[HN Gopher] Andrew McCalip demonstrates synthesis of LK99
___________________________________________________________________
Andrew McCalip demonstrates synthesis of LK99
Author : gabesullice
Score : 520 points
Date : 2023-08-04 10:10 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| dabeeeenster wrote:
| Holy hell. Is this it?
| ssijak wrote:
| it is it but what it is is still to be determined
| subzel0 wrote:
| I don't see why people go crazy over this, the meissner effect in
| superconductors look different.
| majani wrote:
| I'm guessing this is the crappy v1 that barely does what it's
| supposed to. Still represents a giant leap for mankind
| willis936 wrote:
| How so?
| subzel0 wrote:
| The rock should float for a start.
| blueflow wrote:
| Meissner Effect does not mean it has to float. It only
| floats if thats the easiest way to expulse the magnet
| field. Otherwise it aligns normally with the magnetic
| field, which is supposedly happening here.
| supriyo-biswas wrote:
| As it's been theorized elsewhere, it may be that the
| production processes produce a material with only bits of
| the theorized superconductor in it, leading to the wiggling
| effect we see here as well as the Chinese replication
| video.
| sanxiyn wrote:
| It is not a purity issue. On the other hand, 1D
| superconductors are expected to behave this way. See my
| other comments.
| benj111 wrote:
| How do we know it isn't a purity issue?
| Timon3 wrote:
| I don't understand what you're not seeing. Nobody is saying
| that the whole LK-99 sample is superconducting. Why would you
| expect the whole sample to float, instead of "partial floating"
| as we're seeing, if you have a material that's only partially
| superconducting?
| danbruc wrote:
| I was wondering this, why do all the samples not completely
| float. If the sample is only partially superconducting, could
| you just smash it into smaller pieces and find a few floating
| ones? Or would the different domains be so small that you
| have to turn the sample into dust before you get a completely
| superconducting piece? Probably can not be answered in
| general as it heavily depends on the synthesis process?
| sanxiyn wrote:
| Xi Zhi Xi answered this on Zhihu. All his answers are
| extremely good. This user knows something.
|
| Zhe Ying Gai Huan Shi Cai Liao De Ge Xiang Yi Xing , Ye Jiu
| Shi Ta De Zhun Yi Wei Jie Gou Dao Zhi . Yin Wei Cai Liao
| Dang Zhong You Yi Ge Gu Ding Jing Xiang , Na Ge Fang Xiang
| De Kang Ci Xing Zui Qiang , Suo Yi Ci Gan Xian Zong Hui Yan
| Zhao Zhe Ge Fang Xiang Zou , Dao Zhi Suo You Yang Pin Du
| Shi Shu Qi Lai De .
|
| This should be due to the anisotropy of the material, that
| is, its quasi-one-dimensional structure. Because there is a
| fixed crystal phase in the material, that direction has the
| strongest diamagnetism, so the magnetic field lines will
| always go along this direction, causing all The samples are
| all upright.
|
| https://www.zhihu.com/question/615044128/answer/3145337312
| yorwba wrote:
| If the material is a one-dimensional superconductor where
| current can only flow with zero resistance along one
| direction, aligning that direction with the magnetic
| field lines should produce the _weakest_ diagmanetism,
| because the magnetic force is proportional to the cross
| product of current and magnetic field. If the two are
| parallel, the force is zero.
|
| Of course this could explain why the sample doesn't lift
| off: it starts out with the superconducting direction at
| an angle to the magnetic field and relatively strong
| diamagnetism leading to a righting force until the two
| directions are nearly aligned and the diamagnetism is too
| weak to overcome gravity.
| grumple wrote:
| I thought it was clear that the process for creating the
| material is low yield, and the reaction produces other
| materials, so most of the material we're seeing is not
| LK-99. See the wiki section on synthesis:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LK-99 . Right now we don't
| have a good way to produce the material with better yield.
| TheAceOfHearts wrote:
| Someone asked:
|
| > If you were to cut off the part that isn't lifting, do
| you reckon the entirety of the floaty half would float? AKA
| is this semi-float thing a purity issue?
|
| And Andrew responded [0]:
|
| > We wanted to do rock surgery, but I was scared we would
| shatter our biggest piece. It definitely has a piece that
| isn't contributing lift.
|
| I'm guessing once they've prepared more samples and had
| existing samples tested they'll break some into smaller
| parts to try and get a piece that floats independently.
|
| [0] https://twitter.com/andrewmccalip/status/16874084231793
| 70497
| ssijak wrote:
| https://twitter.com/andrewmccalip/status/1687419542103101
| 442...
| ralfd wrote:
| That batch seems to be a dud:
|
| https://twitter.com/andrewmccalip/status/1687425301184393
| 216
|
| "Reaction looks like garbage. Very incomplete"
| supriyo-biswas wrote:
| The Russian molecular biologist "Iris" had a tiny speck
| that floats, and there was another video as well (I don't
| remember the source, but I saw it on Twitter). However, the
| credentials of the people or the labs they work for are
| unknown, so take it with a grain of salt.
| zarzavat wrote:
| Imagine you take red paint and blue paint and mix it
| together. It is certainly true that there is red paint and
| blue paint still in there, but however small samples you
| take it's still going to be purple. You might get some
| samples that are reddish purple and some that are bluish
| purple however.
| netsec_burn wrote:
| That's what is currently being done! A few videos have
| surfaced of smaller grains of LK-99 fully levitating. We're
| waiting for additional confirmation.
| _flux wrote:
| So if we increased the magnitude of the magnetic field (e.g.
| by using an electric magnet), why couldn't we still have the
| sample float? Or does the Meissner effect not relate to the
| magnitude of the magnetic flux?
|
| Unless, of course, the other end is attracting the magnet.
| brucethemoose2 wrote:
| Some speculate its a monocrystsline "1D" superconductor, which
| could explain its different behavior.
|
| But that is out of my depth. I am still trying to wrap my head
| around a directional superconductor/resistor...
| great_psy wrote:
| I'm obviously way out of my depth here, But,
|
| How is this different than a tiny magnetized piece of iron ?
|
| Are they saying this piece showing in the video will always float
| the same way regardless of orientation ?
|
| Also would this effect still work with an electromagnet ?
| xsmasher wrote:
| A piece of magnetized iron would flip the other way if you
| turned over the magnet. That's why in the Chinese videos you
| see them remove the magnet, flip it over, and put it back.
|
| The same "end" of LK99 floats, no matter which pole of the
| magnet you put toward the sample.
| yread wrote:
| I like the 2:35am timestamp
| duckmysick wrote:
| Also, McMaster-Carr (of the "I-can't-belive-how-fast-their-
| site-is-loading" fame) ziplock bag on the following tweet.
| ETH_start wrote:
| FYI: you can use the x.com hostname when linking to tweets, e.g.
| https://x.com/andrewmccalip/status/1687405505604734978
| the-dude wrote:
| Does it help?
| andersa wrote:
| It just seems to redirect to twitter.com though?
| yreg wrote:
| Even better, you can use the nitter.net hostname and then you
| can even read the content even though you don't use X.
| tw1984 wrote:
| the really amazing part of the LK99 is that you don't any big
| name with access to some national labs to demonstrate that for
| you, all you need is some high school lab equipments and some
| very basic understanding of the subject.
| yxhuvud wrote:
| Yes and no. You still need access to red phosphorous which is
| not all that easy to get hold of.
| baq wrote:
| the 1000 C furnace is nothing to sneeze at either.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| These cost about 1300 dollars on Alibaba, the cost of a lot
| of equipment has fallen massively the last few years.
|
| [1] https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/1000-Degree-
| High-temp...
| varjag wrote:
| These are rather common. Often used in metalworking for
| steel hardening.
| baq wrote:
| yeah but OP said 'high school lab'... which granted may
| be true in the US but certainly not what I'd call
| 'common' or even 'rare' where I live. a good description
| would be 'completely unheard of'.
| cthalupa wrote:
| >which granted may be true in the US
|
| I'm a graduate of the public school system in the US in a
| state that is not in the top 10-15 for education - my
| high school had a pretty impressive furnace. I'm too far
| removed to remember what it's maximum temperature was but
| I wouldn't be surprised if it was 1000C+
| jayd16 wrote:
| I guess you'd head to the art department and use the
| ceramic kiln, instead.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| ... and an X-ray Diffractometer.
|
| What is the point of making it if you can't prove that what
| you made is LK99?
| baq wrote:
| A levitating rock would be good enough for me!
| [deleted]
| h2odragon wrote:
| I recall using it for fireworks recipes. Good thing we
| controlled access since then; otherwise people would be
| making drugs with it all over...
| timinou wrote:
| I'm curious what companies stand to gain the most from this
| discovery... I understand the promises of LK-99, but where do you
| think where we'll see it be applied first?
| dvh wrote:
| $9 floating superconductor toy on AliExpress, free shipping
| sixQuarks wrote:
| Lol. You're probably right
| megaman821 wrote:
| Depends on its price and properties. If it is affordable, I
| would go with electric motors. Not having to cool them would be
| hugely beneficial. If it is expensive, then MRI machines and
| space equipment.
| binary132 wrote:
| Maybe I'm confused, but how is this different than an iron filing
| standing up in a magnetic field?
| xsmasher wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37003137
| DarmokJalad1701 wrote:
| The humility is refreshing, compared to anime girl. Also, the
| photos/videos are not shot using a potato.
| sashank_1509 wrote:
| Exactly, that Russian anime girl shud not be getting any
| credit, I don't say this because of her anonymity but because
| of her absolute refusal to take a video or do absolutely
| anything that can make outsiders trust her claims.
| xvector wrote:
| I don't understand why she would be like this. Why would
| anyone hold back the production process for a material that
| could change humanity forever?
| ssabev wrote:
| Lots of bizarre pro-Soviet behaviour from her as well which
| feels somehow connected
| refulgentis wrote:
| She's _literally_ Russian, not ironically. So not so
| bizarre.
| delabay wrote:
| Anime cat girls contribution to this memetic superconductor
| conversation 5% smart sounding commentary, 5% test result
| and 90% cancer.
| [deleted]
| maipen wrote:
| Why? Simple, there's lots of mentally ill people on this
| planet. Anime profile pictures are usualy a redflag. These
| kind of people should only be ignored since they never want
| to cooperate.
| ShamelessC wrote:
| That sort of comment is completely unnecessary and
| ignorant on so many levels. Do better.
| slikrick wrote:
| [flagged]
| onejong wrote:
| [flagged]
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Anime profile pictures are usualy a redflag. These kind
| of people should only be ignored since they never want to
| cooperate.
|
| A lot of them are simply trans and tired of dealing with
| constant harassment campaigns directed towards their
| gender identity. Of course they're wary about
| cooperations with people they don't intimately trust.
| willis936 wrote:
| There would have to be a lot of cognitive dissonance to
| be illegally trans yet self identity as "ethnically
| soviet" on a social media bio.
| aoeusnth1 wrote:
| It takes a lot of cognitive dissonance to be pro USSR in
| the first place, so a little more shouldn't hurt.
| zarzavat wrote:
| USSR means something different to Russians than it does
| to Americans. To Americans it was the Enemy. To Russians
| it was the last time that Russia was truly important on
| the world stage and had some degree of prosperity.
| xvector wrote:
| just some good ole nostalgia for stalin's purges!
| cooper_ganglia wrote:
| "Some people are rude to me for reasons entirely
| unrelated to the issue at hand" isn't a valid reason to
| lack any level of humility, or to withhold evidence of
| your extraordinary claims.
