27 ms·
Superconductor news: What’s claimed, and how strong the evidence seems to be
- thepaulthomson 3y agoCan't wait to be flying my car to work
- etiam 3y agoThoroughly upvoted and discussed "The first room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductor?" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36864624 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36864624 has barely fallen to second page yet, but as the topic is of exceptional interest, and under development, and Lowe's commentary is usually welcome and well received on HN, maybe some duplication can be justified in this case?
- yreg 3y agoI would welcome a new thread to be honest since it's very difficult to find the new comments in this one.
- scarmig 3y agoOne odd thing that I've not seen any discussion on: the reported heat capacity of LK-99 decreases above 250K, which is pretty atypical. Has there been any commentary on that?
- groestl 3y ago> Has there been any commentary on that? German, but nevertheless: http://blog.fefe.de/?ts=9a3f8740 http://blog.fefe.de/?ts=9a3f8740 "I work in the field [...] we don't believe a word of this. [...] The data set in Fig. 4(b) is also a treat. It is VERY unusual when the heat capacity decreases again at high temperatures. This can happen at low temperatures, but not at high temperatures. [...] My personal assumption is that the authors measured an insulator, so no current flow and therefore no voltage occurred (4-point measurement). This would look like a superconductor. But if you then turn up the current (i.e. the applied voltage), breakdowns may occur and a current begins to flow. That would explain the sharp increase."
- scarmig 3y agoNice find.
- distortionfield 3y agoNot really, it’s just more speculation about the experiment. It’s worth as much as anyone else’s salt about the matter.
- fh973 3y agoIt's from a guy of the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research.
- nemo44x 3y agoHe sounds rather bitter and arrogant. He basically just called them idiots. As if none of the researchers would have noticed the measurement error. Perhaps he’s right - we’ll know in a few days I assume. I do hope they are right though not only because it would be a huge leap but also because I’d love to see this guys reaction.
- stu255 3y agoLee and Kim have been working on this stuff for a long time. They published prematurely after major falling out within their institute. This isn't 1 experiment as the Germans seem to think. There are multiple papers, patents, etc. The main focus of these papers has been to make huge claims and make replication very easy. They are "all in" and they want others to call. If they were bluffing they would be heavy on results and light/secretive on how to make the stuff (trade secret, etc). That's why there are 2x papers published within 3 hours, both with different authors, and you have one author telling New Scientist he did not approve of a paper naming him as an author.
- xdennis 3y ago> He sounds rather bitter and arrogant. That might be your interpretation of it. I think the Germans would call it being straightforward.
- floxy 3y agoLots of people are saying there should be a quick turnaround time here for trying the replication. I wonder how much it would cost to try and replicate this, in materials, labor costs, and vacuum furnace time/costs. My naive thought is that that labs in general aren't just going to drop everything to try an replicate every instance of someone declaring they've discovered room temperature superconductivity. Seems more like a "there's a lull in paying work, so hey, why don't some of you junior technicians try this out" thing? Anyone have insight into this? I suppose a university lab might have more leeway here to try out spur of the moment experiments? Maybe this is a "I'm personally interested in this and I'll work in the evenings to test it out, instead of on company/university time"? Or are the authors high profile enough in the community that it meets a certain threshold of credibility that it seems more worthwhile than the average?
- refulgentis 3y agoNot much, see article (~1 day), or article + thread from yesterday. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36864624 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36864624 I don't think, at least generally, work is as rigid as indicated. At least at white collar jobs, and especially a research lab, and most especially a university research lab.
- floxy 3y ago$10, $100, $1,000? 1 hour, 10 hours of labor?
- marcosdumay 3y agoIf you have the equipment, some $100s on consumables, some 10 hours of labor, and some 60 hours of waiting.
- scarmig 3y agoIt's a reasonable enough paper, and replicating should be pretty easy (an undergrad could do it). Because the implications are so massive if true, people are going to jump on it. From the linked article: > You can bet that furnaces in solid-state materials labs around the world have been cooking yesterday and today to try to reproduce its synthesis and the properties, and we should be hearing about the results of these experiments very soon. The first samples should be coming out of the quartz vessels. . .sometime tomorrow, perhaps? Depends on what was available around the lab!
- algo_trader 3y ago> (as well as an obvious instant Nobel prize). South Korea has been waiting for a (real, STEM) Nobel prize for decades. These guys will be worshipped as gods if they deliver
- worik 3y ago> (real, STEM) Nobel prize Ouch.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- carabiner 3y agoI'd bet the country would be transformed by this. SK universities (SNU, KAIST) would rocket in reputation for solid state physics research. Massive money inflows to the country from production of the material. Deep down I think most of us realize that this will probably turn out to be nothing.
