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This is an unreviewed preprint coming out of South Korea. If it’s reproducible it would be the biggest scientific discovery of the last hundred years. It will l
by slashdev 3y ago
This is an unreviewed preprint coming out of South Korea. If it’s reproducible it would be the biggest scientific discovery of the last hundred years. It will literally reshape the world.
However, the most likely thing is they made a mistake and the paper will be withdrawn.
But imagine if it’s true.
- alsaaro 3y agoThey claim to have observed the Meisner effect, quantum locking unique to superconductors, a pretty big signal, so more likely fraud than a mistake.
- sfink 3y agoYes, normally when people come up with some BS about room temperature superconducting, they really just mean they've observed one of the indirect effects of superconductivity. "If you put an ohmmeter in my funky circuit, it displays zero!" Which usually just means you've come up with a clever way to break an ohmmeter. Ejecting the magnetic field (the Meissner effect) is a way better sign. I find it very hard to believe that this could be true, but at least they're measuring the right things.
- giarc 3y agoHow long do you think it'll take for the scientific community to determine whether this is fraud, error or the real deal?
- scarmig 3y agoLess than a week. It's a simple material to synthesize, and the tests conducted on it are pretty typical with effect sizes that don't require any sophisticated statistics to observe.
- rotexo 3y agoYeah, very probably fraud. Only puzzle is why they would choose something so easy for other labs to try (and fail) to replicate.
- carabiner 3y agoDesperate people do crazy things. This is career-ending fraud. South Korea has the highest suicide rate in the world. The pressure to achieve is enormous and makes people shortsighted.
- mrguyorama 3y agoThis also wouldn't be the first time a south korean scientist blatantly made shit up to be a super special scientist in ROK. All judgement withheld until we get a few more labs chiming in with their results though.
- hinkley 3y agoI haven't touched much physics since college. Could the Meisner effect be observed in a material that is not superconducting? Or would that be new physics if it were the case? I suppose that would be a useful material even if it couldn't be used for high current applications.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Mizza 3y ago"We believe that our new development will be a brand-new historical event that opens a new era for humankind." Hell of a way to end a paper.
- ZiiS 3y agoIf iron was worth naming an era after this will be.
- botro 3y agoBut they've trademarked the name KL-99 (®) in their follow-up paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2307.12037.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/2307.12037.pdf
- WASDx 3y agoStone age Bronze age Iron age LK-99 (®) age
- optimalsolver 3y agoIf this is real, I wouldn't even mind.
- arrowsmith 3y agoCan someone ELI5 to those of us who aren't even sure what a superconductor is?
- HDThoreaun 3y agoA material with no electrical resistance. Build a wire out of it and the voltage will be the same on both ends.
- MayeulC 3y agoThat also means that electrons flow unimpeded from one side to the other. Great for energy transmission (though you can't put too much current, superconductivity breaks down under strong fields). Great for fast circuits, such as CPUs, that don't waste energy just transmitting data. Great for storing energy (in principle) by just making a loop and let current flow indefinitely. Related, great for building powerful magnets (that are just such a loop) without wasting too much energy. Applications: MRI machines (they already use superconductors but are bulky due to the need for cooling) and other powerful magnets: LHC/particle accelerators, Tokamaks/plasma control/fusion. But also improved motors and generators. Nice for levitating stuff since they levitate above magnets "for free" (due to their interaction with electrical fields, they reject magnetic fields). Possible applications for maglev (trains, etc), magnetic bearings, etc. And possibly a lot of new applications opened up if you remove the need for cooling (Faraday cages?). Of course, it all depends on how much current and temperature it can handle. But if this is real, just having one material is game-changing, and it will surely be improved upon by looking for similar properties in other materials. This one contains lead, which is a non-starter for a lot of applications due to its toxicity. Someone else wrote a few use-cases in that other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36866686 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36866686
- downWidOutaFite 3y agoEven if we found the perfect material, where it was easy and cheap to create long strong wires for power transmission as well as semiconductor-scale nano wires, we'd be gaining something like (wild ass guess) 20% gain in efficiency. 20% would be nice but would it really beat the last hundred years of discoveries? I don't think so, especially with digital tech's profound world-reshaping continuing to accelerate.
- benlivengood 3y agoSpecifically you could lay undersea superconducting cables around the world and rely on a global electrical grid which allows for nearly 100% solar generation. Superconducting magnets become cheap and widely available which allows for maglev trains at massive scale. Costs for the LHC and similar experiments would drop dramatically. MRIs would only require air conditioning, if that; Modern cell phones are sufficient to compute tomography. Magnetic confinement fusion also becomes cheaper and easier. Electric cars could use superconducting motor magnets allowing for even greater power to weight ratios and efficiency. Just a few things off the top of my non-mechanical-engineer head.