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| You're making quite a leap here assuming they're trans,
| but it's an inarguable stance to take anyway. If I say
| "they should reveal to increase the profile of trans
| folks everywhere", you'll say "why is it incumbent upon
| them to prove their value?" If I say "they should reveal
| to shut down harassers," you'll say that I must be a
| transphobe.
|
| Sexual politics is tiring and pointless, honestly. With
| all the ad hominem bullshit and disingenuous positioning,
| no one is even trying to resolve it.
| Tade0 wrote:
| I don't think it's a valid hypothesis anyway.
|
| The culture around anime profile pictures is that you
| pick a character that you at least somewhat relate to -
| or used to in the past and embraced that.
|
| For trans people that's usually a character that is at
| least in some way gender-bending - like being mistaken
| for the other sex by other characters or people
| unfamiliar with the franchise.
| protastus wrote:
| Her methods were improvised and lacking, by her own
| admission. There are several world class labs working on
| this today. There's basically zero chance a junior
| researcher doing amateur chemistry in the kitchen is going
| to outperform the best groups in the world at figuring out
| how to synthesize this thing with decent yield, and then
| characterizing it.
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| Looks like there's at least three other people in front of
| Andrew on the "first floaty flake replication" list[0], and
| something like four more efforts where the flakes didn't
| float which arguably still counts as replications.
|
| [1]: https://eirifu.wordpress.com/2023/07/30/lk-99-supercondu
| ctor...
| eterevsky wrote:
| Is it possible to distinguish SC levitation from diamagnetism,
| based on this experiment?
| ginko wrote:
| At this point it feels like even of this turns out to not be a
| full superconductor it will be a huge leap forward
| ssabev wrote:
| What a time to be alive. Props for Varda jumping on it. If/when
| this works out would love to see them manufacture it in space.
| refulgentis wrote:
| Why?
| cthalupa wrote:
| Their whole thing is in-space manufacturing in general, and
| stuff in space could make use of an RTAPS. I don't think the
| parent comment was anything more than "It'd be cool to see
| the space manufacturing company manufacture the thing they
| were one of the first handful of people to potentially
| publicly replicate"
| titzer wrote:
| I, for one, am not impressed by his Twitter thread. It looks very
| sloppy, and I am completely disregarding videos of floating
| flakes of gray whatever-the-heck. They look like they have none
| of the equipment to properly test what material they created or
| what its properties are. It doesn't inspire confidence, it's just
| more damn attention-seeking. Stick to rockets or whatever.
|
| That said, the fact that LK-99 has not been instantly debunked
| makes me somewhat hopeful that even ridiculously sloppy attempts
| like this did manage to create a bit of the crystal lattice that
| makes this material unique, and that, if indeed it does have
| superconducting properties, the manufacturing process won't be
| hard.
| fragmede wrote:
| His piece of LK-99 is much bigger than the tiny grains I've seen
| elsewhere.
| est wrote:
| It's made in USA baby!
| OJFord wrote:
| I think you're joking, I'd 100% assume it, except that I ran
| into some truly bizarre US patriotism while trying to follow
| McCalip's updates a few days ago - last relevant one I could
| find was 'materials coming tomorrow' on 27th, but then I
| couldn't find anything about using them or any update. Just a
| decent into people tweeting (in thread) about how great
| America is, the best country, etc. Really surreal.
|
| Think it was in replies here, but not logged in to tell:
| https://twitter.com/andrewmccalip/status/1684438158837153792
| cooper_ganglia wrote:
| I don't think the USA is at the forefront of science, and
| I'm really disappointed to see discoveries like this
| originating from South Korea, China, and Russia before we
| saw results here. But even in light of that, I don't think
| it's very controversial to say that the USA is inarguably
| the greatest country on the planet.
|
| While it's true that the USA may not always be the first to
| every scientific discovery, what it is at the forefront of
| is global trends and driving forward progress in a
| multitude of arenas. Silicon Valley has single-handedly
| transformed the global tech landscape, with pioneering
| companies like Google, Apple, and Facebook leading the
| charge.
|
| American universities such as MIT, Harvard, and Stanford
| consistently rank among the top in the world, pushing the
| boundaries of research and innovation. The cultural sphere
| is heavily influenced by American trends as well. Hollywood
| and New York City define global standards in entertainment,
| fashion, and lifestyle.
|
| Also, America's economic is the largest globally, and has
| considerable influence in shaping global financial trends.
| And let's not forget the huge strides in space exploration,
| highlighted by NASA's momentous moon landing and Mars
| missions. I mean, even the Soviets got a man in space! And
| that was half a century ago! European astronauts have to
| hitch a ride on an American-made rocket to represent their
| nations.
|
| So yeah, while there's always room for improvement,
| America's influence as a pace-setter, innovator, and leader
| on the global stage sets it apart. This isn't just a "USA!
| USA!" chant, I have a seemingly never-ending list of
| criticisms of my country, but, in terms of advancing the
| human species, I would take the USA over literally any
| other country every single day of the week.
| zarzavat wrote:
| It's simply because the US is the richest country on the
| planet[0]. A lot of money buys a lot of science. Many of
| those great discoveries are not made by Americans, if you
| look around at any of those American universities you'll
| see people from all corners of the world.
|
| So yes, the US is quite good at research, but it's not
| due to some intrinsic quality of the country any more
| than a billionaire's ability to attract beautiful women
| is down to their good looks. The US is simply punching at
| its (very heavy) weight.
|
| [0] Why is the US the richest country? It has a lot of
| arable land to support a large population. Most of the
| original settlers came from the previous richest country,
| and it was never colonized (or more precisely it was
| never _decolonized_ ) meaning that the wealth was not
| diverted away from the people like it was in most of the
| worlds countries. The real story here is how China has
| completely mismanaged all the opportunities it's had, you
| can thank Mao for that.
| nemo44x wrote:
| He's replicating a cutting edge material science in his
| garage. People are celebrating the optimistic spirit of
| Americans. The indomitable will that this country
| encourages and the sense that anything is possible if
| you're ambitious and smart enough to pull it off.
| ciniclinic wrote:
| [dead]
| dbish wrote:
| Garage? That's an industrial lab
| giantrobot wrote:
| Maybe the industrial lab is his garage? My "office" is
| also technically a bedroom.
|
| /s
| Ar-Curunir wrote:
| lmao
|
| (a) it's an industrial lab. (b) if there's any optimism
| to be commended, it's that of the South Korean
| researchers who worked on this on-off for ~20 years.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| It's important to remember what kind of people are still
| invested in twitter enough to comment randomly on something
| they have no connection to.
| Levitz wrote:
| I think it's just a "everything is bigger in the US" joke.
| baq wrote:
| It's jarring for us Euros (I dunno, ghosts of the war are
| still alive maybe?), but it's pretty normal stateside.
| pookah wrote:
| [dead]
| rsynnott wrote:
| Also, the Soviet Union, I think; it's just bad
| associations all the way down. I realise that Americans
| have a different background and an American being really
| into flags and founding fathers and all that usually
| means something completely different (and less worrying)
| than someone in Europe doing same, but it's still hard
| not to find it offputting.
| thepasswordis wrote:
| Are you saying Europeans _dont_ have any national pride?
| SanderNL wrote:
| I think you would be hard pressed to find any Euro
| seriously and non-ironically proclaiming their country
| the best in the world. Then again, it's not unheard of.
|
| It just sounds stupid here, because even when all of us
| combine we only ever so slightly pass the "regional
| power" mark. And we know it.
| thepasswordis wrote:
| Have you _met_ any Europeans?
|
| Italians are convinced that Italy is the center of the
| world, with the best food, home of Rome, etc.
|
| French are convinced that France is the center of the
| world, with the best food, home of Democracy, etc.
|
| The British are convinced that Britain is the center of
| the world...although maybe not so convinced of the food
| :-P.
|
| Germans, same thing.
|
| Portugese same thing, but it's the "secret" version of
| Spain with better wine, better food, better beaches, etc.
|
| Everybody has national pride. That's a good thing. You
| should be proud of the place where you live because it
| means you'll take care of it and wont' trash it.
| OJFord wrote:
| It's just done differently, I don't know, it's hard to
| explain, but: A: [orders some
| chemicals] B: God damn I love America A:
| Hell of a thing, America C: greatest country in
| the world
|
| just reads so weirdly to me. Maybe it's partly that I
| can't imagine finding (or any other British/western
| European person finding) _this_ a source of national
| pride to begin with, but even when it 's something we
| do.. I just can't see non-Americans talking like that.
|
| It's not really a problem, just surprised me.
| bandyaboot wrote:
| While most of it is probably sincere, it's also important
| to keep in mind that some people do the "overly patriot
| American" as a joke.
| bandyaboot wrote:
| That sort of cringey, oblivious patriotism has existed
| here for a long time, but I have a feeling it's become
| more common on Twitter since the average demo of active
| participants has undoubtedly shifted toward the political
| and cultural sensibilities of Elon Musk. This will
| probably read as pretty divisive, but I think it's the
| truth.
| elkhadiy wrote:
| This might just be a joke about how everything/everyone in
| the USA is suboptimally bigger than the rest of the world.
| sanxiyn wrote:
| On the other hand, his piece is much smaller than two pieces we
| saw from South Korea.
| anonylizard wrote:
| Those are the original authors pieces, who obviously have
| secret know-how that they are going to sell for many
| $millions rather than give out for free.
| lifthrasiir wrote:
| [flagged]
| refulgentis wrote:
| Clicked through 3 links to be greeted with "Disclaimer: I'm no
| physicist nor chemist...It turned out that LK folks were not
| talking about some stupid shit."
|
| -- combined with "(Note: was written and published hours before
| this demonstration.)", and there wasn't an attempt to explain
| the connection between TFA and this new other article I'm
| supposed to read.
|
| I'm good, thanks.
| lifthrasiir wrote:
| "I'm no physicist nor chemist" means that I have no
| qualification to say whether the theory is legitimate or not.
|
| "It turned out that LK folks were not talking about some
| stupid shit" means that their theory is not out of the thin
| air, but rather based on some alternative theory that has
| _not_ been actually disproven but simply forgotten. This one
| is much easier to verify.
|
| "was written and published hours before this demonstration"
| means that I have no prior knowledge about this
| demonstration. Otherwise you could argue that I have written
| the article to _justify_ this demonstration.
| willis936 wrote:
| The last point doesn't make much sense since there were
| multiple prior similar demonstrations. It's still a
| prediction made after the experiment has concluded and the
| results are widely disseminated.
| lifthrasiir wrote:
| To my knowledge this is the first ever demonstration to
| show the exactly same thing as Q-center's original video
| (partly because this sample is much larger than others),
| so I believe my argument is probably safe. But I
| understand your and GP's judgements given the recent
| craze. To be fair, I'm still conservative about the whole
| thing, but it does look clear to me that we are
| witnessing the conflict between two big theories of SC,
| rather than some crackpot versus "legit" scientists,
| hence my new article.
| refulgentis wrote:
| This isn't a big deal but to explain a bit why it came
| off wrong, sometimes I have a hard time socially and wish
| people would just explain their reactions instead of
| focusing on having the reaction:
|
| - It's not the first, to wit, the repro's author pointing
| out it looks the same as effect from China repro from...3
| days ago? Time is elusive.
|
| - The Russian catgirl superconductor theory stuff is a
| blind alley, you've gone very far down it for someone
| without physics/chemistry background, it's unintelligible
| to people who haven't followed the sociology of every
| repro attempt and people who do have a background and
| know that's a massive theoretical question that can't be
| resolved via twitter or LK99, particularly when we're
| still figuring out LK99
|
| - It's odd to reframe news of a room temperature
| superconductor as a "conflict between two theories of
| SC", we're just scratching the surface, we're months and
| months away from that, if it is resolvable at all.