- dougmwne 3y agoIt’s nothing unless it turns out to be something. I’ll draw an analogy to the LLMs and diffusion models that have lately rocked the computer world. These things are straight up science fiction. I would have said computers would have never been capable of art and poetry. It was all fantasy until it was suddenly reality. We’ll probably know if this can be replicated relatively soon. And if it can it will kick off a whole new branch of materials science and begin a multi-year race to commercialization. We are facing gigantic challenges in energy and climate. We need the win, so my fingers are crossed.
- chasd00 3y agoDude I’m right there with you, fingers crossed!
- dinvlad 3y agoLLMs were/are massively overhyped though. Like it’s not even close to the sort of transformation they promised. Neat tech yes, world-changing solution to all of our problems? Very hardly, unless a very significant effort is spent (and yet undiscovered tech invented) to eliminate all of its significant practical problems. Academics (and similarly venture startup founders) like to sort of jump to conclusions along the lines of “discovery was the hardest part - now this thing could enable ... in the next X years” at the end of a paper. And then people spend many decades to actually reduce this to practice. So 90% of work belongs to applications, not technology in on itself.
- jonplackett 3y agoIf this material does just what they say it does, what would it revolutionise? Or as the article talks about, is this just a pointer at other possibilities that would be the real game changers?
- Fordec 3y agoIn the immediate short term, the power level supported is too low for the real shiny applications that everyone talks about. But the main one that is screaming at me for this technology sitting in front of us is SQUID sensors and RF antennas that will operate in the lower power range of the potential applications spectrum.
- hatsunearu 3y agohow does superconductivity benefit RF antennas? AFAIK loss at AC still occurs with superconductors because the dielectric loss through the materials still exists.
- floxy 3y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_radio_frequency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_radio_frequenc...
- superkuh 3y agoSearch "superdirective superconducting antenna". With normal conductors the directivity of an antenna depends on how many wavelengths it spans; the summation of the currents over the effective aperture. With superconducting materials you can exploit the weirdness in current distribution to make very directional antennas that are small relative to the wavelength. It could be a game changer for making efficient directional small receive antennas. Normally electrically small antennas are just super inefficient but it's made up for either on the transmit side (like with high power AM radio) or with most of the gain coming from some low noise amplifier (like small UHF wireless devices).
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- mmastrac 3y agoThis is an extremely useful summarization of the original paper. > The authors believe that the modified/strained structure of their material creates a large number of “quantum wells” between particular lead atoms and the adjacent oxygens of the phosphate groups bound to them, in effect making a two-dimensional “electron gas”. They propose that electron tunneling between these quantum wells, which are between 3.7 and 6.5 Ångstroms apart, is the superconducting mechanism. I am not enough of a solid-state physicist to judge this proposal, but the authors are making a detailed mechanistic claim that is subject to experimental proof, which is very good to see, and and they adduce a good deal of data to back it up (x-ray diffraction, EPR, and more). And they demonstrate the behaviors that a superconductor should have, such as the Meissner effect (expulsion of a magnetic field), sudden resistivity changes at a critical temperature (bizarrely high though that is in this case), current-voltage (I-V) plots at different temperatures and under different magnetic field strengths, etc. If these data reproduce, the superconductivity of this material seems beyond doubt.
- AndrewKemendo 3y agoTotally agree. This is science at it's best, with maximum skepticism (and a dash of hope), in front of our eyes! Even better, it's a HUGE claim that is going to show how epistemology in science works (reproduction!!)
- akjssdk 3y agoI don't think the actual proposed superconductivity mechanism is the relevant part of this paper. It is much easier to prove that this is superconducting than to prove why. And in a sense it is a bit less relevant. Although developing a working theory for room temperature is also probably worth a Nobel prize, so I am willing to bet some theorists are also running to their blackboards as we speak.
- scarmig 3y agoYeah. BCS was proposed a half century after the first conventional superconductor was discovered, and even today we don't have a convincing mechanism for "regular" high-Tc superconductors. But if it superconducts, it superconducts, and research into the how is useful but not a blocker to using it.
- rohan_ 3y agoWhat do the "super forecasters" have to say about this? Was this predicted on prediction markets? Was the assumption of this tech existing already factored into prediction models?
- hcks 3y agoPrediction markets say this will probably not replicate (and imo even overestimate the probability of replication)
- treme 3y agolink? interested in this wager
- pallas_athena 3y agohttps://polymarket.com/event/is-the-room-temp-superconductor-real https://polymarket.com/event/is-the-room-temp-superconductor...
- shusaku 3y ago~20% of a ground breaking discovery is actually a good week in my view!
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- eig 3y agoThis video (https://sciencecast.org/casts/suc384jly50n https://sciencecast.org/casts/suc384jly50n) showing the Meissner effect should be the easiest to replicate: just send a sample to another lab and put it over a large magnet. As far as I know, the only explanations for this occurring is room temp superconductivity, or a strong diamagnetism (which would also be very cool to see)!
