did_ however compare is the way this
| finding is being discussed in comparison to how crypto-
| assets have been discussed at a certain point in time.
|
| More specifically I was comparing a specific trait of
| some actors in both of these discussions (the "I want to
| believe"-type). I stand behind that observation, although
| I see how people can read more into my comment, depending
| on where they are coming from.
| cthalupa wrote:
| > I'm actually surprised by the sheer lack of people
| commenting in the more-or-less-perma-LK-99 threads who show
| skepticism of the results.
|
| There's plenty of people that are skeptical and making it a
| point to tell everyone they are skeptical. There's plenty of
| people that are skeptical that are still engaging on the
| possibility of it being real because it is interesting to do
| so. There are plenty of people discussing potential pitfalls
| in the papers being written and experiments being done.
|
| But ultimately talking to people in the comments on HN is a
| form of entertainment for most of the people engaging, and
| skepticism is a lot less entertaining for most people in
| general than being enthusiastic and engaging on
| possibilities. It's not surprising that people going
| somewhere for engagement and entertainment are doing the
| thing that is more fun to the majority.
|
| I doubt the majority of people that are excited about it
| would place serious money on it being true - I sure wouldn't.
| But I am having fun watching the developments, talking about
| things to the minimal extent I understand, and thinking about
| the Cool Stuff that would become possible if we were to
| suddenly have a new room temp ambient pressure semiconductor
| junon wrote:
| This. The idea that science can't also be fun seems to be
| the mindset of a lot of people criticizing others for
| participating more as eager spectators. Nothing wrong with
| that. Let people enjoy things. If LK-99 turns out to be
| nothing then we got some entertainment out of it and a lot
| of people learned about superconductors (and science in
| general) in the process. How's that not a win in and of
| itself?
| _jal wrote:
| Just to underline this, after years of plague, war and
| uncertainty, I think this is a great, positive thing,
| whatever happens.
|
| I'm annoyed with someone I was talking to about this, who
| either can't or won't stop ranting about past high-
| profile failures.
|
| Yes, we all know. Old folks like me remember the cold
| fusion scam first hand. Your knowing cynicism displays
| deep scientific wisdom. Happy?
|
| Great, now let's watch the fucking show, this is neat,
| even if it doesn't work out.
| capableweb wrote:
| I'm guessing some people feel like the time spent
| discussing/keeping up to date would be a waste of time if
| it turns out it isn't true.
|
| Which I guess is fine, the friction comes from when those
| people think others shouldn't "risk" wasting their time,
| as they start wanting to impose their own will upon
| others. But this happens all the time with humans so...
| zackees wrote:
| Cold fusion was replicated by a few labs but that wasn't
| good enough for the media and they killed it. For
| background see 60 minutes episode "Cold Fusion is Hot
| again" where they interview and admit Pons Fleischmann
| was right.
|
| The difference now is that China is a super power and
| doesn't have to kiss the ring of the US hegemon.
|
| As an example of replication see
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S036031
| 992...
|
| There are many paper like this.
|
| The "cold fusion is a hoax" was in itself, a hoax.
| lucubratory wrote:
| Journal seems legitimate, but author has a H-index of 7
| and is making a revolutionary claim that the vast
| majority of working scientists in the field reject. Why
| aren't people accepting his work, then? Who is
| perpetrating this "hoax" you are referencing?
| greenthrow wrote:
| It's one thing to engage suspension of disbelief when
| watching a movie. It's another to engage it when
| discussing actual scientific papers.
| junon wrote:
| No, it's not. Most people engaging in scientific papers
| are not themselves scientists in the field. Further,
| their enthusiasm doesn't change reality. LK-99 is or is
| not a superconductor. People getting overly excited
| doesn't change that. Lighten up.
| _0ffh wrote:
| Ha, I've been talking about the same topic with an
| experimental physics professor friend of mine. He was just
| not interested at all, like "I've seen stuff like that so
| many times before, I'm not interested at this point. I may
| look at it when there's a publication in a serious
| journal." while I was like "Hey it's popcorn time, this is
| a fun ride, whatever the outcome!". =)
| vinnyvichy wrote:
| Speaking as an academic, I really hope they don't ever
| publish in a serious journal even if it turns out to
| replicate. Did your friend take Ranga Dias seriously
| because that was published in Nature? I understand
| there's a lot of noise, but one of the things one learns
| is to cut out noise without having to rely on journal
| brand
| _0ffh wrote:
| Nope, he didn't. You're getting the wrong message here.