|
| - You've gotten wrapped up in the meta and express it via
| namecalling in a way that distracts, c.f.
|
| ---- my reference to the "stupid shit" quote.
|
| ---- "crackpot versus legit scientists": what I call
| They'ing, what smarter people would call creating
| dichotomous groups out of thin air and then attributing
| positions to them.
|
| ---- "recent craze" "still conservative": the
| metajudgements don't contribute anything and there's
| plenty of it to be found, it's mostly gone/downvoted on
| HN over last 24-48 hours because it became stifling.
| lifthrasiir wrote:
| You could have just requested more contexts then. You
| instead picked three particular phrases, which are
| actually least relevant parts of the linked article, and
| concluded (or appeared to conclude) that my article is
| not worthwhile to read. It might be, but I _want_ it to
| be worthwhile to read and your reply had no hints to
| avoid that. Especially given that the very point of my
| article is about providing those contexts.
| refulgentis wrote:
| Darn, didn't expect this. :(
|
| I suggest revisiting this thread in a week.
| sashank_1509 wrote:
| Interesting, this is being done in room temperature too. I
| suppose a few things I can conclude from this saga:
|
| 1. The synthesis process is much more complex than the original
| paper suggests. Every group except the original is unable to
| create a large piece of sufficient purity.
|
| 2. It seems like even with a pure sample, the entire structure
| might not be superconducting which leads it to tilt on one edge
| instead of completely floating. (Some call it a 1D
| superconductor, I'm a bit out of my depth here)
|
| Should expect all these things to improve soon, but seems like a
| genuine breakthrough, not a fake or a dud'
| blackkettle wrote:
| The original group also stated that they are preparing another
| paper specifically about this synthesis process IIRC. This
| would seem to indicate that the challenge is known and the
| initial omission either deliberate or another side effect of
| this absurdly gripping kdrama.
| EvgeniyZh wrote:
| This 1D stuff really confuses me. I was taught that 1D
| superconductivity is prohibited by Mermin Wagner theorem. You
| can induce superconductivity on 1D system but that requires
| higher dimensional SC near it, which is the opposite of
| proposed scenario?
|
| If someone have seen theoretical papers explaining this and/or
| understands it, I'd love to know. Iris Alexandera posted link
| to some experimental paper [1] but I didn't understand the
| mechanism from it and it is very scarcely cited
|
| [1] https://arxiv.org/abs/1103.1459
| swader999 wrote:
| Who is going to be the first to sell a rock of this on eBay?
| ThePhysicist wrote:
| Honestly I don't see anything that would prove superconductivity
| in this video. If LK-99 is a type-II superconductor you should
| observe flux pinning i.e. you would be able to move the flake
| with a tweezer and it would be stuck in place as the magnetic
| flux lines are pinned to defects in the material. I haven't seen
| any details on the supposed properties of the material like the
| coherence length, but from the original paper it seems the
| critical field of a small flake is rather low at a few 100-1000
| Oe, so a more convincing test than thermal cycling would be to
| simply use an electromagnet and increase the field strength, the
| sample should then drop once the (second) critical field is
| reached. If the critical field strength is too high you can
| reduce it by heating the sample, but what's critical is to
| observe breakdown of diamagnetism with an increase in field
| strength without any form of hysteresis, which you won't observe
| in the same way in a diamagnet.
|
| The best test would probably be to produce a Josephson junction
| and measure Shapiro steps at high frequency, that's something
| that cannot be explained by anything except a superconducting
| quantum material. As the sample is highly impure it could even be
| enough to irradiate it with a microwave source and measure the
| reflectivity / transmittance, there could even be intrinsic
| Josephson effect like in high Tc superconductors. Impossible to
| say though without knowing more details about the material.
| carabiner wrote:
| Damn. It's over.
| pnwcoder wrote:
| What would be an explanation for the partial levitation of the
| LK-99 sample shown in the video?
| ThePhysicist wrote:
| Could be normal diamagnetism, or even ferromagnetism. Very
| hard to say as they don't even give any field strengths in
| the video, it's just a Neodym magnet they hold near the
| sample. If I understand the video correctly they just orient
| the magnet by hand, so I would not even rule out a
| ferromagnetic effect. There can be multiple regions with
| different orientation in such a polycristalline material,
| which can produce all kinds of weird effects. Not saying that
| it's not a superconductor, just that I would not draw any
| conclusions from this video. If this was a type-II
| superconductor and the flux pinning is strong enough to lift
| the flake up you should be able to drag it across the bottom
| of the beaker with the magnet as the magnetic flux lines
| "impale" the crystal, i.e. they are in an energy minimum and
| moving them out of there causes resistance as they need to
| break the superconductivity in the material surrounding the
| defect where they are pinned. If it's just diamagnetism
| that's not the case. So observing that the flake is
| completely stationary when the magnet is moved in our out
| tells me this likely isn't flux pinning we're seeing.
|
| I'm a bit skeptical how they even know it's the right
| material, getting the doping right seemed quite intricate so
| it would seem quite extraordinary that they can hit the right
| process after trying for a few days. Not saying they didn't,
| but so far I'm rather inclined to believe they just got a
| ferromagnetic metal flake (which is easy to get following the
| thermal annealing process they did, or even by banging the
| material up a bit as they seem to have done for getting it
| out of the synthesis tubes).
| lr1970 wrote:
| > Could be normal diamagnetism, or even ferromagnetism.
|
| I am curious how one could confuse the two? One leads to
| repulsion, another to attraction.
| ThePhysicist wrote:
| I'm not even sure they reversed the magnet polarity in
| this video, it seems they just removed the magnet and put
| it back, so there's no way to rule out a ferromagnetic
| effect. Again, I just find it really hard to deduce
| anything from this footage, not saying it can't be a
| superconductor.
|
| I'm not even sure they reversed the magnet polarity in
| this video, it seems they just removed the magnet and put
| it back, so there's no way to rule out a ferromagnetic
| effect.
|
| I'm not sure either if LK-99 is a type-II superconductor
| but I would believe so given the papers I've read. Type-
| II superconductors aren't perfect diamagnets, they allow
| magnetic flux to penetrate the superconductor once you
| hit the first critical field, these flux vortices then
| get pinned at sites of defects where the energy
| requirement for breaking the superconductivity is lowest.
| That's what keeps a type-II superconductor levitating
| over a magnet, a type I superconductor or perfect
| diamagnet wouldn't do that. Then again I have never seen
| how e.g. a tiny YBCO flake (high Tc type-II
| superconductor) would behave if you put it in a beaker
| and dragged a Neodym magnet below it, so who knows.
| [deleted]
| floxy wrote:
| There have been some people saying that LK-99 might only be
| superconducting in one dimension. Does anyone know how that (or
| even just 2-D/planar superconductivity) would effect the
| levitation of samples? For the 1-D case, maybe there would be
| issues in creating loops in the bulk material for persistent
| currents to flow in? It might be hard to make a Josephson
| junction unless you knew the orientation of the
| superconductivity direction? Has anybody studied this before?
| My intuition breaks down here.
| ThePhysicist wrote:
| The superconducting wave function can have different
| symmetry, e.g. most/all low-temperature superconductors have
| s-wave symmetry (meaning the wave function amplitude is the
| same in all directions), whereas high-temperature
| superconductors have d-wave symmetry, which means the wave
| function amplitude has lobes and drops to zero along the
| diagonal axes. There are no p-wave superconductors to my
| knowledge (which I guess is meant when they talk about a 1D
| superconductor, i.e. the wave function has p-symmetry, but
| not even sure if that's what they mean).
|
| I know the main researcher has brought forward a modified BCS
| theory that combines insulator-metal transition physics with
| superconductivity, no idea though what to make of that.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > which I guess is meant when they talk about a 1D
| superconductor, i.e. the wave function has p-symmetry, but
| not even sure if that's what they mean
|
| I think they mean it only appears on islands that are much
| longer than they are wide or high. I.E. I understand it as
| a geometric limitation on the form of the crystals they can
| make.
|
| The theoretical stuff that got here implies it has d-wave
| symmetry, and so does the original paper.
| marklubi wrote:
| [flagged]
| jjoonathan wrote:
| Theranos raised $724 million using intentional deception.
|
| LK99 is an incomplete paper that someone posted to arXiv.
| marklubi wrote:
| My comment had nothing to do about the money that Theranos
| raised, but about how the hype feels.
|
| Theranos was sooooo hyped on HN early on, and now we know
| how it turned out. This feels like practically a carbon
| copy of that hype.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| All hype cycles look like this. If Theranos was the last
| one you witnessed, I envy your ability to unplug.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Theranos had very little external hype. No one talked
| about Theranos until it blew up, outside of pretty niche
| fields. The founder tried to build some hype but it was
| still a pretty typical "tech startup founder hyping
| themselves up" type of situation
| stephenitis wrote:
| The hype is more warranted here because I think material
| and physics scientists are excited and publicly and
| clearly skeptical.
|
| There is a wider knowledge that this may be nothing or
| somewhere in between. The rollercoaster following the
| developments is why the wider public is enjoying
| following it as science entertainment.
|
| On Twitter it seems like crypto bros are trying to scam
| with a LK-99 coin.
|
| AI/ML crowd is pondering what happens to computing power
| in 5-10-15 years if LK-99 is proven applicable to advance
| current technologies.
|
| There is a large mix of aspirational futurism and a lot
| of tempered real science going on here.
|
| All in real time, on active, Twitter, WeChat/Billibili(?)
| etc
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| a decent crypto strat is to buy a coin named after a
| major news event asap, then sell within a day
| jjoonathan wrote:
| It's a decent strat right up until the greater fool
| learns their lesson and leaves. Then you become the
| greatest fool.
|
| The only way to reliably succeed at this is to take steps
| to ensure the existence of a greater fool. We call that
| "fraud."
| stephenitis wrote:
| Probably why hot takes outside of the field is physics in
| this instance are ignored.
|
| My hot take rebuttal?
|
| There has been no multi billion dollar investment into LK-99.
|
| If scientists around the world took to Twitter and all tested
| and sought to disproved Theranos's claim all at once BEFORE
| Theranos became a juggernaut of fraud, I think there would be
| a more apt comparison.
|
| To history's credit there were a few scientist who stood up
| and said that Theranos's claim was not possible.
|
| So far the there is a lot of hype and social media energy,
| but not the same levels of fraud and deception going on here.
| If anything the science has started to point towards the
| likelihood there may be something to the claims in the
| original LK-99 papers.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| BurningFrog wrote:
| I keep reading that room temperature super-conduction will
| revolutionize so many fields.
|
| Is there a good summary of _which_ fields, and how, somewhere?
| Sevii wrote:
| Anything involving electricity or magnetic fields.
| coding123 wrote:
| Can someone ELI43 what benefits a shaving of metal dancing in a
| beaker can do for the world?
|
| And will this be like my 90% efficient solar panels that I'm
| still waiting for?
| xwdv wrote:
| Just needs to scale up. We need several kilotons of this
| material ASAP.
| sashank_1509 wrote:
| This makes me extremely bullish about Varda Space, they have
| engineers of high quality and expertise that they could do a
| decent replication very quickly (if they got access to raw
| materials earlier, they might have been first to do so,
| comparable with the Chinese Groups) while working on their off
| time (from what I've seen of their twitter) and not a single big
| academic lab has managed to complete any sort of replication to
| date!