- soligern 3y agoI don’t know enough about this but shouldn’t the entire superconductor be floating above the magnet? Why is one part still attached (or maybe attracted) to the magnet?
- NegativeLatency 3y agoContamination/impurities or something else in it that's not superconducting?
- soligern 3y agoA strange exposition video then, I would try to remove the part that wasn’t superconducting (the part touching the magnet) before I released this. A completely floating piece of this superconductor would remove literally all doubt.
- xeonmc 3y agoYou say to do WHAT to the best piece of sample they synthesized?
- XorNot 3y agoScope of the claim. This is world changing. Shoot the first video, then get the dremel/pliers and cut that large bit off. It would be worth it, because if this works at all, then it's vital to prove it. We'd be having a very different discussion if that small piece was umabiguously floating and remaining locked in place.
- orblivion 3y agoSo what kinds of cool stuff could be built with a room temperature superconductor? Better levitating trains?
- ianmcgowan 3y agoFrom the article, "Who knows what could come out of that? Robust high-current-density room-temperature superconductors are right out of science fiction (SF readers will recall that one such material was a big plot point in Larry Niven’s Ringworld). Electrical generation and transmission, antennas, power storage, magnet applications (including things like fusion power plants), electric motors and basically everything that runs on electricity would be affected. We could stop throwing away so much generated power on heating up the wires that deliver it, for starters."
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- swader999 3y agoNuclear fusion much easier, quantum computing, lossless electricity transmission, insane batteries. Dirt cheap MRIs, Basically welcome to the Jetsons. Much easier to mitigate climate change to the point where we can just deal with it.
- NotYourLawyer 3y agoThis would only solve one of the more minor problems with fusion. And what would it do for batteries?
- m463 3y agoI wonder if it would really mean a different sort of battery maybe like a super capacitor that doesn't discharge.
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- fortysixdegrees 3y agoThis is going to mess up RoHS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restriction_of_Hazardous_Substances_Directive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restriction_of_Hazardous_Subst...
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- bawolff 3y agoThere is already a bunch of exceptions for lead, if this is useful with no alternatives they would probably just add more exceptions.
- cperciva 3y agoNot necessarily. The "strained crystal" approach probably extends to other elements; mixing Pb and Cu works well since there's a large difference in their sizes, but rare earths might work just as well as Pb.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 3y agoCan we get those in volumes necessary to do high voltage lines though?
- amluto 3y agoREBCO tape is just starting to be available in volume, and I don’t think availability is raw materials is even close to being a limiting factor.
- varjag 3y agoRoHS has a number of exceptions. Ambient temp/pressure superconductivity will absolutely be excepted too.
- seventytwo 3y agoNope, sorry. The EU is probably just gonna pass on RT superconductors. /s
- curiousObject 3y agoWhile we’re waiting for experimenters to reproduce this, it’s worth comparing this amazing announcement to the Cold Fusion affair of 1989[1] It’s notable that the first publications about attempts to reproduce the Cold Fusion experiment all reported positive results. It’s probably because experimenters who got negative results decided they might have done something wrong so they kept trying, and delayed, and they did not publish until later. Those early reports of positive results were largely retracted within a few weeks. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_fusion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_fusion
- selestify 3y agoWhy did those early experimenters report positive reports? Did they inadvertently do something wrong themselves that looked like cold fusion?
- wolfram74 3y agoSmall effect sizes make it easy to confuse noise for positive results. Throw into it the very strong desire to see the thing work, and, well, even the best of us are only human.