|
| That publication is _necessary_ to arouse his interest
| doesn 't mean it's _sufficient_ to make him believe
| anything. Those are different things.
|
| Peer review for publication is just meant to cut out the
| obvious crap. It's not a guaranty, and nobody who knows
| this stuff thinks it is.
| vinnyvichy wrote:
| Do you even do proofs in your line of work? I'm saying
| making publication necessary for arousal is a foolproof
| way to miss out on the beginnings of most of the really
| interesting stuff. Yeah he can read the ivy-approved
| materials in nature, but that would be stale. Okay, I can
| understand that his own line of work is much more
| interesting to him, that he would ignore the latest
| glimmerings from adjacent fields. That makes more sense
| than just taking peer review at face value.
| calf wrote:
| Several years ago there was publicized a P = NP proof,
| and during our group meeting I couldn't help but audibly
| scoff, but our advisor just calmly downloaded the pdf and
| started skimming it.
|
| It was an object lesson for me. Keep an open mind, use
| your own competence and intellectual abilities to see for
| yourself and decide. And only then can you offer
| insightful criticism.
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| I'd go one step further. The worst case is they made up data
| enough to seem plausible, knowing full well replication is
| impossible, but their institution wanted their name in a
| major publication so they were told to make shit up and get
| published.
| jjallen wrote:
| The reason I don't think this is the case is that they have
| literally been working on this thing for a quarter of a
| century. While the people involved are not full on
| superconductor experts, they are also not super stupid and
| realize that their claim is a huge one.
|
| How could you work on something for years and years and
| years, make a claim that it is the first room temperature SC
| and be _totally_ wrong about it. Even if they only worked on
| it for ten years, I don't think they are totally wrong.
|
| I think what has happened is that they rushed to publish the
| paper and the reason it has not been replicated is that they
| don't even know how to reliably make the material yet. This
| is why the methods to make it are not in the paper -- because
| they don't even know how to do it.
|
| Remember they were forced to publish this paper by a rogue
| former employee.
| verisimi wrote:
| Can you really be working with a material for a quarter of
| a century AND not know how to make the material?
| kaba0 wrote:
| While I have no expertise in material science, it is
| definitely not some minecraft crafting - depending on the
| procedure, you may get only few percents of useful output
| that you may have no way to further purify.
|
| At least for chemistry, it is often a completely
| different paper that introduces an efficient way for
| actually mass-producing the given chemical. The first one
| is more like a proof of concept throwaway code, if we
| want an analogy.
| blharr wrote:
| Being wrong in such a complicated field is always possible.
| Your personal experience and expertise can only go so far.
| brucethemoose2 wrote:
| Some literature suggests its a "one dimensiononal"
| superconductor only kinda works in tiny monocrystaline grains.
|
| ...But maybe thats even _more_ interesting for, say,
| microelectronics? Especially if the resistance orthogonal to
| the superconductivity is high, if such a thing is even
| possible?
| wbl wrote:
| The really cute thing is conducting in one axis insulating in
| the other two. Then you get to have a very high density
| interconnect for free.
| frognumber wrote:
| Such things are possible, and not even very uncommon. The
| human body has tissues with conductivity different in
| different dimensions.
|
| If you'd like to create one yourself, take a bunch of
| parallel insulated wires. Conductivity will be low along the
| wires, and high perpendicular to them.
|
| Or alternated high-resistivity and low-resistivity sheets.
| Conduction will be low parallel to the sheets, and high going
| through them.
|
| Lots of things behave like that.
| monocasa wrote:
| See also Z-tape.
|
| https://www.3m.com/3M/en_US/p/d/b10167835/
| aziaziazi wrote:
| > human tissues > isolated wires > alternated sheets
|
| The thinks you describes are systems made of multiple
| materials. Are you aware of a materials that behave that
| way by its own ?