| littlestymaar wrote:
| You forgot the Russian twitter biologist.
| waihtis wrote:
| the difference between doers versus academics has never been
| demonstrated more beautifully
| admissionsguy wrote:
| The problem is they needed academics to show them what to do.
| adverbly wrote:
| That's not entirely accurate. For my understanding, it is a
| private institution which employed the individuals who made
| the discovery. Some of whom have alternative backgrounds in
| academia, and some of whom have it in industry.
| sashank_1509 wrote:
| The story goes, some professor had a theory in 1999 that
| was rejected by the mainstream regarding creating
| superconductors. He passed away and as a dying wish asked
| his students to continue the research work and develop a
| theory for why it works. The students unable to get
| "academic" funding set up a company and got funding from
| industry to do their research in 2017 and the rest is
| history.
|
| It's very hard to redeem academia in this example.
| kome wrote:
| it's kinda false:
| https://hackmd.io/@lifthrasiir/lk-99-prehistory people
| were working on it since soviet times, in academia. And
| those people influenced other people. Also in academia.
|
| It's a slow moving process, but it works.
| dwb wrote:
| Oh yeah, the commercial "doers" are happy to have a go once
| academics have slogged away at the hard, risky, expensive,
| and often thankless trial-and-error before the discovery. Not
| to do down the people in this particular example, and I'm
| happy to assume they aren't claiming any credit they
| shouldn't, but the dichotomy really isn't as you make it out
| to be.
| kome wrote:
| ...without academics we wouldn't be here. at all. here an
| historical genealogy that leads to the LK99 discovery:
| https://hackmd.io/@lifthrasiir/lk-99-prehistory
| zamalek wrote:
| There is a large degree of luck involved. The original team,
| who have been working on this for significant time, have only
| attained a 1/10 success rate (one of the better samples came
| from a test tube being dropped on the floor part-way through
| annealing). So it's part talent, part luck.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| The first pre-print came out on 22 July (if I am not mistaken).
| Not enough time has passed pure and simple.
|
| If I was an academic working on this, I would be following the
| Sagan Standard and triple checking my results before claiming
| anything.
|
| I think we are all suffering from 24 hour news cycles. The work
| in China and now Varda is very exciting but they are warp speed
| developments.
| lumost wrote:
| Speed is correlated with execution quality. All else being
| equal, A lab which is better equipped - with better access to
| materials, and motivated and competent researchers will
| deliver _before_ the equivalent lab which is deficient in any
| of the above.
|
| A twitter post isn't peer review, but it is a nice way of
| sharing part of the process. A video etc. will help others in
| their attempts to replicate.
| anonylizard wrote:
| This is simply what post-peer-review looks like.
|
| Instead of a few anonymous peer reviews, you get the entire
| planet to replicate. Moment you get something meaningful,
| publish it on arxiv. Quantity, not quality is king. Anomalies
| are drowned out by large samples. Questionable methods get
| mass debated in public.
|
| Scientists are dependent on public funding, why squander the
| biggest moment in pop science for literal decades?
|
| Now this won't work for 99.99% of research. But top tier
| research will probably get published on youtube and arxiv in
| the future...
| CharlieDigital wrote:
| Not all meaningful science is this level of groundbreaking
| for this model to work. Formal peer review is still very
| much necessary.
| svara wrote:
| > Questionable methods get mass debated in public.
|
| By people who don't know what they're talking about.
|
| You're seriously underestimating the level of expertise
| that it takes to professionally assess most research. It
| wouldn't be unusual for there to be a small handful of
| people with that ability in the world.
| codedokode wrote:
| > You're seriously underestimating the level of expertise
| that it takes to professionally assess most research. It
| wouldn't be unusual for there to be a small handful of
| people with that ability in the world.
|
| Does it mean that grant money are distributed by people
| who are unable to "assess most research"?
| svara wrote:
| No, because funding agencies use external reviewers who
| are experts in the field of an application.
| ivalm wrote:
| Depends on the level. At the level of congressional
| appropriation then certainly. At the program manager
| level then hopefully the pm knows.
| bee_rider wrote:
| They say you don't really understand something until you
| can teach it. I wonder to what extent "can I teach this
| to the general public, and do they care?" is an indicator
| of both understanding new results and also whether or not
| they really matter.
|
| Of course, we're often working on a tool to help make
| tools for other scientists, so that sort of thing is hard
| to explain to the general public, but ultimately it
| should terminate in some results that actually have
| obvious value to society in general.
| okonomiyaki3000 wrote:
| > > Questionable methods get mass debated in public.
|
| > By people who don't know what they're talking about.
|
| I'm glad I'm not the only one who finds all these public
| mass debaters disgusting.
| generalizations wrote:
| What matters is the discovery of new things that are
| true, that we can do engineering with. Publication by
| youtube & arxiv doesn't have to be oriented at public
| consumption - it works just as well when it's by-
| researchers, for-researchers. Except without gatekeeping,
| people like McCalip can participate too. Who cares who's
| sitting on the sidelines? In post-peer-review, industry-
| funded academics rush a paper to a preprint server, a
| space engineer replicates it, and someone else figures
| out how to mass-produce it, and we get room-temp ambient-
| pressure superconductors, and we know we did because the
| engineering works.
|
| This works just as well with less exciting tech, because
| the point is that _we collaboratively learned how to
| build something_.
| MetaWhirledPeas wrote:
| Agreed. What I don't understand is the gatekeeping. Why
| would the actions of outsiders have any bearing on "real"
| research? Are they worried that grant money will get
| redirected toward shallower, more glamorous groups?
| dotnet00 wrote:
| I think the gatekeeping is relevant because almost every
| time in recent years that the general completely
| unvetted, often actively ignorant public has gotten an in
| on the scientific/R&D process, it has been a disaster for
| the field.
|
| NASA can't take risks and seriously innovate anymore
| because even intentional explosions will be passed off as
| failures, we all experienced the sheer madness of the
| covid years, similarly anything nuclear brings complete
| randos out of the woodworks claiming absurd things about
| its dangers.
|
| Not having some amount of gatekeeping just lowers the bar
| too much and introduces so much more noise.
| MetaWhirledPeas wrote:
| > Not having some amount of gatekeeping just lowers the
| bar too much and introduces so much more noise.
|
| I can see how this would be a _very_ controversial
| subject. Discouraging scientific participation? That 's a
| tough pill to swallow without a lot of justification.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| It isn't discouraging participation, it's requiring that
| you meet some minimum level of proficiency to be
| considered credible. Kind of like how you need to have
| some experience in programming to have any credibility
| when talking about how a programming language should be
| designed.
| MetaWhirledPeas wrote:
| > it's requiring that you meet some minimum level of
| proficiency to be considered credible
|
| That's not really the case though is it? Doubting
| someone's credibility would simply mean ignoring their
| results. But withholding information is something else
| entirely.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| Maybe I'm misunderstanding, where did withholding
| information come into this?
| MetaWhirledPeas wrote:
| > Maybe I'm misunderstanding, where did withholding
| information come into this?
|
| When I mentioned gatekeeping I was specifically referring
| to how there's this formula that was kept secret since
| 1999. At some point the potential significance surely
| became apparent, and one of the only speculations I can
| come up with to justify that would be gatekeeping;
| keeping the information out of the hands of the filthy
| commoners for reasons.
|
| Maybe it wasn't gatekeeping. If not I'd sure as heck like
| to know what it was.
| cycomanic wrote:
| They didn't keep it, they simply did not work on it and
| only came back to it 20 years later (somebody posted a
| bit of history on the other thread currently on the front
| page, I'm on mobile so it takes to long to find it atm).
| They didn't know about it's superconducting properties
| either.
|
| So no withholding information at all. But on a more
| general level if everyone would be posting out every
| little bit of information they produce during their
| research instead of publishing articles it would be a
| disaster. The reason we do science is because we are
| trying to understand things just posting your random
| results would just give everyone information overload,
| because you would know what to focus on. Lk99 is actually
| a great example, the material would have completely been
| ignored by most (maybe even has been, not sure if they
| published about it previously?) if not for these recent
| results. Moreover because the results were published
| before the authors were confident about what they had,
| they have been subject to lots of ridicule and
| accusations of fraud. It might turn out alright in this
| case, but something like this can be career ending if it
| turns out to just be an experimental error.
| MetaWhirledPeas wrote:
| > They didn't keep it, they simply did not work on it and
| only came back to it 20 years later (somebody posted a
| bit of history on the other thread currently on the front
| page, I'm on mobile so it takes to long to find it atm).
| They didn't know about it's superconducting properties
| either.
|
| I really do hope it's something innocent like this.
|
| > if everyone would be posting out every little bit of
| information they produce during their research instead of
| publishing articles it would be a disaster.
|
| I'm not sure it would be any worse than it already is. I
| don't see how we could achieve any more bombastic
| headlines than we already get.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| Ah, then I completely misunderstood you. Yeah I'm not in
| favor of outright withholding information.
|
| However, what I think happened here is that they weren't
| able to work on it for a while, and if say, they didn't
| feel confident in their findings back in 1999 and only
| got around to being able to look at it again in 2017, it
| would make sense that their intent wasn't to gatekeep, it
| had just become one of those "we'll get around to testing
| it one day" type of projects everyone has. In this case
| it just potentially was a pretty massive thing to put
| off.
| nyospe wrote:
| In 1999, I was still a student in solid state physics,
| not far past my bachelor's degree, and happened to notice
| the publication of something that, to this day, I suspect
| might be (note, load bearing "might") a critical
| breakthrough for desalination. Nothing came of it. Nobody
| has published any follow-up for it. Nobody has done any
| research that would contradict it either. It's just
| sitting out there, unnoticed, decades later.
|
| Was it withheld from the public? Eh... yes? Kind of?
| Because it was only ever published in a journal -
| probably Materials Letters, but this was a long time ago
| - that you would only have access to if you were a
| graduate (or ambitious undergraduate) student with plenty
| of time to read in a university library, or a specialist
| in the very narrow field that journal was for, somebody
| with a membership included subscription...
|
| This isn't gatekeeping, this is, to be blunt, profit
| motivated hoarding by a handful of publishers in the
| academic journals business. And this is the thing that
| arXiv.org and other pre-print venues are actually having
| an impact on. I, for one, am strongly in favor of
| academic information being widely available. I'm not as
| much in favor of people who have not demonstrated their
| competencies in something that requires a great deal of
| both knowledge and skill feeling entitled to being given
| a platform for their (usually laughably clueless)
| proposals. If you've done enough work to have a tested
| hypothesis, that's different.
| Vecr wrote:
| At least post the citation for the desal thing?
| [deleted]
| giantrobot wrote:
| My personal opinion/reaction likely isn't going to affect
| anyone's grant status. I'm just a random asshole. But
| there are less random assholes whose opinion might count.
| If someone _sounding_ authoritative, but is just a random
| asshole like me, shits on this work on social media it
| might affect a group 's grant status if it taints the
| opinion of someone holding the purse strings.
|
| So I don't think asking about credentials or asking about
| references is gatekeeping. It's putting a statement into
| context. If I as a random asshole say "this isn't a
| superconductor" you as a reader should want to know where
| I'm getting that opinion from rather than just taking my
| statement at face value.
| MetaWhirledPeas wrote:
| I'm not suggesting we give random people credibility: I'm
| suggesting that when we make potentially-enormous
| breakthroughs that maybe we shouldn't keep that
| information to ourselves for decades.
|
| Edit: According to this it was just an unfortunate
| 19-year hiatus. (Yikes.)
| https://twitter.com/8teAPi/status/1684385895565365248
| codethief wrote:
| > Instead of a few anonymous peer reviews, you get the
| entire planet to replicate.