- curiousObject 3y ago> Did they inadvertently do something wrong themselves that looked like cold fusion? Yes, probably This blog talks about some of the many pitfalls that could mislead researchers: https://coldfusionblog.net/2019/03/13/the-case-against-cold-fusion-experiments/ https://coldfusionblog.net/2019/03/13/the-case-against-cold-... Some of the errors are very subtle. It’s not surprising that mistakes were made
- segfaultbuserr 3y agoIt was a great blog, it was a lot of fun when I found it. The summary was basically that, designing a reliable calorimetry equipment and experiment suitable for use in Fleischmann-like experiments is just uniquely challenging, it remained an unsolved problem even decades after the initial fiasco. The whole experiment setup is inherently error-prone. I found it was pretty interesting. One researcher P.J. King who recently attempted a replication [1] commented online [2] that: > We observed the claimed heat effect, both in magnitude and duration, in our parallel __control__ cells. This indicates a calibration error in the apparatus. One little known fact about these electro-chemical cell experiments is that they are run for a week or more before the effect is observed. Typically, calibration is conducted over a few hours and is done both before an experimental run and intermittently during it, to re-check thermal stability. > We submit that this approach to calibration is inadequate for establishing a calorimeter’s propensity for heat artifacts. Stability over time periods longer than the experiment should be demonstrated in order to minimize the possibility of misinterpreting the fluctuations that we observed as “excess heat” events. > Consequently, we contend that all claims of anomalous heat in LENR experiments using electro-chemical cells that do not exhibit thermal stability on a time period longer than the time duration of the experiment itself must be thrown out. As the majority of research over the past 30 years has not demonstrated this kind of calibration stability, that eliminates most of the effort in this field. You can read more about our work on the ReResearch LLC website. > That is not to say that we know everything about hot fusion in the solid state or how quantum mechanical interactions might impact fusion reactivity. There is much still to be discovered. But these electro-chemical LENR heat experiments are noise, not signal. [1] Guffey, Mason J., Yang Tang, and P.J. King. 2016. “Attempted Replication of Excess Heat in the Letts Dual-Laser Experiment.” Journal of Condensed Matter Nuclear Science 20 (1): 1–28. [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbzcYQVrTxQ&lc=UgzFM3zS0QyP502YuXZ4AaABAg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbzcYQVrTxQ&lc=UgzFM3zS0QyP5...
- archepyx 3y agoAnother comment from a well informed source on the topic: https://nitter.net/condensed_the/status/1684255515944034304 https://nitter.net/condensed_the/status/1684255515944034304 Also, on the sentences in the manuscripts trying to explain the effect: I think that is wild guess at best. The measurement results done in the manuscripts probably can be taken at at face value (at least until there is a reproduction). Whether they really indicate superconductivity or something else that looks like it in some of the aspects is then a different question.
- thepasswordis 3y agoIt's probably better to link to the original, not this mirror: https://twitter.com/condensed_the/status/1684255515944034304 https://twitter.com/condensed_the/status/1684255515944034304
- MikeBVaughn 3y agoThe replies don't load for me in this one.
- diabolo96 3y agoNitter is an alternative front-end that allow you to view the tweet and the response while Twitter only only to view the attached tweet only. So in fact , it's better that he used nitter rather than the "original"
- cmrdporcupine 3y agoTwitter is not a publicly available resource, not part of the open web: Its URLs are semi-private and require an account to fully read and they should not be posted here on HN. For almost two weeks they were fully locked, and now one can only see the original post and not the thread, and all browsing is locked out.
- Exuma 3y agoSo where do we stay up to date with whether it's valid or not.
- mrandish 3y agoTFA notes that it should be quick to replicate and it's definitely gotten enough attention. If the right lab has the needed materials readily available, I expect we'll start seeing credible people posting excited tweets implying initial confirmation as soon as Friday afternoon/evening (assuming it replicates on the first go). If we don't see anything by the end of next week I'd guess that either it's not replicating or, at minimum, it's more finicky than it first appears.
- TigeriusKirk 3y agoThis site will no doubt have the reports in either direction on the front page.
- p1mrx 3y agohttps://polymarket.com/event/is-the-room-temp-superconductor-real https://polymarket.com/event/is-the-room-temp-superconductor... graphs the sentiment over time.
- Ajedi32 3y agoSlightly more pessimistic than I was expecting given the amount of hype this has generated. Though I guess for something this groundbreaking a 25% chance that it's real is pretty newsworthy.
- seventytwo 3y agoFingers crossed!
- carabiner 3y agoResearcher on reddit thinks it's probably spurious measurement artifacts, not superconductivity: > I would say they are not faking it, but instead they just don’t understand what they are looking at. Based on what measurements they are doing, as well as how they are doing them, they do not have a good understanding of the standard processes to characterise a superconductor. Also, based on their analysis/discussion, they do not have scientific knowledge of the background theory. In review of these two papers, it’s terrible science, not something malicious (as has been seen before in RT superconductivity work…). Even if these claims turn out to be true, it's still terrible science, and that's my main criticism. Either way, these types of claims are not uncommon, see for example this paper from a few years ago which went nowhere. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.1807.08572 https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.1807.08572 https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/159g2k4/comment/jtkcmc1/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3 https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/159g2k4/comment/...
- fluidcruft 3y agoAnother interesting comment by that redditor https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/159jojs/comment/jtgwyrh/?context=3 https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/159jojs/comment...
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- WaffleIronMaker 3y agoAnother interesting analysis from that post: > So, to clarify for my nonexpert brain, if this were a superconductor and their measurements were accurate: > Fig 5 means the sample must be completely pure to be a superconductor > The rest of the paper indicates the sample must have impurities. > So it's pretty safe to say that either it's not a superconductor or their measurements are wrong (or most likely both). Since they never got it to the critical temperature and showed the full Meissner effect, if the measurements are wrong it's fair to say they don't have evidence for superconductivity anyway, just diamagnetism, which isn't really that big a deal https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/159g2k4/comment/jti897k/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/159g2k4/comment/...