| cma wrote:
| TV rock for a similar thing optically.
| Filligree wrote:
| No, and LK-99 isn't made of a single material either.
| criddell wrote:
| How do you mean? It isn't like a wire where you typically
| have separate insulator and conductor materials, is it?
| aziaziazi wrote:
| Can you elaborate on that ? For noobs like me, LK-99 only
| contains Pb9Cu(PO4)6O, doesn't it ?
| baq wrote:
| Diamond and graphite both only contain C.
| Someone wrote:
| _If_ some of its properties change depending on the
| direction you measure, it can't look the same in all
| directions.
|
| As a simple example, consider graphite. That's just 'C',
| but the crystalline version is layered, so it behaves
| differently depending on what direction you look at it.
|
| Like wood, it will split easier when hammered parallel to
| the layers than when hit oblique to it.
| vingt_regards wrote:
| Graphite
| ibic wrote:
| I think you are referring to the pioneer work done by Prof.
| Chair Tong-seek (or Dongsik Choi as another spelling) here?
| https://twitter.com/sanxiyn/status/1684437744406392833
|
| Any Korean can give some brief summary over the book that
| tweets mentioned?
| ssamt wrote:
| There is a short introduction right on the link.
|
| "The author writes on the influence and meaning of the
| certain future superconductor revolution on humanity, and
| while showing similar guise as Western science, he attempts
| to maintain the notion of the Oriental spirit, the
| confidence and self-esteem of East Asian scientist."
| Something like that. I'm not sure what it means.
|
| (Also, yes, Choi Dongsik is probably correct.)
| pjc50 wrote:
| An even better version of
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anisotropic_conductive_film or
| "zebra tape", maybe.
| floxy wrote:
| The one-dimensional things seems like it could make it
| complicated to measure the resistance. Especially since the
| bulk material that seems like people are making isn't being
| laid down in thin films where you might know which direction
| the conductivity might go. What if there are superconducting
| grains/domains that abut to each other, but the 1-D paths are
| then not aligned? Even if you knew that the "domains" were
| aligned with each other, but didn't know the orientation, it
| seems like you'd measure a drop-off in resistance, but not to
| zero at the critical temperature. Maybe?
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| Zero loss diodes seem pretty useful.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Especially if the material happens to have photo electric
| properties too...
| fsckboy wrote:
| ...and gain, at an incredibly fast slew rate!
|
| I mean, we're laundry list fantasizing, right? [shrug
| emoji]
| jacquesm wrote:
| Well, yes. _But_ both Silicon, Selenium and Germanium as
| well as all metals that are shiny are photoelectric. If
| this thing can form diodes that open a potential path to
| very high efficiency solar cells. It wouldn 't be the
| first either:
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/srep11504
|
| "Origin of photovoltaic effect in superconducting
| YBa2Cu3O6.96 ceramics"
| mmusson wrote:
| How would that work? A diode requires a p-n junction
| created by doping the substrate. It has low resistance in
| one direction but ideally infinite resistance in the other
| direction.
| mmusson wrote:
| I just saw an article that explains the superconducting
| diode effect https://phys.org/news/2023-08-ubiquitous-
| superconductive-dio...
|
| So theres the answer.
| distortedsignal wrote:
| I don't think this would be zero-loss diodes - it would
| probably superconduct in some x-axis while being non-
| superconducting in the y- and z-axis. Even then, it's not
| clear to me what the conductivity is like in the non-
| superconducting axies.
| [deleted]
| sampo wrote:
| > The production method is so poorly documented only a fraction
| of the samples being made shows any interesting properties.
|
| I have understood that rather, the production method is poorly
| known even to the Koreans themselves, and also they have only a
| small success rate in their samples. So it's more that the
| Koreans themselves are not entirely sure what "makes it click",
| and you can't document it well because you don't yourself know
| all the details.
| TylerE wrote:
| Would a ~200K superconductor be useful, if such a beast exists?
| Obviously not as good as room temp, but at least that's a temp
| you can maintain with dry ice and not liquid nitrogen.
| kuprel wrote:
| Why don't they just share the original sample? At least it
| could offer an existence proof
| xvector wrote:
| The probability of being able to reproduce this is unknown,
| there's no reason it couldn't be one in millions.