|
| Notably, peer reviews typically don't involve reviewers
| trying to replicate the results. So we've essentially
| skipped peer review (at least temporarily) and went full
| speed ahead with the post-peer-review process.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| > _This is simply what post-peer-review looks like._
|
| Peer review was never a substitute for replication in the
| first place. In this sense we've been "post-peer-review"
| the entire time.
| lamontcg wrote:
| > top tier research will probably get published on youtube
| and arxiv in the future...
|
| "Top tier science" is already published on arXiv.
|
| The future happened back in 1995 or something like that.
|
| > Quantity, not quality is king.
|
| No, quality is still king. We don't need videos of flakes
| standing on their end we need someone who has been working
| with superconductors all their lives who is competent
| enough to measure zero resistance across the sample. If one
| of the wild theories is right we need someone who actually
| knows how to prove it and not just sound like they're
| intelligent by talking about 1-d superconductors.
| ironborn123 wrote:
| This kind of public interest and demonstrations is unique
| only to RTS and few other phenomena
|
| - ordinary ppl more or less understand the importance of
| RTS
|
| - a visible and understandable effect (Meissner) can be
| shown on successful replication
|
| - the materials required are easier to understand, but the
| synthesis procedure is tricky, and purity is important
|
| - The skills of chemists comes into play, leading to kind
| of a Breaking Bad feel
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Only if you're doing sexy science.
|
| The peer review system is broken but I think we still need
| some sort of structured system in addition to this "hey
| world, check this out!" method.
| jcranmer wrote:
| There is a new claim or two of room-temperature
| superconductors published on Arxiv every year: https://nitt
| er.net/peternemes/status/1684483863999827973#m... and yet
| this is the only one that sets the Twitters afire.
|
| The reaction I've seen from most of the scientists has been
| pretty negative on the papers. The originals aren't strong
| papers. The chemistry has issues: https://nitter.net/Robert
| _Palgrave/status/168545015680691814... (unbalanced
| equations, starting materials have pretty different element
| ratios to final products). As for the main claim, note that
| LK-99 seems to be a poorer conductor than copper wire at
| room temperature: https://nitter.net/bedoya_pinto/status/16
| 86848392616423425#m... which is the kind of thing that
| should really cause a record scratch and make everyone go
| "um, I think you did something wrong there"--it's something
| that _absolutely_ would be caught in peer review.
| notfish wrote:
| I'm not sure I understand your point. Are you trying to
| say that people shouldn't be paying attention to this? I
| would personally be horrified if I found out that the
| paper on the synthesis of a room temperature
| superconductor went through the normal peer review
| process instead of letting the world know they discovered
| something huge.
| jcranmer wrote:
| My point is why should _this_ unreviewed claim of ambient
| condition superconductor be exalted as the holy grail and
| all of the other unreviewed claims of ambient condition
| superconductor languish in obscurity when they come out?
| It 's definitely not for the strength of evidence!
| marcosdumay wrote:
| It's pretty much due to the strength of evidence.
|
| There is no conclusive proof that this is a
| superconductor on the replications, but the evidence has
| been on a different level from nearly everything else
| you'll find on Arxiv since the beginning.
| jcranmer wrote:
| AIUI, things that float in a magnetic field at ~room
| temperature are moderately common claims, and this is
| really the only evidence that LK-99 might be a room-
| temperature superconductor. The published ancillary
| evidence in the original paper actually raises red flags
| that _isn 't_ a superconductor--the "0 resistivity"
| domain in their temperature-dependent resistivity plot is
| (when you realize the units they're using) actually
| slightly less resistive than regular copper wire, which
| suggests that the sharp drop in resistivity may be
| nothing more than a pedestrian phase change in the
| material.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > things that float in a magnetic field at ~room
| temperature are moderately common claims
|
| At monopolar magnetic fields weak enough to come from a
| permanent magnet is a lot rarer.
|
| Almost all superconductor claims come from measuring
| magnetic resonance or direct resistance measurements.
| Both are noisy things to measure, and won't get you
| reliable results.
| likpok wrote:
| Your link sort of hints at the reason, I think. There's
| enough posted to make a serious run at replicating it,
| and it seems to be simple enough that you can do it in a
| kitchen. At the same time, it's not _so_ easy that people
| have cleanly demonstrated it -- the constant
| rollercoaster of "we're so back" and "it's so over" I
| think drives some of the hype.
|
| It also seems like it has at least pretty strong
| diamagnetism, which while not a demonstration of
| superconductivity is both somewhat interesting and gives
| a vivid demonstration that's amenable to social media.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > Quantity, not quality is king. Anomalies are drowned out
| by large samples.
|
| Yeah, that's not how it works.
|
| At practice, anomalies are hyped into everybody's
| attention, and large samples are drowned out by lack of
| novelty. You don't need questionable methods to get bad
| results, you just need quantity.
|
| All the things that are happening are great, and this may
| be an astonishing discovery. But don't put more certainty
| on it than it's warranted.
| Accujack wrote:
| >This is simply what post-peer-review looks like.
|
| No, this is a new face for peer review. Existing peer
| review processes have stagnated in the information age,
| possibly with good reason. There are a lot of advantages to
| more immediate review of papers and data, and also to
| bypassing the systems of qualifications presently used to
| choose who is a valid reviewer.
| moolcool wrote:
| > If I was an academic working on this, I would be following
| the Sagan Standard and triple checking my results before
| claiming anything.
|
| Counterpoint: It's better that a lot of people know "Hey, we
| might be onto something interesting here" early on.
| TheAceOfHearts wrote:
| It's really disappointing that no other US lab has engaged with
| the public in the same manner. Regardless of the outcome, I
| think seeing things get built and experimented with in mostly
| real-time is a massive source of inspiration.
| brakedam wrote:
| I don't know what's going on here, but I can see some guys
| are trying to make a LK-99 bubble in here. politically, not
| scientifically. We should be aware that there is still no
| critical evidence of room-temp superconductors.
| iamshs wrote:
| All I see from US academics on Twitter are debates about this
| and that. Borderline annoying. This is the first result from
| mighty US capitalist machine meanwhile 3 Chinese labs have
| published pre prints and Russian replicated it in her
| kitchen.
| foobarian wrote:
| Naturalize the Russian, problem solved.
| iamshs wrote:
| Seeing her tweets, I doubt she wants to exercise this
| option.
| lucubratory wrote:
| Yes, I laughed when I saw that comment. I believe she
| would be denied entry to the US based on the questions
| that screen out communists, although because the
| particular question mentions a party and I don't believe
| she's a CPRF member it's possible it wouldn't apply.
| Regardless, not a good fit on either end of the
| relationship.
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| I'm more amused by 'grab anyone we want' stance, along
| with 'everyone wants to be the US citizen'. Imagine some
| Chinese would said that about some US scientist.
| nemo44x wrote:
| Yes, but our ESG scores are impeccable.
| anonylizard wrote:
| This, its utterly shameful. Hot takes here, hot takes
| there, skepticism here, tell people to calm down there.
|
| Yet not a single replication! China has gone through
| multiple failed and successful replications so far. And the
| first US replication is from an amateur.
|
| If LK-99 works out, expect some congressmen to use this as
| a bludgeoning tool against the state of US public science.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| To be fair, no one in the us has a grant to replicate
| something that came out this week. Its also the academic
| summer. A good amount of PIs are probably nowhere near
| their labs on vacation currently.
| _jal wrote:
| > To be fair, no one in the us has a grant to replicate
| something that came out this week
|
| And yet researchers in other countries managed to find
| the money this week. That would seem to point to a real
| relative weakness that's worth thinking about.
|
| Whether it is the result of gatekeeping, bureaucracy,
| academic squabbling, or something else, a cranky (and
| hilarious) Russian did better, faster work in her
| kitchen. Even putting aside professional scientific
| dysfunction, that seems to indicate a strategic cranky
| kitchen chemist gap.
| peteradio wrote:
| Seems kind of stupid to do chemistry in your kitchen.
| What exactly is the rush here to come out with results
| _right now_?!
| _jal wrote:
| > What exactly is the rush here to come out with results
| right now?!
|
| Well, the work is happening _right now_.
|
| You seem to want to make it sound like impatient kids
| being unreasonable or something, which is a ridiculous
| read.
|
| It is more a matter institutions becoming irrelevant
| because they literally can't keep up with their peers.
| Which brings me back to,
|
| > Seems kind of stupid to do chemistry in your kitchen.
|
| When the institutions in your country become incompetent,
| that's what you're left with.
| iamshs wrote:
| They couldn't even source Phosphorus!
| yorwba wrote:
| Nanjing University physics professor Wen Haihu said in an
| interview with The Paper that the news was extremely
| likely to be false and they only assigned a student to it
| because many groups internationally were working on
| replications
| https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_24024641
|
| "A researcher from the Institute of Physics at the
| Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) declined to comment on
| LK-99, telling the Post that even taking the issue
| seriously would be ridiculous." https://www.scmp.com/news
| /china/science/article/3229778/coul... (It's unclear to
| me whether this was before or after the HUST team
| published their video.)
|
| I don't think it's so much "China good at science,
| everyone else shamefully bad," but that some institutions
| (including in China) are more risk-averse, because labs
| who're already working on something they expect to
| succeed are less likely to benefit from dropping it to
| try something unproven.
| cryptonector wrote:
| The other thing is that even if LK-99 is finally
| conclusively shown to be a room temp & ambient pressure
| SC, there will be lots of important challenges to work on
| surrounding LK-99, so not being the first to replicate is
| no tragedy: - challenges in practical and
| reliable manufacturing of LK-99 -
| challenges in engineering w/ LK-99 - challenges in
| finding better materials than LK-99 using similar
| approaches
|
| If I were in a position where I could devote funding and
| researcher and lab time into LK-99 research, I might well
| quietly let others to do the replication work while
| having my team quietly research practical manufacturing
| of LK-99 so that we could a) beat everyone else to the
| punch on practical and reliable manufacturing, b) get the
| patents for (a).
| TylerE wrote:
| Not go all conspiracy, but isn't that also pretty much
| the playbook you'd run if you were trying to discredit
| it, to get as much of a jump on the rest of the world as
| possible? The Chinese government is not exactly known for
| playing _fair_.
| yorwba wrote:
| That requires a government so competent they immediately
| notice the significance of a claimed breakthrough by a
| foreign lab and coordinate an information campaign where
| their leading scientists act all skeptical just like
| leading scientists in other countries, denying rumours
| that the Academy of Sciences is working on a replication
| etc., ... but completely fail to act on similar rumours
| sparked at the same time by screenshots of a HUST
| professor getting all excited about his university's
| replication work in a group chat.
|
| Usually, when the Chinese government is confronted with
| an unexpected development they want to suppress, the
| opposite happens: official spokespeople clam up, nobody
| has a statement ready, related keywords get censored more
| or less effectively on social media, until an official
| narrative is revealed that doesn't withstand further
| scrutiny but survives anyway because such scrutiny is
| censored as well.
|
| So no, it's pretty much _not_ the playbook they 'd run if
| they were trying to discredit it.
| cryptonector wrote:
| Individual lab heads might do this sua sponte. Think:
| while everyone else is busy playing replication games you
| can work on reliably making LK-99 and beat everyone else
| to the punch on the more valuable patents and engineering
| glory.
| kijin wrote:
| It's the same in Korea where the research originated.