- JacobAldridge 3y agoI’m reminded of the paper, just over 10 years ago, that reporting measuring neutrinos travelling faster than the speed of light. When published, the authors made it clear: this is probably wrong, but we can’t see where we made a mistake … so what if we’re right and just upended relativity theory? That was turned out to be a measuring error [1]. This one may be the same, though the lead authors publishing two versions of the paper - one with only 3 names, ostensibly because the Nobel Prize can only be awarded to a maximum of 3 people - suggests less modesty and vulnerability on their behalf. I hope they’re right though! [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2012.10099 https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2012.10099
- willis936 3y agoI don't see the similarities. This upends zero theories. I see similarities in the long line of "STP superconductors for real this time!" claims, but not findings that contradict current physical models.
- bhaak 3y agoIsn't it that this would upend zero theories because we don't have any that satisfyingly explains superconductivity?
- lIl-IIIl 3y agoI thought of that too, but the difference is that faster than light travel is impossible according to our understanding of physics, but nothing says that room temperature superconductors are impossible.
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- tux3 3y agoNew scientist got a reply from the authors and a few other experts: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2384782-room-temperature-superconductor-breakthrough-met-with-scepticism/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/2384782-room-temperatur... >Kim has only co-authored one of the arXiv papers, while the other is authored by his colleagues at the Quantum Energy Research Centre in South Korea, some of whom also applied for a patent on LK-99 in August 2022. >Both papers present similar measurements, however Kim says that the second paper contains “many defects” and was uploaded to arXiv without his permission. In that paper, the work is described as opening a “new era for humankind”. >Other experts that New Scientist consulted were similarly sceptical about the results and the data produced. Some raised concern that some of the results could be explained by errors in experimental procedure combined with imperfections in the LK-99 sample.
- tigershark 3y ago“Both papers present similar measurements” I’m not a physicist expert of superconductors, although I’ve followed quite closely that field since the ‘90s. But if the measurements are similar and correct and if the video of lk-99 levitating above a magnet demonstrating the Meissner effect is not fake, I don’t really have an alternative explanation to account for all of that. I guess that we’ll see what happens in the next week or two. This is too high stakes to take longer than that for a so easily reproducible experiment.
- nazgulnarsil 3y agoIt has been proposed that alternative mechanisms besides SC can create diamagnetic effects. I think we're waiting on more informed updates because the people with the competence to comment on this are probably working furiously in a lab right now rather than commenting. edit: useful comment elsethread by macromaniac on plausibility of diamagnetic effects
- abrichr 3y ago> the video of lk-99 levitating above a magnet demonstrating the Meissner effect Can you please provide a link? Edit: found it https://sciencecast.org/casts/suc384jly50n https://sciencecast.org/casts/suc384jly50n
- amelius 3y agoCan we just send some current through it and see if it heats up?
- iceflinger 3y ago"this stuff is claimed to superconduct all the way up to room temperature and indeed up past the boiling point of water. Its critical temperature is said to be 127C" Would this have implications about possible efficient methods of converting heat back into electricity? Or even just more ways of harnessing heat energy in general. I'm imagining heat pumps built with superconductors could be a critical part of mitigating climate change, but I'm far from a scientist and barely understand the physics here.
- ayakang31415 3y agoNo, it just means that the material conducts electricity without losing almost any energy through heat at that critical temperature. Heat itself is a process of energy transfer (heat itself is not energy which many people fail to recognize if they haven't studied thermodynamics thoroughly).
- simmanian 3y agoI see a few comments saying this can also be used to "solve" climate change, but I am trying to understand the how. Do people mean that the world will have less carbon footprint overall because everything will be much more efficient?
- XorNot 3y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_magnetic_energy_storage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_magnetic_energ... You build a big inductor, and because it's superconducting current just goes round and round. At room temperature you have no refrigeration losses, you can build more just as fast as you can kick out superconductor. It would be 100% efficient, have 0 self-discharge, and enormous power capacity and infinite power cycles.
- NeoTar 3y agoI think it may be that electrical power could be generated in places where (carbon free) energy production can be abundant but consumption is low (e.g. Solar power in the Sahara desert) and then transported with almost no losses to sites of high energy consumption (e.g. the cities of North Africa and Europe).
- BizarroLand 3y agoNorth America could be powered with a small section of Nevada being covered in Solar Panels, given a theoretical transmission loss of only a few percent from one side of the country to the next. Bolster that with windmills and hydroelectric and that would be that for the next 30 years. Electricity would be cheaper and more plentiful than water in many areas.