|
| If the original sample breaks in transit or experimentation
| we may have lost the only example of a room temp
| superconductor ever seen.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| Invite some scientists and journalists to the lab to
| observe it?
| WindyLakeReturn wrote:
| I think they have done that. The catch is that these
| scientists are likely to take their time, because they
| want to produce something with weight behind it. This
| isn't lab #5234's attempt to reproduce it which showed
| some weird behavior that might be a success, this is the
| expert report on the original material giving second
| opinion on how valid the first's claim is. That needs to
| have more care, which means more thoroughness doing the
| research and more time spent writing up the final result
| with care. If lab #5234's attempt ends up being a false
| positive or experimental error, it will be one of many
| and won't mean much, but if this particular report is
| wrong or has a major error, that is going to be impactful
| in a negative way.
| reacharavindh wrote:
| With my conspiracy theory hat on, perhaps the authors were
| encouraged/coerced to not release proper documentation to
| reproduce the recipe entirely by [their bosses, state agencies
| etc.] If the claims are true, then the implications to defense,
| weaponry and such are very high, and the C _|N_ |D* agencies
| like to not lose their cards in the game.. /conspiracy
|
| Or
|
| Real science is just darned difficult, and the scientists are
| working hard to reproduce the results themselves. Which is more
| likely.
| _ph_ wrote:
| Right. From my own experience, growing crystals is close to
| alchemy. Of course we know exactly how to do it, yet, it
| takes a lot of skill to grow a lot of substances. There are a
| lot of detaills to the process which are difficult to capture
| in documentation, even if the best faith attempts are made.
| Add to that any variation in the machinery used. As a
| consequence, it is quite common in crytallography that there
| is a single source for certain crytals. At least in an
| initial phase. If a substance becomes reasonably popular,
| eventually more people manage to produce quality crystals.
|
| So I would expect eventually good samples to turn up
| elsewhere as many groups are working on this, but it can take
| a lot of time. Especially as no one knows what exactly was
| different about the Korean samples.
| MichaelMoser123 wrote:
| LK-99 contains polonium? which has a half-life of hundred and
| something days.
| redox99 wrote:
| Lol. Polonium is Po. PO is phosphorus and oxygen.
| MichaelMoser123 wrote:
| thanks!
| More-nitors wrote:
| guess it's safer to eat :)
| rvnx wrote:
| Only in a tea.
| [deleted]
| anonymousDan wrote:
| Can someone point me to a list of exciting applications of room
| temperature superconductors? Trying to understand why such
| excitement about this!
| tetris11 wrote:
| >
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_applications_o...
| [deleted]
| EvgeniyZh wrote:
| Note that there is no signs of phase transition (no jump) and the
| values below 110K are around reasonable measurement resolution.
| It may be that they just got the resolution threshold and
| misinterpret it as SC
| squirrel_fetus wrote:
| Pretty cool! The question is how cool?
| segfaultbuserr wrote:
| According to the paper: Tc = 110 K, or around -163 degC. This
| is still pretty "cool", the existence of room-temperature
| superconductivity remains unverified. But assuming this paper
| is true, it means the material would still at least be a
| legitimate high-temperature superconductor in its own right,
| and the original claim would probably be cleared from being a
| deliberate fraud.
| jfengel wrote:
| Cooler than dry ice but less cool than liquid nitrogen.
|
| (Wakka wakka wakka)
| febusravenga wrote:
| I see lead (Pb...something) as main ingredient, isn't it banned
| in most industries because how toxic it is and how hard it's to
| handle in industrial scale? isn't that a problem for potential
| mass applications?
|
| (lots of comments about this discovery call this revolution that
| will change everything around us and that somehow implies mass
| production I guess)
| gtsteve wrote:
| If this discovery is confirmed then someone will figure out how
| to do this safely, using robots or other kinds of machines to
| produce superconductor wires. The benefit derived would be
| simply too great to ignore it. Perhaps superconductors don't
| show up in your home but I can certainly imagine applications
| in optimising power grids.
| thomasmg wrote:
| Lead is still used for example in car batteries (lead-acid),
| bullets, and solders (electronic components).