|
| A bunch of professors belonging to a hastily formed
| academic committee are trying to monopolize the public
| debate, quibbling about errors in the arxiv paper and
| demanding that Lee & Kim turn over samples of LK-99
| because the big-name professors are obviously too busy to
| make their own. It seems that their first priority is to
| avoid a repeat of the Hwang scandal than to touch any
| novel research.
| username332211 wrote:
| Any time the material exhibits a properties inconsistent
| with superconductors, the to-go explanation is that it's
| supposedly extremely difficult to manufacture. Not to
| mention, the original instructions include stuff like
| "The sealed tube containing the mixed powder was heated
| in a furnace at 925degC for 5-20 hours." which sounds a
| tad bit imprecise.
|
| Don't you think in those conditions it's at least a
| little bit reasonable to demand samples?
| kijin wrote:
| One would think so, if the rest of the world weren't
| already cooking up similarly half-levitating samples in
| their kitchens and garages.
| brakedam wrote:
| This is very ambiguous. So, everyone can make samples in
| their kitchens, but unfortunately, the researchers don't
| have enough samples to provide, right? Researchers have
| their own primary responsibility to prove it, not the
| public. And this was not a debatable issue before the
| LK-99 bomb.
| zarzavat wrote:
| They've said they will provide samples after peer review.
| Which seems fair doesn't it? How can they complete their
| paper and peer review without the samples? And if the
| samples get damaged they will be regret ever handing them
| over. If you were in the same situation you'd make the
| same decision.
|
| I and everybody else would love them to hand over the
| samples for external testing, but it's _their_ samples so
| they can do whatever they want with it, and the rest of
| the world just has to pound lanarkite while we wait.
| brakedam wrote:
| But I heard that in the interview, Dr. Kim said they have
| various samples that have different magnetization
| properties. It doesn't make sense that they have only a
| few samples, ironically. I'm sorry, but this makes me
| think that they are trying to move the public some other
| way.
| kijin wrote:
| Judging from the Korean-language interviews making the
| rounds today, there seems to be some sort of political
| tension between the researchers and the so-called
| verification committee. There's disagreement about
| whether anyone actually demanded samples, or whether it
| was just a polite request...
|
| I have a hunch that this might have something to do with
| the late professor Chair (Choi?) who came up with the
| idea back in the 90s, and whose last wish his disciples
| claim to be following. Chair was a sort of outcast in the
| superconductor research scene, and the methodology his
| disciples have been using are also, um, unorthodox at
| best. Someone might stand to lose a lot of credibility if
| the verdict goes one way or another. We know there's been
| tension even inside the team, as one of the three men
| named in the first paper was dropped from the second
| paper. At this stage, I'd be more concerned about these
| internal tensions and personal grudges than any attempt
| to manipulate the public at large.
| brakedam wrote:
| Now I understand what's going on in South Korea. Okay,
| this is more political than I thought. But the problem
| is, the researchers even didn't send the sample abroad to
| prove it. Even though they had many requests for a week.
| This doesn't make sense, and that kind of background
| story is not helpful in solving this.
| cthalupa wrote:
| It would not be a normal part of the process for people
| to be demanding samples just because there was a preprint
| posted on arxiv. It's a weird situation and they don't
| owe anyone any of these samples.
|
| They say they want to share samples after they get a peer
| reviewed paper published. That's not a weird position to
| be in. If it wasn't for the hype around this, they
| wouldn't be in this position.
|
| Let the process play out like it normally does, and if
| none of the replication attempts pan out, they can
| provide the samples after the peer review. We'll still
| care about RTAPS even if it takes another year for a
| sample to be provided.
| brakedam wrote:
| This case is something different. Because everyone
| reviewed their Arxiv papers and found that there's no
| meaningful figure for the resistivity. And even
| magnetization data was not matched between two Arxiv
| papers. Now, here is where we are. After these reviews,
| they never updated their data to solve this issue, but
| they decided to let other guys do their experiment
| instead of them. The easiest way to solve this is to plot
| the resistivity data again on a logarithmic scale. And
| this takes less than a minute because they have raw data.
| This is a very uncommon situation in the scientific
| community.
| cthalupa wrote:
| Both papers were significantly rushed for reasons
| unrelated to the science aspect of it.
|
| Wait for the peer reviewed paper if you are this
| concerned about it.
| username332211 wrote:
| I assume they have more than one sample, don't you?
| Hopefully, if they had only one, they'd say that
| explicitly on one of their papers.
| cthalupa wrote:
| >Don't you think in those conditions it's at least a
| little bit reasonable to demand samples?
|
| No. Because ultimately they don't owe anyone anything
| outside of the standard scientific process. They want to
| get the peer reviewed article published, and have stated
| that if people still want samples after that they will
| provide them.
|
| Half of twitter shitposting about FLOAT THE ROCK and a
| bunch of curious scientists and engineers attempting to
| replicate this doesn't fundamentally change this
| equation. If it's a superconductor now, it'll be a
| superconductor in 6 months.
|
| None of the media hype or unwashed masses treating this
| as science entertainment should significantly impact the
| process they are going through. Assuming they've got an
| RTAPS, they'll get the Nobel Prize regardless of whether
| or not they satisfy everyone's curiosity right this
| moment or a year from now. Assuming they don't have one,
| well, that'll get found out too.
| cryptonector wrote:
| > gone through multiple failed and successful
| replications so far
|
| The "successful" replications are partial. No one knows
| how to make a large enough sample of LK-99 that can be
| tested to definitely show superconductivity (or not) at
| room temp and ambient pressure.
|
| IMO the most bullish research done yet is the theoretical
| research.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > If LK-99 works out, expect some congressmen to use this
| as a bludgeoning tool against the state of US public
| science.
|
| I hope for the same here in Germany. It's way past time
| we actually deal with the sorry state of science funding
| and academia in general across the Western world.
| ncann wrote:
| Yeah and it's not just the US but also
| France/UK/Germany/Canada, all the western countries
| usually held in high regards for science, the lack of
| enthusiasm (for lack of a better word) is rather
| disappointing. I don't think I've seen a single
| university lab in these countries announced "hey we're
| trying to replicate this as well".
| mschuster91 wrote:
| They don't have the funds to do so any more. Everything
| is just project based grants, which often enough aren't
| even enough to run a project to completion. And
| professors have to chase grants and do other bullshit
| paperwork in an awful lot of their time.
| fragmede wrote:
| Given the international reach of the US' War on Drugs, is
| red phosphorus also controlled in other nations? Being
| denied access to the precursors needed makes replication
| far harder.
| WentFullRetard wrote:
| [dead]
| dotnet00 wrote:
| The National Labs have to be a lot more careful with putting
| out potentially incorrect results due to their notoriety,
| being public funded and the public's lack of respect for the
| trial and error involved in the scientific process.
|
| So they'll quietly slog away trying and retrying experiments,
| checking and rechecking their data before finally saying
| anything.
|
| As we saw with other previous big things, like the first
| gravitational wave detection, they took some time to make
| sure that they were right.
|
| I think that if it turns out to be real and national lab
| experiments prove that out, we'll be hearing rumors
| circulating within the field some time before an official
| announcement, just like how there were rumors about LIGO's
| detection circulating for a month before the announcement.
| ciniclinic wrote:
| [dead]
| carabiner wrote:
| These are completely different activities... Doing some week
| long materials experiment has almost no relevance to production
| aerospace engineering with regulatory burdens and multi-year
| test schedules. I might as well say that any mathematician who
| can publish a paper quickly about boundary functions can also
| be a very effective SWE at Amazon working on cloud.
| sanxiyn wrote:
| World first replication was done by Iris Alexandra using her
| own accelerated process and there is no way Varda Space could
| have beaten her.
| beowulfey wrote:
| Do we actually know who that is though? I thought it was
| pseudoanonymous. It's a new twitter account at least.
| sanxiyn wrote:
| It is pseudonymous, although the handle iris_IGB suggests
| she works at IGB, Institute of Gene Biology, Russian
| Academy of Sciences.
|
| https://genebiology.ru/
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I have to assume that charlatans have long since figured
| out how to select social media names that insinuate a
| relationship to a well known organization, when in fact
| no such relationship exists.
| iamshs wrote:
| Her rock actually floats. Did it all in the kitchen too. She
| should rightly be credited as first one.
| mtillman wrote:
| They use a magnet for movement. "When the magnet is placed
| parallel and flat to the bottom of the beaker, the sample
| stands at a 90deg angle to the field."
| sanxiyn wrote:
| More than that, she calculated how high it will float, and
| how height will depend on temperature, before starting the
| experiment, and confirmed all her predictions.
| ThisIsMyAltFace wrote:
| Where did she do this? I haven't found anything in her
| twitter feed
| epups wrote:
| Wow, that's hugely impressive! Where can I find more info
| about this? Is it all on twitter?
| terrut wrote:
| She has been alluding to old Soviet scientists having a
| theoretical foundation for the type of conductivity
| shown. She posted a link to this comment that explains
| some of the background:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36996337
|
| Check out her twitter for some real fun rants @iris_IGB
| mycologos wrote:
| I don't understand why people are attaching any weight to
| Alexandra's claims. AFAIK, it's a pseudonymous account that
| has provided no evidence that couldn't be easily faked. You
| might object that the evidence provided by the non-
| pseudonymous scientists could also be faked, but the key
| distinction is that they're attaching real, professional
| identities to their claims. There are reputational
| consequences to making things up. They have skin in the game.
| A pseudonymous account doesn't. Why should we believe them?
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Not quite pseudonymous - she says her name is Iris
| Alexandria and that she's affiliated with the IGB in Russia
| and is now collaborating with the MEPI in producing more
| and measuring samples and that this is the reason why she
| doesn't publish any data as it's not hers and is bound for
| a publication, and that some of the researchers there are
| familiar with alternative superconducting theories which
| LK99's late PI was basing off on.
|
| Of course it could all be faked, but she is prima facie
| attaching real, professional identities to her claims.
| BaseballPhysics wrote:
| > I don't understand why people are attaching any weight to
| Alexandra's claims.
|
| Confirmation bias is a hell of a drug.
