[HN Gopher] Magnetic field sorting of superconducting graphite p...
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Magnetic field sorting of superconducting graphite particles with
Tc>400K (2024)
Author : ykch
Score : 53 points
Date : 2025-02-13 15:20 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arxiv.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (arxiv.org)
| mapt wrote:
| Is magnetic field sorting a novel method for superconductors in
| general?
| ramses0 wrote:
| I misinterpreted the outcome, my thought was along the lines of
| "are they creating (eg) SSH keys out of magnetic charges and
| radix-sorting them to find the factors" (or something).
|
| eg: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3YnENM0cFg
|
| ...we're at the materials science stage where it's not out of
| the realm of possibility to "do it with the atoms" and "let
| god/physics sort it out".
| vlovich123 wrote:
| So we've gone from the best semiconductor we can manage is -73
| degrees C at huge pressures to we can do it past water boiling?
| This is a huge leap forward no?
|
| > It suggests that, if the Aquadag paint instead of being
| fabricated from normal graphite particles is made from the sorted
| superconducting ones, we would obtain a superconducting paint
| whose resistance might be possibly zero above room temperature
| allowing for the design of superconducting circuits at room
| temperature
|
| There must be some nuance here that requires some expertise to
| understand since I would think Tc up to 500K is way above room
| temperature but they're being very cautious about saying they
| could build such circuits. Is that because circuit manufacturing
| is an even higher temperature process or something else?
|
| This seems like a revolutionary result that's the first step in
| changing everything we do in electronics from computers to
| travel. What's the reason to contain excitement?
| boothby wrote:
| They're claiming to have found a small number of microscopic
| particles that are superconducting at 500K, with details on how
| they found those particles. They acknowledge that making
| contact with those particles to directly test their resistivity
| is particularly challenging. That is, even if this is true,
| there's a long road between the discovery of microscopic
| particles and mass manufacturing / large scale integration.
|
| It would be quite inappropriate for them to brag about
| revolutionizing anything at this stage. The field recently
| witnessed that with overstated claims surrounding LK99. Much
| more appropriate to publish methods and allow other groups to
| verify or refute their findings.
| dcre wrote:
| This is from October 2024 and appears to have made no splash
| whatsoever, which probably tells you what you need to know about
| it.
| pfdietz wrote:
| This was my thought.
| naasking wrote:
| Given the recent public drama from other groups claiming the
| same things, maybe the quiet approach means real science is
| being done here, which takes time to verify.
| waynenilsen wrote:
| lk99 v2.0.0
|
| 400k ~ 260f / 127c
| Timsky wrote:
| Absolutely! You read my mind. Moreover, lk99 was AI-generated.
| Is this one, too?
| radioactivist wrote:
| The idea that graphite may contain in inclusions that are
| superconducting at room temperature is highly speculative
| (putting it mildly) and not an idea that is taken seriously in
| the condensed matter physics community.
| interstice wrote:
| Possibly, but a lot of real progress has been made by trying
| things that turn out to work and then working backwards to
| figure out how.
| radioactivist wrote:
| If this ever works/worked I would agree, but the linked paper
| is not at all convincing.
| dvh wrote:
| I think the idea behind it is really clever. You don't know how
| to manufacture the material. Create a test that separates the
| good particles. Sieve through mountain of crushed material, out
| comes small amount of good stuff. Genius.
| wolfi1 wrote:
| I would call it the "Cinderella Method" after the German
| version of it:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinderella#Aschenpu
| ttel,_by_th... ("Die Guten ins Topfchen, die Schlechten ins
| Kropfchen"_)
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| Agreed very cool. I had seen a previous process where sorting
| out conductive nanotubes from non-conductive ones by inducing a
| current in them and pull them into a different sluice with a
| magnetic field. Interesting stuff.
| tired_and_awake wrote:
| Yeah this is almost common at this point, specifically with
| carbon nano structures. The reason why is it is very
| expensive to manufacture specific structures but cheap and
| easy to make a ton of random structures. So yeah you "just"
| sort through the random ones, of course sorting through to
| find the desired structure can be fantastically difficult,
| but hey it works!
| woah wrote:
| There are a lot of skeptical comments here, but the authors make
| this claim in the abstract:
|
| > We have obtained a concentrate of above room temperature
| superconducting particles.
|
| Is this just a lie?
| teraflop wrote:
| As discussed in the Reddit thread linked elsewhere, this is far
| more likely to be sloppy research and misinterpretation of data
| than a deliberate lie. It's not trivial to accurately determine
| whether a tiny collection of graphite particles is actually
| superconducting.
| metalman wrote:
| all of the standard caviats apply of course, but the premise is
| in itself worthy of attention and fits in with a great deal of
| the background work in all of human technology ,ie: " wait, wait
| some of this stuff is different, look there, there it did a
| THING", its how our ancient ancestors got us ceramics and metals
| and glass. And the history of white light led's started with
| exceptionaly rare, fluke, white light led's, that eventualy were
| proven to be the result of very tiny amounts of "contamenents"
| that produced the effect, took them decades to narrow it down,
| and figure it out, and then scale up to production levels. Now
| the research tools are, way better, smaller, cheaper, and in
| thousands of labs world wide....so
| juancn wrote:
| This sounds too good to be true, yet the paper is oddly
| compelling.
|
| They don't claim to explain how it works, they just provide a
| method to find naturally occurring superconductive particles and
| sort them out, presumably, so we can further study them and
| hopefully, figure out how to make more, more reliably.
| casey2 wrote:
| It should be compelling they been confirming these claims in
| papers for decades now. What a grift.
| thehappypm wrote:
| Would a room temperature superconductor that costs, say, $100k
| for a pound be useful in any way?
| zulban wrote:
| Sounds like it could at least build cheaper MRIs.
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| i wonder if it would efficiently absorb electromagnetic waves
| and through coupling with a more resistive layer thermalize
| that energy.
|
| buyers of such materials could certainly afford that price tag
| 46Bit wrote:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/AskPhysics/comments/1gm4w4i/is_ther...
| asdfman123 wrote:
| What about the superconducting graphite particles with a TC
| <$400k/yr?
| aljgz wrote:
| Now this is a clever comment
| bloopernova wrote:
| What is it about cold temperatures that makes something
| superconductive?
| tired_and_awake wrote:
| The hand waviest simplest answer i can think of is... basically
| quantum effects dominate and require that the background
| thermal noise be eliminated to be pervasive.
|
| Its like trying to juggle on a top of a moving plane - the
| balls won't really do what you want with 300mph winds blowing.
| Go inside on steady ground and your tosses are the dominant
| forces on the balls.
| DarkmSparks wrote:
| I gotta say wow.
|
| This is the first potentially viable mechanism I've heard of that
| might just do this, it's also easily verifiable - using existing
| non room temperature super conductors.
|
| like panning for gold, but using their magnetic properties.
|
| if you can sort say -127'C superconductors by putting them
| through the field at <-127'C
|
| then you can sort 30'C superconductors by putting them through
| the field at <30'C
|
| This sounds like it has great potential across the board - one of
| the biggest issues so far - at least as my very limited knowledge
| understand it - even for the lower temperature superconductors
| has been removing the "bad" material, a "cheap and easy" method
| to do that sounds like a great leap forward.
| Animats wrote:
| Indeed, wow. Has anyone reproduced this result?
|
| The separation process has some similarity to electromagnetic
| separation of uranium isotopes. Only more difficult.
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