| cycrutchfield wrote:
| Airplane fuel...
| pjc50 wrote:
| It's banned in the EU under RoHS .. but with a whole load of
| exemptions, which make it kind of pointless. I suspect this
| would be exempted pretty quickly once it became important.
| [deleted]
| kolinko wrote:
| A high chance that lead can be replaced with other metal, from
| what I heard.
|
| Also, it's not extremely toxic - romans ate from lead dishes
| and didn't even notice the toxicity.
|
| You don't want to consume it, and you don't want to breathe it,
| but it's not as bad as say, asbestos.
|
| If you have an ICE car, it probably has a lead-acid battery,
| and the only thing that prevents us from using lead in grid
| storage is their short lifespan - not health or ecology :)
|
| Also, if you ever took an x-ray, you wore a lead jacket to
| prevent unnecessary radiation.
|
| If we cannot avoid lead in this alleged superconductor, it may
| limit applications slightly, but not by much.
| yreg wrote:
| Tesla has a lead-acid 12V battery as well :)
| [deleted]
| crakenzak wrote:
| So exciting!
|
| Just FYI, the wikipedia page for LK-99 has a very useful tracking
| grid of replication attempts with sources:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LK-99
| Filligree wrote:
| That grid is a direct copy of this one here:
| https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/claims-of-room-tempe...
|
| ...but isn't sourced, presumably because they don't consider SB
| to be professional enough.
| capableweb wrote:
| Does not seem to be a direct copy (the Wikipedia missing
| things like Progress/Status, Reliability of Claim) and also,
| the Wikipedia page can be collaboratively kept up to date,
| while the other is a random forum post "owned" by one user
| and the owners of the platform.
| awb wrote:
| The Response and Replication sections on Wikipedia seem far
| more skeptical and pessimistic about LK-99 than the average HN
| comment or news article.
| silisili wrote:
| I'm curious why every tracker lists Argonne, though no status
| or progress listed. I'm sure there are a hundred other labs
| who've either done nothing, or are doing something without
| fanfare, so why Argonne?
| JustARandomGuy wrote:
| Argonne is a highly regarded national lab; results from there
| would be highly credible. Also an Argonne staffer has gone on
| record[0] saying that they're attempting to replicate, while
| other labs have not said whether they're trying or not.
|
| Personally I'm waiting for the Argonne results which should
| be done by the end of the week.
|
| [0] https://www.science.org/content/article/spectacular-
| supercon...
| adamsmith143 wrote:
| With you there. A lot of Chinese labs are listed e.g. but
| my own experience trying to replicate materials science
| results from "credible" Chinese labs has led to a lot of
| disappointment.
| Levitating wrote:
| All the labs on that list have stated that they are working
| on replicating the experiment. That's also what is
| referenced.
| psychphysic wrote:
| Anyone can edit Wikipedia.
| mycologos wrote:
| Yes, in particular, anyone can add citations that you can
| check if you're skeptical. In this case, the citation is an
| article from science.org [1], which includes the following
| quote:
|
| > "They come off as real amateurs," says Michael Norman, a
| theorist at Argonne National Laboratory. "They don't know
| much about superconductivity and the way they've presented
| some of the data is fishy." On the other hand, he says,
| researchers at Argonne and elsewhere are already trying to
| replicate the experiment. "People here are taking it
| seriously and trying to grow this stuff."
|
| [1] https://www.science.org/content/article/spectacular-
| supercon...
| dmarchand90 wrote:
| What makes me excited is there is very good theoretical
| work, using 'standard techniques ' that shows it either
| is a superconductor or will have very good properties in
| designing one.
|
| Cold fusion, the EM drive, time traveling neutrinos, and
| all the other false excitement never had a theoretical
| backing. So 'guarded optimism' seems warranted
| swagmoney1606 wrote:
| We'll probably know for sure within the month!
| generalizations wrote:
| Somewhat disappointed the russian twitter anon isn't
| included, since they seem to have made the first replication
| attempt that might have panned out.