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| _biggest eyeroll ever_
|
| That person's twitter feed reads like the howlings and
| scribblings of someone in a manic depressive cycle. I'm a
| little surprised _anyone_ would take them seriously.
| sashank_1509 wrote:
| A worthless replication. Grainy photos of supposed samples
| floating. When asked for videos she just insulted the people
| asking for videos to no end and to date has not provided any.
| No measurements provided either.
| ThisIsMyAltFace wrote:
| It wasn't even a replication by their own admission!
|
| https://nitter.net/iris_IGB/status/1685774956330635264#m
|
| They won't publish a preprint on their version because they
| think it would be "unfair"!
|
| https://nitter.net/iris_IGB/status/1687020011548770304#m
|
| Every post this person makes throws up more red flags. I
| have no idea why people believe any of their claims besides
| "haha anime girl"
| sudosysgen wrote:
| I think you're misinterpreting the second tweet, I read
| it as "I can't publish a preprint myself since I'm not
| the only one working on it now, and my team doesn't feel
| our work is ready for publication". Of course it can
| still be bullshit but it makes sense that a biochemist
| doesn't have the means to test this material and that a
| credible physics institute wouldn't want to rush
| publication if they aren't sure of their results.
| stephenitis wrote:
| I believe she said it wasn't a replication because she
| had changed the formula.
|
| She seemed to have problems with the efficiency of the
| original formula, which is why I believe she doesn't
| believe it's replication what she produced may in the end
| not be LK-99.
|
| It seems like she's in the process of getting X-ray
| diffraction analysis (XRD) done.
|
| There has been several fake videos placed out there on
| the Internet.
|
| There is a quote by jay-z I'll paraphrase
|
| " Men lie
|
| Women lie
|
| But replicable science don't lie. "
|
| The mixture of USSR tweets has patriotic Americans so
| ruffled that some can't see through their disbelief and
| rage.
| ThisIsMyAltFace wrote:
| >I believe she said it wasn't a replication because she
| had changed the formula. She seemed to have problems with
| the efficiency of the original formula, which is why I
| believe she doesn't believe it's replication what she
| produced may in the end not be LK-99.
|
| Yes, it isn't replication, and the only proof that her
| modified substance does anything interesting is a photo
| of a single grain suspended inside a small tube. She
| hasn't written anything clarifying the process from her
| vague twitter thread, she hasn't posted a video showing
| the sample's behavior (which would be better than
| nothing), she hasn't shown any measurements, and when
| people ask for these things, she gives unconvincing
| excuses.
|
| And yet every thread is full of people saying she was the
| first to replicate. The USSR tweets are a little
| eyerolling but not the main issue
| s5300 wrote:
| >> World first replication was done by Iris Alexandra using
| her own accelerated process and there is no way Varda Space
| could have beaten her.
|
| World first _public_ replication
|
| As much respect for her as I have & as much I've enjoyed
| watching this pan out, a U.S. DoE affiliated lab or other
| nation states' equivalent likely did something in the same
| timeframe.
|
| People working in those labs are unfathomably smart &
| talented.
| TheAceOfHearts wrote:
| Do you have any evidence or are you just speculating?
|
| I don't doubt that the people working in these labs are
| very smart and talented, perfectly capable of their own
| replication attempt. But would they rush to try replicating
| it immediately after the paper's publication?
| devwastaken wrote:
| Private R&D has always towered above academics. People who can
| compete create significant innovations. People who can't
| compete stay as professors doing research because it's the
| easiest and most convenient pathway.
| alsaaro wrote:
| Maybe.
|
| A better explanation for the slowness of the national
| laboratories is they their word will be taken more
| definitively on this issue than anyone else.
|
| They are the ones with reputations and have to answer to
| critics in the private sector, amateur sector, and in
| Congress.
|
| I think their slowness is an encouraging sign, it means LK99
| isn't easily debunked.
| ciniclinic wrote:
| [dead]
| stephenitis wrote:
| I was impressed by this being an extra time endeavor.
|
| It does show genuine scientific curiousity from Andrew and his
| team(they might just be along for the ride).
|
| If more company bonding events could be live streamed/tweeted
| experimental replication attempts of novel compounds instead of
| happy hours.
|
| The world would be a stranger place.
| blackkettle wrote:
| 100% true and actually a very interesting statement. Can you
| imagine if he had tried to present this idea to the c-suite as
| a potential marketing or PR coup?!
| wiz21c wrote:
| Do we really care if they confirm it in a week or two ? Are
| we on a hurry ? I don't know anything bout supraconductors
| but given the number of failing attempts to repicalte (and
| the number succeeding), I would not be suprised if it'd take
| quite some time before we can be certain. Moreover, we'll
| need a consensus among all the people who understand the
| subject. So, a week or even a month won't make any
| difference.
|
| We're not talking about a vaccine.
| Torkel wrote:
| As engineers we are given building blocks that we can build
| things from. Iron, steel, copper, plastic. Every once in a
| while a new building block arrives. It takes a while for us
| to figure out how to use it. But when we do, the world
| changes.
|
| - batteries + touch screens => iPhone
|
| - batteries got better => Tesla
|
| - reinforced concrete => pretty much all the worlds
| buildings and bridges
|
| - neodymium magnets + gyros => drones
|
| A room temperature superconductor... well, that changes
| things on a completely new level. Order of magnitude
| smaller losses plus order of magnitude higher magnetic
| fields? OMFG can we build SciFi things from this if it pans
| out.
|
| So yeah - we are in a hurry. If this pans out, there will
| be a massive shift in how pretty much anything is made. And
| the reward for the people who can figure it out first are
| insane, in terms of potential value created.
| pm215 wrote:
| We're in a hurry in the sense that we don't want to leave
| investigation of this on the back burner for a few
| months, but we're not in a hurry in the sense that it's
| going to make any difference in practice whether a lab
| group reports today that they've reproduced it, or takes
| a bit more time to be careful and reports more thoroughly
| in two weeks time. Any first mover advantages are likely
| to accrue to the groups who come up with a reliable
| reproduction method over the next couple of months, not
| to the ones who send out the first press release and
| twitter post this week.
| Torkel wrote:
| From a scientific perspective, you are probably correct.
|
| But think about it from a company/wealth creation
| perspective. Are you then really sure the correct course
| of action is to take it chill?
| pm215 wrote:
| My point partly is that as outside observers we can't
| deduce "is taking it chill" merely because we haven't
| seen two press releases and three tweetstorms from any
| particular lab yet. They might be slogging away but not
| caring to report every step on the path to the outside
| world.
| ironborn123 wrote:
| The point is not whether it takes one week or two weeks.
|
| But eastern competition is fierce, and the western world
| is mired in esg and bureaucracy.
|
| Something is rotten at a general level, and if its not
| fixed soon, this trend of lagging behind will also start
| manifesting where it starts to hurt.
| anonylizard wrote:
| This is why Elon takes dumps on competitor companies.
|
| He understands how to market in the social media age.
| willis936 wrote:
| Ever felt schedule pressure / been on the critical path?
| This is that concept applied globally. The hurry is that
| delays in initial research measurably delays potential
| rollout. I'd like to see this material meaningfully used
| in my lifetime for its potential global society wide
| benefits / ease of human suffering / margin on total
| ecological collapse. The pace set now affects the mean
| and standard deviation of probability of that happening
| on the timeline.
| WentFullRetard wrote:
| [dead]
| blackkettle wrote:
| My point was not actually about the ultimate result of
| replication. This guy undoubtably performed an indirect
| marketing coup for his company by engaging competently on
| this tangentially related topic and then following through.
|
| In my experience though, if he had made any effort to link
| those two things prior to doing this - e.g. by proposing
| this as an internally sponsored marketing stunt - it would
| probably have been rejected.
| DarmokJalad1701 wrote:
| Eh, I have met the CEO of Varda. They are very much a
| startup and have that startup energy. One of the founders
| of Varda has been very vocally supportive of this on
| Twitter as well.
| mtillman wrote:
| Of course, this is all Varda IP as they're in California
| and anything a head of research performs that generates
| IP is owned by the employer.
| jasonjmcghee wrote:
| Is that a law in California? My understanding of the
| labor law is that California protects employees, so that
| if they sign a contract assigning IP to the company
| (which is almost a sure bet today, but not a law afaik-
| please correct me otherwise) they are actually protected
| such that it only applies if:
|
| - using company resources, such as time, hardware, or
| office space, unless otherwise stated.
|
| Clearly the case here, but my understanding of this law
| doesn't align with how you described it.
| lyapunova wrote:
| The word "bullish" and fundamental science should stay as far
| away from each other as possible.
| huijzer wrote:
| > not a single big academic lab has managed to complete any
| sort of replication to date!
|
| They are still busy getting approvals from three layers of
| management and one group of lawyers.
| thepasswordis wrote:
| Don't forget the DEA.
|
| The reason the Varda team even took this long is because they
| couldn't get red phosphorus.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| You just have to be registered / approved with the DEA --
| most labs are and can freely order phosphorus and almost
| other chemicals with no further burden. Seems like Varda
| didn't have any prior use for restricted chemicals so they
| hadn't registered yet, a not uncommon situation that will
| be quickly resolved for their next attempts I'm sure.
| TillE wrote:
| Indeed, DEA-listed chemicals don't even require a DEA
| license, it's just a bit of paperwork for new buyers, so
| the DEA can later come and ask uncomfortable questions if
| they suspect your usage is not legitimate.
| DoctorOetker wrote:
| Currently out of office, will respond as soon as possible
| after Impostor Syndrome therapy session is over.
| toxik wrote:
| Doesn't ring true for me at all, academia is many things but
| if your supervisor is onboard, you can generally do anything.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Who can do anything? Things cost money and money is usually
| already earmarked for other things. The labs that can
| engage with this have both some sort of a slush fund or
| another account appropriate to charge these fishing
| expeditions to, and also a post doc who somehow has plenty
| of time on their hands to drop everything they are doing
| and validate a dubious result.
| huijzer wrote:
| Okay still stuck in peer review then
| brainwipe wrote:
| For journal publish, yes but not for doing the actual
| work. If you find something interesting, you can go fast.
| bglazer wrote:
| Nope you can just put a preprint out. Like it or not,
| academic labs are probably busy doing things like
| checking their data and doing multiple replicates varying
| conditions. You know, science.
| huijzer wrote:
| Yes, exactly. And getting approvals from three layers of
| management. You know, science.
|
| I'm pushing back against academia because I think the
| system is pretty much a mess. Academics believe that we
| got all the nice technological innovation because of
| academia. I think it is despite academia. Most money
| going there is just wasted on writing not what you think
| is right but what you think will be published, waiting
| for peer review, and other bureaucracy. The main problem
| is that academia works with the belief that science needs
| to be rigorous since bad science might damage their
| reputation. However, this is how governments think, but
| not how scientists should think! Would the world be a
| better place if any new website, company, or YouTuber
| should be reviewed by peers first? No. Just like science,
| these are strong link problems [1].
|
| [1] https://www.experimental-history.com/p/science-is-a-
| strong-l...
| bglazer wrote:
| I'm in an academic lab right now. I have never once had
| to get approval from three levels of management to do any
| experiment, nor have I ever heard of anyone having to do
| that. I'm not even sure who would be three levels of
| "management" above me.
| BaseballPhysics wrote:
| I'm sorry but your facts don't comport with my
| preconceived notions so you are wrong prima facie.
| willis936 wrote:
| Indeed. I've worked at two academic labs and one startup.
| The talent density at the startup is higher, but the
| academic labs were far scrappier and resourceful with
| limited resources. Venture capital makes people fat and
| lazy. They forget what it's like to operate on fumes.
| alberth wrote:
| ELI5, can someone please.
|
| This stuff is over my head (what I'm looking at, ramifications,
| etc)
|
| I'm also confused because I see conflicting things (e.g. "room
| temperature" but video says "500C").
|
| Also, is this real or fake? I've seen comments on both.
| Loic wrote:
| 500degC/min cool. This is the cooling rate. It should be
| written 500K/min. He explains that he had no data about the
| cooling rate from the original paper and as such is going to
| test several rates.
| refulgentis wrote:
| K has same dimension as C, K = C + 273.15
| sebzim4500 wrote:
| >what I'm looking at, ramifications, etc)
|
| It's showing a sample of something that might be partially a
| superconductor (as in, one side of it might be superconducting
| and one side might not be). It's probably not a complete
| superconductor, since it would be floating if it was. Some
| people are saying it's a very weird magnet.
|
| If it's a superconductor then this could be comparable in
| impact to the development of the transistor. As in, it won't
| change things overnight but in 50 years people will look back
| at it as the beginning of a new era of technology.
|
| >I see conflicting things (e.g. "room temperature" but video
| says "500C").
|
| I think the 500C refers to the manufacturing process, not the
| current temperature.
|
| >Also, is this real or fake? I've seen comments on both.
|
| The video is almost certainly real, but it may not show a
| superconductor. The risk isn't intentional fraud, it's just
| hard to tell with these small, impure samples.