- nine_k 3y agoI think not just maglev: a lot of typical bearings could possibly be switched from ball / roll to maglev, saving a lot on friction and maintenance. Undersea cables are a pie in the sky; current high-load cables in urban an industrial areas could be made much smaller, simpler, and lossless. I wonder if transformers, currently huge and expensive, could be made better with this, too; at least the ohmic losses could be removed, and thus a lot of need for cooling, and the fire hazards.
- eterevsky 3y ago> the biggest scientific discovery of the last hundred years I would say that electronic computers would take take the first spot for me, but I don't deny that room-temperature superconductors would be pretty close to the top.
- rewmie 3y agoI'd say that not keeping electronic computers in mind is a testament to how big of a discovery they were, in the sense that we need to think hard about transformative discoveries to realize that not so long ago humanity didn't had electronic computers,and yet they are everywhere.
- slashdev 3y agoI’d say electronic computers were the biggest invention of the last 100 years. But it wasn’t one discovery, that built upon many, many discoveries and breakthroughs. As a singular discovery goes, it’s hard to think of something that tops this. Of course, even if this is true, bringing it to market in a practical way will probably look a lot more like the invention of electronic computers.
- LinAGKar 3y agoThe transistor could probably qualify
- slashdev 3y agoYeah, probably.
- MayeulC 3y agoHmm, maybe the atomic bomb? The wright brothers's first flight took place about 120 years ago, so it doesn't qualify. However, in both cases, people knew it was a matter of time before someone figured the proper recipe. Room temperature/pressure semiconductors? That was still science fiction yesterday. In short, you are probably right, with the sibling commenting on (BJT) transistors.
- 3y ago
- PaulHoule 3y agoTo change the world it has to be manufacturable at scale, stable, etc.
- rewmie 3y agoI don't agree. Producing something at scale is only relevant if the goal is mass commercial distribution. Communication satellites changed the world and they are practically all (i.e., some exceptions such as space-x constellation) one-off builds of single-shot projects.
- barelyauser 3y agoCommunication satellites only changed the world because they broadcast to mass produced receivers.
- rewmie 3y agoMass produce as many receivers you want and don't launch the ad-hoc satellite. How useful are the receivers?
- barelyauser 3y agoThere is always low range broadcast I suppose.
- akasakahakada 3y agoI believe receiver use same tech as transmitter. When you have one, you must have the counterpart.
- rewmie 3y ago> I believe receiver use same tech as transmitter. The hard problem solved by satellites is getting the satellite in orbit and getting it to stay there. Humanity already could send radio waves across the planet. Emitter and receiver is not the hard problem.
- jakedata 3y agoI was with them until I came across Figure D on page 7. It uses Comic Sans and calls the entire paper into question. Please note: this comment is an attempt at humor. Various people seem to have a difficult time discerning humor or sarcasm and choose to downvote. It is also possible (but unlikely) that I am not funny.
- tomashubelbauer 3y agoNeither humor nor sarcasm advance interesting conversations on their own IMO.
- jakedata 3y agoAnd yet humor and sarcasm can add spice to the conversation. I really did read the entire paper at the level of detail that allowed me to spot the inconsistency in the font. That was not made up, was substantive and should be corrected before it goes to print. The PS was also very real as the grandparent gets buried under downvotes.
- vpribish 3y agoroom temperature superconductor does not need 'spice', save the clowning for something trivial
- DrBazza 3y agoIndeed, huge if true. I hope it's not another cold fusion moment.
- abecedarius 3y agoScientific discoveries since 1923 include quantum mechanics, just for the first 1920s discovery to come to mind. Still it'd be a prime new part of "living in the sci-fi future" for me.
- yreg 3y agoAlso antibiotics, DNA, personal computers
- carabiner 3y agoSouth Korea has been desperate for a Nobel prize for a long time. Don't be surprised if they jumped the gun for a false exciting result for national pride.
- Workaccount2 3y agoYou're not gonna get a noble prize for unverified results.
- laverya 3y agoIt's almost happened before! https://youtu.be/nfDoml-Db64 https://youtu.be/nfDoml-Db64
- carabiner 3y agoYa no shit. Desperation makes people do dumb things.
- distortionfield 3y agoYou think this team would jeopardize their reputations by faking this data with such easily verifiable and thus refutable claims?
- whiskeytuesday 3y agoI mean that's almost exactly what happened with cold fusion, not faking so much as convincing yourself. What's the Feynman quote? "The first rule is do not fool yourself and you're the easiest person to fool" - something like that anyway.
- kjs3 3y agoIt's not unheard of. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02401-2 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02401-2
- 3y ago
- zardo 3y agoI don't think mistake is a possibility. If it doesn't superconduct at room temperature, the photo of it levitating has to be faked.
- tigershark 3y agoThere is also a video posted above from where the photo is taken and it doesn’t look fake.
- frognumber 3y agoNo. It's not. The impact won't be bigger than, say, the jet engine (1935), nuclear power (1951), the computer processor (???), the internet (???), DNA (1953), or many others. The past century has had a lot going on.