| sashank_1509 wrote:
| Anon is fine, I'm inclined to promote anons who do credible
| replications. Russian anon is not one of them, she really
| should take a video at the very least, even then her speck
| is so small until she released detailed measurements one
| can't in good faith trust her. I won't be surprised if at
| the end of all this, she just claims she was trolling in
| good fun and we're the fools for taking anything she says
| seriously.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| >I won't be surprised if at the end of all this, she just
| claims she was trolling in good fun and we're the fools
| for taking anything she says seriously.
|
| Ahhh, you gotta love the internet
| yreg wrote:
| Ah this again. No offense to you, but yes, the obnoxious
| anonymous Russian troll who's only proof is a photo of a
| spec of dust (glued?) in a syringe, who refuses to take a
| video, who says she didnt follow the paper beause she
| immediately invented a better way to make a different room
| temp superconductor, who says she doesnt care about
| superconductors and who keeps tweeting bizzare USSR
| propaganda?
|
| I wonder why she's not included in the Wikipedia article.
| /s
| lost_tourist wrote:
| I suspect that account is just a troll who knows a bit
| about material science. They spend more time arguing and
| promoting the Soviet Union than sciencing. I gathered that
| after just 5 minutes of scrolling through their twitter. I
| suspect a retired and bored Soviet scientist maybe?
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| Iris? That person comes off as completely unhinged. If
| their result is genuine, I'll eat my curtain.
| sedatk wrote:
| Off-topic, but I admire the effort to translate the formula to
| Unicode characters in the title. It's not just a simple copy-
| paste from the article.
| Arnavion wrote:
| The submitter also fixed the incorrect use of the degree symbol
| before K, lol.
| 8n4vidtmkvmk wrote:
| "degrees Kelvin" is wrong? Why's that?
| rsfern wrote:
| The SI unit is just "kelvin" because it's an absolute
| scale. Usually "degrees" is only used with Celsius and
| Fahrenheit scales because they are relative. Not sure about
| Rankine...
|
| https://www.nist.gov/si-redefinition/kelvin-introduction
| archon1410 wrote:
| > zero on the Rankine scale is absolute zero, but a
| temperature difference of one Rankine degree (degR or
| degRa) is defined as equal to one Fahrenheit degree
|
| But Rankine is an absolute scale. "By analogy with the SI
| unit, the kelvin, some authors term the unit Rankine,
| omitting the degree symbol."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rankine_scale
| rsfern wrote:
| Ah, interesting - this NIST page uses degR, which is at
| odds with the explanation in the other page on Kelvin
| (which doesn't mention Rankine). I'm not sure if that's
| because there's a strong convention to use the degree
| symbol with Rankine or if there's an additional reason
| not mentioned by the Kelvin page
|
| https://www.nist.gov/pml/special-publication-811/nist-
| guide-...
| Arnavion wrote:
| Technically the units of temperature are "degrees Celsius",
| "degrees Fahrenheit", "Kelvin", etc. ie "degrees" is part
| of the name of the units "degrees Celsius" and "degrees
| Fahrenheit". "Kelvin" is the name of the unit by itself, so
| "degrees" is not supposed to be used before Kelvin.
|
| In practice everyone's so used to saying "degrees" for
| temperatures that they end up saying it with Kelvin too.
| LightMachine wrote:
| GPT-4 does it very well though. (Not saying OP used it, was
| just curious if that'd work.)
|
| Prompt:
|
| > Observation of zero resistance above 100[?] K in
| Pb10-xCux(PO4)6O
|
| > convert this to a title, with the correct usage of unicode
|
| Output:
|
| > Observation of Zero Resistance Above 100 K in
| Pb10-[?]Cu[?](PO4)6O
| 1letterunixname wrote:
| ChatGPT says: The chemical formula
| "Pb10-xCux(PO4)6O" can be written in Unicode as follows:
| Pb10-[?]Cu[?](PO4)6O Please note that not all
| characters may be perfectly aligned due to font
| variations and rendering differences in different systems.
| However, this representation should provide a close
| approximation to the chemical formula.
|
| As plain text: Pb10-[?]Cu[?](PO4)6O
|
| EDIT: Note that arxiv uses mathjax (JS) to take a compound
| formula as plain text and applies subscript, superscript,
| etc. styling to it. ("Pb10-xCux(PO4)6O")
| sedatk wrote:
| Wow, I would've never thought to use ChatGPT for this. Very
| cool.