| ssijak wrote:
| There is a Checz lab also documenting the process
| https://twitter.com/CondMatfyz
| yread wrote:
| Czech
| tw1984 wrote:
| I am totally confused, it is documented in the original south
| korean paper, why anyone would want to rely on such second hand
| unverified info when first hand info from the original
| inventors are freely available to everyone?
| TheAceOfHearts wrote:
| Having multiple groups document and share their progress
| while attempting to replicate LK-99 is exciting and it
| captures people's imagination. People want to see LK-99 being
| replicated by multiple sources. Aside from that, as I
| understand it the information in the original South Korean
| paper leaves out a lot of details on how to fully replicate
| their findings.
| ssijak wrote:
| not sure what you are saying. other labs are trying to
| replicate what Koreans published and are documenting the
| their process of replication
| threeseed wrote:
| Also it's great that all of the labs have their own style
| for how they replicate it.
| mholm wrote:
| It is documented fairly poorly in the South Korean paper. Not
| atrociously poorly, but enough that there's a fair bit of
| ambiguity, and several top labs have failed to replicate for
| this reason. When replication is this difficult, hundreds of
| labs doing experiments will give tremendous data on the
| principles behind what create the material, moreso than one
| lab repeating hundreds of small tweaks.
| yreg wrote:
| https://nitter.net/CondMatfyz
| amluto wrote:
| To me, this doesn't really look like the little sample is trying
| to levitate. It looks like it's trying to _rotate_ , almost like
| it's trying to line up with the magnetic field.
|
| Magnetic dipoles in a magnetic field experience a _torque_ , and
| if a little sliver of stuff experiences a torque trying to make
| it point a particular direction, this could easily overcome the
| force pulling it toward the magnet.
|
| (The torque on a dipole is proportional to the applied field. The
| force is proportional to the _gradient_ of the field. And the
| experimenters seem to be using a pretty big flat magnet or a big
| solenoid, close to the center, which is likely to have a fairly
| spatially constant field near the surface.)
|
| I'm reminded of once holding a bar magnet in a small plasma
| testbed electromagnet. Small = a few feet long and maybe 2 feet
| across. (The big one across the room was about the size of a semi
| truck IIRC.). I naively expected the magnet to be pulled in
| toward the center. Nope, not so much, but it tried quite hard to
| twist itself in my hands.
| gabesullice wrote:
| Nitter:
| https://nitter.net/andrewmccalip/status/1687405505604734978#...
| fosterfriends wrote:
| As someone new to the Twitter sphere - could some help me
| understand Nitter?
| yoavm wrote:
| It's an open-source privacy oriented and no bullshit
| interface to Twitter.
| fosterfriends wrote:
| Out of curiosity, how do they sync through Twitter's now-
| very-closed API?
| blamazon wrote:
| Off the top of my head I think it's basically using the
| same publicly undocumented API that the Twitter-hosted
| front ends use - Twitter did successfully block nitter et
| al recently with the "must be logged in to view tweets"
| change but rolled that back (partly?) after Threads
| launched.
|
| I surmise that to block such access by Nitter completely
| while keeping Twitter's own front ends open to the
| public, Twitter would need to be extensively re-factored
| on both the front and back ends, a goal that the
| organization may not be capable of successfully
| completing at this time, but is presumably working
| towards.
| [deleted]
| littlestymaar wrote:
| Twitter is so slow to load on mobile that it's faster to hand-
| replace "twitter.com" with "nitter.nl" than to wait for the
| load time and the close the multiple pop-ups.
| ssijak wrote:
| pardon my ignorance but why are people posting nitter links
| every time, what is wrong with original twitter urls?
| lopkeny12ko wrote:
| Because people on HN love to hate on Elon.
|
| "Elon bad! Twitter bad!" It's uninspired and tiring.
| giantrobot wrote:
| Yes. It must be that and not at all the fact that Twitter
| is unavailable at worst or degraded at best if you don't
| have an account. There's something uninspired and tiring
| but I don't think it's people avoiding Twitter.
| gmerc wrote:
| Elon is turning his platform to pay for misinformation and
| rage baiting. No need to support that even passively.
| Swenrekcah wrote:
| You are not wrong. I certainly was no fan of the old
| twitter's ultra woke circle jerk and bullyism but you could
| at least mostly ignore it and the verified accounts were
| actual verified people.
|
| Today the misinformation and shitposting crap is impossible
| to avoid, the top comments are invariably random 8 dollar
| people (?) that add little to the discussion and porn bots
| / onlyfans all over the place.
|
| On top of that it seems there might be a bias in the
| accounts that get selected for payouts and there is indeed
| quite the incentive for ragebait there.
| gmerc wrote:
| 70% of the payouts in the top tier (10 people) go to Elon
| h11h wrote:
| If not logged in, Twitter shows no replies, not even ones in
| the same thread.
| userbinator wrote:
| Loads very quickly and viewable without any JS.
| tambourine_man wrote:
| How's Nitter still working after all these recent
| restrictions from Twitter?
| flotzam wrote:
| https://github.com/zedeus/nitter/pull/927
| tambourine_man wrote:
| Thanks, but do you have more info on this new
| authentication method? Is Musk suddenly OK with it? What
| has changed?
| nzoschke wrote:
| Twitter isn't loading at all for me at this moment. No idea
| if it's me, or twitter or being logged out or logged in or
| what.
|
| Nitter let's me see the content instantly.
| lifthrasiir wrote:
| Twitter nowadays is much more strict about rate limits from
| non-logged-in clients.
| mr_sturd wrote:
| Twitter tries to force sign in/up, when you scroll down
| through replies.
| jansan wrote:
| This allows people without a Twitter account to read tweets
| and replies. Also, some people (as myself) have blocked
| Twitter.
| pera wrote:
| Twitter is basically broken if you don't login, compare this:
|
| https://twitter.com/andrewmccalip
|
| https://nitter.net/andrewmccalip
|
| In Twitter the latest tweet I see is from July, in Nitter is
| 22 minutes ago. Additionally in Twitter I get 3
| notices/popups that I need to close.
| nicce wrote:
| We should discourage the use of walled-gardens for public
| discussion anyway. Otherwise nothing changes ever.
| dillydogg wrote:
| Do you mean closed source software? Because that would
| rule out Hackernews. But I agree on the principle. Maybe
| it's the type of discussion. I would be happier if this
| very exciting superconductor story was unfolding
| somewhere else than Twitter.
| hjek wrote:
| Hackernews was released as free / open source some years
| back. There's a community managed fork:
| https://github.com/arclanguage/anarki/
| orra wrote:
| A walled garden is when users contribute the data for
| free, but the data is stuck. No free API access.
| dillydogg wrote:
| Ah, makes sense, thanks for the clarification
| owenmarshall wrote:
| "Walled garden" is orthogonal to "open source"
|
| A walled garden is a site that degrades significantly or
| is unavailable without an account, like Twitter. Anyone
| can view all of HN modulo dead comments without an
| account.
|
| You can have a fully open source walled garden.
| dillydogg wrote:
| I appreciate the clarification, thanks. This forum is
| open to the public at the moment. Though Hackernews could
| go down or take the conversation offline at any moment
| (this is an issue of trust more than anything, and I
| think HN does a good job, certainly more than Twitter)
| rvnx wrote:
| Links behind logins wall/paywall should be totally
| forbidden, Twitter, Quora, news websites, etc. I don't even
| get why they are indexed by Google, as this is cloaking,
| and forbidden by the ToS (+ gets annoying)
| vinyl7 wrote:
| Google has a rule where links from google can't be
| paywalled. So you can see Quora posts if you enter from a
| Google link, but not if you go to the URL directly.
| mrkeen wrote:
| Yeah that would be nice, but pretty hard to enforce.
|
| I just read until I hit the first popup, then I back out.
|
| I'd downvote if I could.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Google gave up on checking or enforcing these things
| because they'd otherwise lose traffic and ad revenue.
| ssijak wrote:
| I was not aware of this, I'm always logged in when I visit
| twitter
| willis936 wrote:
| And I'm not.
| rsynnott wrote:
| In this brave new Twitter-y world, if the Twitter link loads
| at all (hardly a sure thing lately) it'll only show the tweet
| without any replies, unless you're logged in. Nitter will
| show the whole thing (it's ultimately dependent on Twitter so
| may also be broken, but in several recent partial Twitter
| outages nitter has been usable while the twitter web UI was
| not loading).
| timeon wrote:
| I do not have account. Even if Twitter links loads (which is
| not always the case) - there are no comments/thread.
| dm_me_dogs wrote:
| My online life has been way less stressful since I both deleted
| my Twitter account, and set up my own Nitter instance.
|
| Same goes for Reddit.
| mderazon wrote:
| What does setting up your own Nitter instance give you that
| the hosted one doesn't? Just additional privacy?
|
| As for Reddit, is there another frontend?
| thepasswordis wrote:
| This has to be the new version of:
|
| "I don't even own a TV!"
| dvngnt_ wrote:
| social media is much worse than TV though
| [deleted]
| swader999 wrote:
| HN is all I have left. Been this way for a few years. I guess
| I still use Twitter, but just for local emergency news.
| gamegoblin wrote:
| I follow ~200 extremely high quality people on twitter,
| never use the algorithmic timeline -- just the "Following"
| tab, and it is easily 10x more signal to noise than HN for
| me, I'm almost upset I didn't start using it sooner.
|
| Only works if you can resist the temptation to follow
| national news orgs, politics, etc. In my little niche,
| though, I essentially never see any of that, even less than
| one sees on HN. It's all just tech, AL/ML, space/rockets,
| startups, etc.
| [deleted]
| yonatan8070 wrote:
| Wouldn't a regular fleck of magnetic metal do this too? I've seen
| many examples where metal dust arranges itself into lines along
| the magnetic field lines like this video is showing
|
| I'm absolutely not an expert on any of this so I'm probably
| missing something
| xsmasher wrote:
| A piece of magnetized iron would flip the other way if you
| turned over the magnet. That's why in the Chinese videos you
| see them remove the magnet, flip it over, and put it back under
| the sample.
|
| The same "end" of LK99 floats, no matter which pole of the
| magnet you put toward the sample.
| lyapunova wrote:
| Why is this being plastered here as fact before the peer review
| process has been completed? It's like we already went through
| this with the first set of claims and are waiting for the
| original peer review to run it's course.
|
| Let this guy publish in the normal format and wait for the
| reviews to see if the findings are legitimate, conflated, or
| spurious.
| xcodevn wrote:
| Can anyone conduct a proper measurement of resistivity versus
| temperature and determine whether it's a superconductor or not?
| adrian_b wrote:
| In another thread such a measurement has been discussed.
|
| Unfortunately such measurements are not enough for definitive
| conclusions, because all that they can show is that below some
| temperature the resistance becomes smaller than the error of
| the measuring equipment.
|
| Moreover, because the samples obtained so far are extremely
| inhomogeneous, they do not show a definite transition
| temperature, which would have made superconductivity much more
| plausible.
|
| In any case, the results obtained so far are enough for showing
| that it is worthwhile to invest time and money for developing a
| method of producing samples that are larger and more pure,
| because whatever they are, they must have unusual properties.
|
| The best would be to develop a method for making monocrystals,
| because this material has an asymmetric crystal structure,
| which might have very anisotropic properties.
|
| The most interesting properties of semiconductors could not be
| discovered during the first century after their discovery by
| Faraday, because they were not available as pure monocrystals.
| Only after the methods for growing pure crystals have been
| developed during WW2 (for radar diodes), it became possible to
| measure the intrinsic properties of the semiconductors and to
| design new devices using them, and then the semiconductor
| industry has grown exponentially.
|
| With this kind of non-metallic superconductor, the problems may
| be similar.
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