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The Sagan standard is the adage that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” (a concept abbreviated as ECREE). But one can hope such evidence is f
by intrasight 3y ago
The Sagan standard is the adage that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” (a concept abbreviated as ECREE). But one can hope such evidence is forthcoming. And if it is, then short the oil majors.
- hatsunearu 3y agosuperconductivity isn't really "extraordinary" though, the evidence to tell whether superconductivity is happening is relatively mundane.
- abtinf 3y agoOr go long—such a breakthrough would radically increase demand for energy.
- nine_k 3y agoDepending on the expense of making the new material, it may become actually feasible to build solar panels across Sahara and feed both Africa and Europe with the electricity generated, because transmission will become lossless and physically compact.
- WanderPanda 3y agoGeopolitically infeasible, look at the mayhem caused by nord stream alone
- nine_k 3y agoMaybe it could be a stabilizing factor, because the many interests involved would be mostly aligned. However unstable Middle East is, most of the time no oil well is on fire, or in a war zone.
- WanderPanda 3y agoIt is not about the steady state being unstable on its own, it is about how easily it can be brought out of equilibrium with a very small force (of a hand full of people). An inherent flaw in the centralized nature of such a system
- nine_k 3y agoHow easily Saudi oil industry could be brought out of its equilibrium? How easy was it to do that for Kuwaiti oil industry, and how long did it last? When enough interests are aligned, equilibria stay pretty steady, exactly because there are several powerful interests.
- intrasight 3y agoIt wouldn't be centralized
- brutusborn 3y agoYou can already do that with long distance DC. The problems aren’t technical.
- aqme28 3y agoThe other paper from them claims to have a video of room-temperature magnetic levitation with one of their samples, but I haven't been able to find the link.
- balloonthief 3y agohttps://sciencecast.org/casts/suc384jly50n https://sciencecast.org/casts/suc384jly50n
- floxy 3y agoRegular evidence will suffice. If people can make the material and levitate a small permanent magnet above the sample at room temperature, that will be sufficient.
- nine_k 3y ago"Extraordinarily" may mean here "reproduced in 100 laboratories consistently", beyond any doubt.
- floxy 3y ago>"reproduced in 100 laboratories consistently" That's a pretty high bar. Everyone has their own threshold of skepticism, but if NREL announced next week that they followed the recipe and it was superconducting at room temperature, I'd be willing to bet money on it being real.
- nine_k 3y agoHigh indeed, as in "extraordinary". I think that "reproduced at 100 labs" is near the level of reproduction at any university lab, maybe even as a part of students coursework. Which would actually be great, since we don't have trouble reproducing some other important electromagnetic and quantum phenomena, like light diffraction, at an ordinary university lab.
- floxy 3y agoYes, I'm saying my threshold is a lot lower than reproducibility at 100 labs.
- jjk166 3y agoIf 99 labs reproduce the results and 1 doesn't, my guess would be that the one lab screwed up. Realistically, once you get a handful of independent reproductions, the odds that something is an error or a fraud drop to basically nil.