- pshc 3y agoEven if we replaced all fossil fuels overnight we still wouldn't have "solved" climate change--the damage we have done is locked in for the long term. We need active mitigation to restore Arctic ice, de-acidify the oceans, save coral reefs, bring back old weather patterns, etc.
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- ChuckMcM 3y agoRaise your hand if you contacted Aldritch about the two pre-cursor materials :-) This is an excellent summary and like Derek I have high hopes (but low expectations) that by the end of this week we'll see some tentative confirmation. This stuff isn't particularly hard (or expensive!) to make so that should really make for interesting news and some very fun products if it is proven out.
- hcks 3y agoDon’t waste your time, it’ll be disproved 10 times before your reactants get delivered.
- kstrauser 3y agoBy whom, if no one orders the ingredients to run the tests?
- hatsunearu 3y agoPresumably there are some labs with a very large spice cabinet.
- ChuckMcM 3y agoOr the ability to make the required spices on demand :-).
- mitthrowaway2 3y agoDo handle these carefully, powdered lead oxide is no joke!
- techdragon 3y agoGood luck with your samples and in the very least it should be good fun to play a small part in the replication of results. If documented well enough you might even wind up in a meta-study some day. The bigger the impact the more of a splash it will make in social contexts consequently we see a lot of blatant and cautious naysayers with various explanations and individual explanations for the logic of their refutation. But it’s If it’s shocking enough, groundbreaking enough, anyone with the expertise to try will do so either to see if it’s right instead of waiting around for someone else to do it and write it up and publish it, or to prove that it’s not and for something this big at least, give BobbyBrocolli a new possible video topic to consider.
- honkycat 3y agoI've been saying for years we are one "future technology" away from savings our asses from our world collapsing. Here is hoping this is that breakthrough.
- Evidlo 3y agoMaybe post-scarcity countries will have more time to focus on fighting for land and less need for maintaining good relations with others.
- keenmaster 3y agoWith tons of cheap energy, you can make better use of the land you have. The entirety of humanity can technically fit in Southern California. I’m imagining a swarm of construction robots running on dirt cheap power, excavating land and building beautiful AI-designed mid-rise apartments in all directions. Scarcity, what’s that? And once we have bonkers amounts of power, like from fusion, we can trivially extend cities out into the sea by adding to the landmass (though this won’t account for a majority of the scarcity reducing effect).
- floxy 3y agoSince it is apparently expected that the material is almost trivial to synthesize, I'm wondering why the original group hasn't tried to get an outside independent source to verify one of their samples before dropping this on the arXiv? Is there some other internal reason/pressure to release this now? Like they've tried to be in stealth mode for the two years since applying for the patent, but risks of leaks are growing, and now they are rushed? Or maybe they have had some independent outside confirmation, but I guess you don't need to share it if you know you've got the goods, and are confident that everyone will be able to reproduce it in short order. Otherwise, I'd think I'd be trying to have 100 samples queued up for anyone who wants to verify.
- sanxiyn 3y agoAs far as I can tell, https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.12008 https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.12008 is the paper by the original group and https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.12037 https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.12037 is the paper they wrote with an outsider. Their chosen independent outsider is Hyun-Tak Kim.
- wenyuanyu 3y agoExactly opposite, they needed to drop this on arXiv first to stake their claim before anyone else. It's open for everyone to test out now, so if it's legit, we'll know soon. Also, it's a smart move if they're worried about leaks, now they're in control of the news.
- pbj1968 3y agoKorean scientists are known for making a lot of bold and unreproducible claims.
- obblekk 3y agoThe researchers definitely believe it's real - they're fighting over who gets credit (hence the double paper publication). Only a few days left until replications should start pouring in...
- ck2 3y agoOooh fresh Derek Lowe, awesome Enough of all the UFO nonsense, this is what matters for the future > If these data reproduce, the superconductivity of this material seems beyond doubt. > Another welcome feature is that their procedure for preparing LK-99 seems quite straightforward. You can bet that furnaces in solid-state materials labs around the world have been cooking yesterday and today to try to reproduce its synthesis and the properties, and we should be hearing about the results of these experiments very soon.
- elfbargpt 3y agoOne interesting thing I saw pointed out on twitter: both of the published papers have "Lee" and "JH Kim" as the first two authors (LK-99 material namesake). The first paper was published by YW Kwon with himself as the third author. The second paper was published a few hours later by Hyun-Tak Kim with himself as the third author. As others have pointed out there can only be 3 names on the ticket for a nobel prize. To me this might indicate that they all think the result is potentially nobel-worthy, and also that the papers may not be as complete / rigorous as they should have been due to this drama / race to publish (YW Kwon published without permission to get his name out there, forcing Hyun-Tak to push his out a few hours later)
- mitthrowaway2 3y agoIf this is real, it's worth a nobel in both physics and chemistry, so there are plenty of accolades to go around!