| cooper_ganglia wrote:
| I use ChatGPT as a word calculator for literally everything
| all of the time. It's super great for achieving proper
| formatting easily!
| qingcharles wrote:
| Indeed. I always tell it to use proper fancy quotes and
| proper apostrophes in its output, but I can't get it to
| do it 100% of the time despite trying out many prompt
| variations and telling it the Unicode values etc etc.
| hcks wrote:
| - it's an easy to make room temperature superconductor!
|
| - ok it's hard to make but still RTSC!
|
| - ok it's superconducting at 100K but its a novel class of SC! <=
| _you are here_
|
| - ok it's not a superconductor but it still has interesting
| properties!
|
| - ok it doesn't have singular properties but it could have!
|
| I predict there will still be LK99 truthers in 20 years arguing
| that this amazing discovery was buried by big copper conspiracy.
| ajnin wrote:
| I'm puzzled by this, looking at the resistance versus temperature
| graph they're not demonstrating zero resistance at 110K, they're
| demonstrating that at 110K the resistance becomes so low that it
| reaches the noise floor of their instrument. It's a stretch to
| call that superconductivity because when it come to that it needs
| to be actually zero, as in "I can put a current in a loop made of
| the material and come back one year later and it will still be
| there". Exponential decay will quickly catch up with a non-zero
| value, even very very small. Still this exponentially decreasing
| resistivity looks interesting, I have no idea if that's unusual
| or if that means anything. The weird dip at around 230K will need
| to be explained as well. I'm just an interested bystander, that
| goes without saying.
| Loughla wrote:
| Really, really, really Stupid question (yes, capital S stupid).
| Several hypotheticas here that got me thinking:
|
| If superconductor exists at room temperature, and if I
| understand you correctly, it can hold a charge, essentially,
| indefinitely.
|
| Could I get a roll of it and charge it and throw it at someone
| to kill them? Or could I fry a passing car by throwing it at
| the car?
| segfaultbuserr wrote:
| You certainly can use it as a batteryless inductor coil to
| zap people, similar to how you zap people with a charged
| capacitor. But a superconductor is limited by the magnetic
| field strength it can support. When the magnetic field
| strength goes up beyond the critical field by increasing the
| current, superconductivity is lost. In superconducting
| magnets, this causes a catastrophic failure called a "magnet
| quench". So a superconductor cannot store unlimited energy.
| In the original LK-99 claim, the critical current is 200 mA,
| it's not much.
| Sharlin wrote:
| Well, that's one of the reasons demonstrating the Meissner
| effect is considered a better evidence of superconductivity. Of
| course _any_ physical experiment always has a noise floor and a
| finite error. You can 't exactly ever measure zero resistance
| because your probes and the probe-sample interface have nonzero
| resistance...
|
| But looking at that graph, it would be an incredible
| coincidence if the resistance dropped like it does and then
| suddenly stabilized to some very small but nonzero value...
| That would probably require entirely new physics to explain and
| would be a much bigger news than "merely" a 110K Tc
| superconductor!
| foven wrote:
| Groups that typically do resistivity measurements on
| regularly measure low-temperature resistivities on conducting
| materials of ~ 10s of micro Ohm m. So if you're measuring in
| this range on a conducting material and hitting the noise
| floor with a SHARP drop, that's a pretty big indicator of
| superconductivity (assuming you haven't just broken your
| contacts which is a concern when cooling things down). I'm
| not so familiar with PPMS systems, but I imagine it has some
| built in auto-adjust on the sensitivities to where you can be
| pretty confident your noise floor is below these values.
|
| What is complicating the interpretation here is the log scale
| (and lack of conversion to resistivity): It is amplifying the
| impression of the noise below what they call Tc, and making
| it harder to interpret the approach of the material to the
| transition point. The behaviour at the approach to Tc also
| doesn't really look like a metal, which should scale as
| propto T, or a semiconductor which should increase with
| decreasing temperature. Possibly a result of it being some
| horrible mixed phase ceramic.
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