- dustypotato 3y agoThe K-Drama I'd like to follow :)
- Koiwai 3y agoIf this is true, I think the nobel prize committee would happily make an exception for them.
- lucubratory 3y agoThey will not. They never have.
- KingLancelot 3y ago[dead]
- nimish 3y agoGiven the ingredients have known semiconducting properties one would think they'd run it through the wringer to expel any doubts as to its superconducting properties. 2DEGs and such at room temp are common, GaN transistors do it and they have well known temperature dependent resistance characteristics. The semiconductor characterization people at any fab could really get to the bottom of this.
- jake_D 3y ago1. In the video, they push the disc with a pen until it rolls over. They repeat it multiple times. It it were superconductive they could just position it in space without laying it on the magnets first. 2. The disc is not hovering. 3. The disc is damaged; one edge is thicker/heavier than the other. Thus causes the rolling. Notice that the heavier part always stays on the magnet. It it were superconductive they would be able use a uniform disc. I call BS.
- blablabla123 3y agoWith a "regular" magnetic field you cannot even do this, it would roll over continuously. At least one point needs to be actually fixed. Also if I remember correctly it's mentioned that not the whole probe is superconductive but just part of it.
- jake_D 3y agoIt would not roll over continuously as it's affected by gravity as well. The heaviest part is at the bottom. And if it's not completely superconductive, what stops it from not being completely magnetic? For all we know, only the thin part could be magnetic, being repelled from the magnet below.
- 1-6 3y agoIs it Lee or Kim? LeeKim-99
- jeepers6 3y agoThey were working on this as far back as 1999.
- Helmut10001 3y agoFor those like me that know nothing of superconductivity, I found this [1] entry quite helpful to assess the impact, particularly: > At atmospheric pressure the temperature record is still held by cuprates, which have demonstrated superconductivity at temperatures as high as 138 K (−135 °C). [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room-temperature_superconductor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room-temperature_superconducto...
- 9991 3y agoRight
- 8bitsrule 3y ago>(SF readers will recall that one such material was a big plot point in Larry Niven’s Ringworld). Even the one with (as he put it) 'the mistakes in it' !!
- MrPatan 3y agoThe moment they push the sample and it "turns and snaps" into the magnet in this video: https://sciencecast.org/casts/suc384jly50n https://sciencecast.org/casts/suc384jly50n makes it look like a diamagnetically levitating piece of graphite moving over multiple magnets in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-tW8_SRW3g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-tW8_SRW3g Why am I wrong? I want to believe!
- Tade0 3y agoMy suspicion as well. If in the original video the researcher is holding a Neodymium magnet, then at this size it already has lethal magnetic power - or at least enough to make one lose fingers with improper handling.
- fbarred 3y agoIf this is real, what about this discovery that made it happen now? Is it a case that some technology is now available that unlocked this? Or is this trying something and seeing if it works? Could this discovery have been made 10-20 years ago?
- amai 3y ago"I am not enough of a solid-state physicist to judge this proposal,..." I stopped reading after this confession of the author. So this text is just as good as a opinion of some other random guy.
- danpalmer 3y agoI’m not a JavaScript developer, but I can tell if a JS dev is bullshitting or if they know their stuff. The author has enough relevant experience to be able to safely conclude a similar thing. They are honest that they won’t spot minor issues, but my takeaway from this article is that the original paper authors are not cowboys or bullshitters, and they have a chance at a real finding, subject to regular research bugs. That’s good enough to be worth an article!
- gus_massa 3y agoThe articles about chemistry of this author are very good. I studied a specialty in Chemistry in secondary school (12-18), so I can evaluate most of them but the details are usually above my level. When posted here his post get good comments and I upvote most (all) of his stories. His conclusions here are similar to the hivemind opinion in the first post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36864624 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36864624 My takeaway is: 1) It must be confirmed. (And if confirmed it's huge.) 2) The method to make the material are very easy (if you have a good lab) For me, this post confirm that the chemistry part makes sense. Perhaps there was something weird abut the composition of the ceramic. Perhaps about the method to make it? If he says that it looks fine, for me it's a nice confirmation that it makes sense. The explanation of the effect using "quantum wells" is more strange. I feel it's suspicious and that it will be explained in a different way in the future. Anyway, I'm neither an expert in superconductivity, so I may be wrong. I don't know his opinion about the "quantum wells" but I guess he also is not an expert in that field to evaluate it. Superconductivity is a field where the experimental results usually arrive long before the theoretical ones, so assuming this is new material is true, it is possible that we get a lot of new materials in the next 10 years and a good theoretical explanation in 50 years.
- The_Double 3y agoThe strangest thing to me is that apparently this material has been developed years ago, the video of a piece floating was uploaded 3 months ago, and apparently it's easy to produce more samples, but the papers still reads like they have been thrown together in less than a week. (English might not be their first language, but the presentation of the figures is also poor) And it also seems like they haven't spent that time by doing high quality experiments. Surely if you have found a magic material that can change the world you would spend more effort than this on doing experiments and publishing a good paper as soon as possible. The low quality video and poorly presented graphs are reminiscent of Victor Ninov's fraud.
- jahnu 3y agoI read somewhere once that deliberately poor quality graphs are sometimes used so that readers cannot extract the precise values from them. This could be to obscure fake or real data.
- tomtom1337 3y agoThis is true, but from personal experience, academics are terrible at including high quality images. My colleague would screenshot an image from some visualisation software and paste it in to her paper in MS Word. Then that image would get copied or screenshotted into a different word document, and so on, and the quality would deteriorate.
- earthboundkid 3y agoMy wife is an academic and I often see her screenshoting to move an image from one document to another. Seems like a UI failure that the system can't detect this use case and move high quality backing images through the clipboard.
- awesomeMilou 3y agoMacOS went full circle here at least with regards to text: In the new MacOS versions, if you screenshot text there's automatic OCR, so when you receive a screenshot of some text, you can copy it again! It's non-trivial to implement that for something like SVG's, but if UI developers had anticipated this use case, we might have gotten a remedy with the introduction of raster graphics.
- RyanAdamas 3y agoWhat if the team itself did create LK-99 that is a superconductor, but they aren't able to reproduce it and only have the sample left that works. Hence, they aren't able to make more of it to prove their success, but rather decided to release the paper and method so that others can try to reproduce it. Given the amount of interest, they could put hundreds of labs to work trying to recreate what they themselves can't, hoping someone will find what they found and have an actual process for doing so? Is that even possible?
- MVissers 3y agoThe most likely explanation based on the authors in the two articles is infighting, where one researcher decides to publish an uncomplete manuscript with his name as the third author. He’s omitted from the second author. I do believe they believe they have something nobel-prize worthy. They offered to help with replication in other labs, which is a good sign. Could still be measurement error, we just need to wait until it gets replicated.
- mromanuk 3y agoHow long does it take to get a replication? I would love to follow up this kind of news, directly from a the researchers doing the work. Is there anyone to follow on twitter to keep posted on this?
- valine 3y agoI believe it needs a minimum of 48 hours in the furnace. If labs started right away after the paper hit Arxiv we should be hearing about results soon.
- PawgerZ 3y agoI have never worked with super conductors, but I did talk with people who have and read every comment on hacker news. From what I can gather, people already make YBCO superconductors in their garage, and this doesn't seem much different in difficulty. Many people have said that it's simple enough that they expect youtube tutorials on how to make it in a week or two.
- Vox_Leone 3y agoA passing thought: with [post pandemic] AI and superconductivity breakthroughs [case verified], 2023 turned out to be a hell of a year. Will be remembered.
- wcerfgba 3y agoIf this is real, what are the consequences/impacts/implications/applications? I don't know anything about superconductors!
- MayeulC 3y agoWell, There are countless comments addressing this, but possibly more on the earlier thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36864624 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36864624
- nemo44x 3y agoApparently the 2 main guys, Kim and Lee have been working on this since 1999 and hence the name "LK-99". They worked on other things in industry over the years with this on the back burner and a few years ago received some funding to pursue this. Kwon was brought in to babysit essentially. At this point they were able to isolate the material but it took a few years to figure out how to produce it reliable. They bring in HyunTak who has Western ties and has a respectable reputation being a well known physical chemist. They file patents in 2022 and 2023 and some in the group are nervous that because the process is so simple they'll get scooped. Spies, etc. HyunTak wants to do more work before publishing but Kwon just goes ahead and published the paper with him, Lee, and Kim as the authors. HyunTak gets word of this and publishes his paper with him, Lee, and Kim and some others later that day. I think because of this, it is real. Infighting over credits and the fact that HyunTak is extremely respectable.
- ryzvonusef 3y agohttps://twitter.com/alexkaplan0/status/1684622263339884544 https://twitter.com/alexkaplan0/status/1684622263339884544 > I have bad news. I am growing increasingly convinced that LK-99 is simply diamagnetic, rather than superconducting. It lines up well with existing evidence (susceptibility, levitation, lack of heat capacity singularity, etc.) https://twitter.com/alexkaplan0/status/1684622265403465728 https://twitter.com/alexkaplan0/status/1684622265403465728 > Discovering a new diamagnet is cool, but .... obviously way less cool ____ reminded me of this asianometry video on a similar much hyped korean breakthrough in biology, and the sad aftereffects of it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0MMtKMTjoU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0MMtKMTjoU
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