34 ms·
LK-99: The live online race for a room-temperature superconductor
- Havoc 3y agoThis is great. Much easier to tell what’s going on than going by the chatter. Thanks
- ssijak 3y agoThis twitter handle contains some interesting back story investigation https://twitter.com/8teAPi https://twitter.com/8teAPi
- junon 3y agoWhere? I just see bandwagoning from a shitpost account.
- ssijak 3y agostart here then go to comments for branching out https://twitter.com/8teAPi/status/1685960703658860544 https://twitter.com/8teAPi/status/1685960703658860544
- hobofan 3y ago> interesting back story investigation No! As stated in their reply to this, you should assume that everything that account writes is fiction. They said that they were essentially trying to write a The Big Short-style screenplay in real time as the story unfolds. To do that, they link to actual newsworthy tweets and "fill it in with realistic stereotypes". It's a shame that this account is one of the most responsive aggregators of new developments, as I find their real-time fictionalization incredibly irresponsible.
- ccity88 3y agoIris Alexandra's twitter is especially enthralling. Seems like so much discoveries and innovation happens from computer science to physics, chemistry and biology all from people with anime profile pictures.
- guywhocodes 3y agoI hope we get a video from Iris proving it's not glued to the support, if they were able to produce a levitating grain that's amazing. Regardless if superconducting or not.
- jiggawatts 3y agoThat's a small enough sample that static electricity alone could explain the "levitation".
- bhaak 3y agohttps://twitter.com/iris_IGB https://twitter.com/iris_IGB for those looking for the account. I'm watching all of this unfold as an unknowledgeable bystander. I'm at a loss for half of the technical terms and have no clue how many of those people are just LARPing. But the positive energy of this all is very refreshing. This is what the internet was made for and I'm glad I can take part of it even if only by contributing moral support.
- justinjlynn 3y ago> anime profile pictures Either that or furry ones. Amusing apparent correlation.
- WaffleIronMaker 3y agoHighlighting this tweet in particular: > Here's a chunk of pyrolytic graphite on the same magnet with the same stick. Even with less density and more surface normal to field.... It doesn't lift off. If it's diamagnetism it's a fucking absurdly strong one https://twitter.com/iris_IGB/status/1685804254718459904 https://twitter.com/iris_IGB/status/1685804254718459904 Her findings, and suggestions of manufacturing process improvements, are very interesting.
- pipo234 3y agotldr; no successful experiment outside original labs reproduces the results. Fingers crossed...
- yreg 3y agoOTOH only one lab announced a failure and they say they haven't followed the recipe. Fingers crossed...
- jboggan 3y agoThis live crowdsourced approach is a far better way to test and refine hypotheses than peer review and the current state of science journals.
- oldgradstudent 3y agoThat's how it has always been done. During the 1989 cold fusion fiasco, the findings were announced in a press conference, pre-prints were circulated in the community, and many groups attempted to reproduce the results. The first publication came weeks later. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_fusion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_fusion
- oneshtein 3y agoMy reply to you was cut off by dang.
- mjfl 3y agorequires a really significant result in order to demand widespread effort in to replicate.
- danbruc 3y agoOnly as long as the experiments are reasonably simple. There are probably still some things requiring only simple experiments to be discovered, but most of the low hanging fruit has probably already been consumed by a couple of centuries of experimentation and scientific progress.
- constantcrying 3y agoThe single most famous mathematical result this century (solution ofthe Poincaré conjecture) was verified by consensus after the claimed proof was published to arxiv.
- danbruc 3y agoWhich falls into the category where I said it would be possible - you don't have to bring your own Hadron collider but only your brain in order to check whether the proof is correct. Admittedly not any brain will do, so in a sense you still need some specialized equipment.
- aqme28 3y agoBeen following this very closely. Seems like the one takeaway is that whatever material this is, it's interesting. It's also difficult to synthesize in bulk, which is a shame because superconductivity is not easy to observe in non-bulk materials (think: powder). Note: I have a physics degree and a little bit of condensed matter experience, but nothing like anyone actually working in the field. Just some graduate courses and a bit of lab work experience.
- Panzer04 3y agoAssuming LK99 is legitimate, my hope is that the principles that make it work are more broadly applicable - and with that, refined production processes or newer alloys can be found. Simply knowing that it's possible would lead to a huge amount of research immediately focusing on this kind of thing. There's nothing more revolutionary than a discovery of a new class of materials. After all, we often name eras throughout our history after them :) (Stone age, etc)
- ant6n 3y ago> There's nothing more revolutionary than a discovery of a new class of materials. After all, we often name eras throughout our history after them :) (Stone age, etc) I wonder what was involved in the discovery of stone.
- WaffleIronMaker 3y agoNote that the original table has been more recently updated: https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/claims-of-room-temperature-and-ambient-pressure-superconductor.1106083/page-11?post=94266395#post-94266395 https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/claims-of-room-tempe...
- 7moritz7 3y agoSo what is the wordpress post for?
- rcme 3y agoBasically theft. > This is (initially) a copy of Guderian2nd’s table on the discussion thread on Spacebattles with a bit of cleanup. I’ve rewritten most of the notes to be more concise as I track the updates myself, where I can.
- ot 3y agoHow is it theft? The original source is prominently cited, the author of the blog post is an active participant to the original discussion, the whole point of the post is to collect and summarize various sources in one place.
- rcme 3y agoUsually copying someone else’s work without permission is considered (intellectual property) theft. Also, this person just copied the initial work but isn’t as committed to keeping things up to date. Much better to use the original source.
- PartiallyTyped 3y agoCould this be the new 4 minute mile? Will [humanity] evacuate on ourselves? Whatever this may be, it’s exciting.
- dang 3y agoWe detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36940487 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36940487.
- aqme28 3y agoI don’t know what you’re trying to say, but to “evacuate on ourselves” means to shit ourselves.
- PartiallyTyped 3y agoThat is exactly what I intended to say. Everyone thought the 4 minute mile was impossible, until it was done, and then everyone started doing it. Had Roger Bannister had a cardiac arrest and evacuated on himself, people would have stopped trying for it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFH0qcmw36Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFH0qcmw36Q
- zelos 3y agoI've seen the 4 minute mile myth posted a lot around LK-99 stories: https://www.scienceofrunning.com/2017/05/the-roger-bannister-effect-the-myth-of-the-psychological-breakthrough.html?v=47e5dceea252 https://www.scienceofrunning.com/2017/05/the-roger-bannister...
- youknowone 3y agoI translated a survey about LK-99 papers to English https://hackmd.io/DMjYGOJFRheZw5XZU8kqKg https://hackmd.io/DMjYGOJFRheZw5XZU8kqKg
- ggdG 3y agoThank you so much for this!
- TheAceOfHearts 3y agoSaw some people hyping up markets where people are betting on prediction markets whether or not LK-99 will replicate. Can't help but feel like that money would be better spent just paying off some labs to actually try to replicate the process. The response I got from a predictions market enthusiast was that having a sufficiently large market would motivate people to attempt to have the process replicated and buy options on the outcome once they confirm their findings in order to cash out. Which gives me strong feelings of scamming the uninformed and gullible. As for comments on LK-99 itself, I don't understand why nobody has gotten their hands on an existing sample to verify that it's legitimate. Shouldn't the minimum requirements be a magnet and the material sample, to demonstrate it floating through the meissner effect?
- incrudible 3y agoJust making a bet does not really spend the money, it will just change hands, presumably from the less informed to the more informed, who should be able to eventually spend it more wisely. As far as forcing the outcome, if it turns out to be possible, but the market got it all wrong, there is your incentive to give it a shot regardless.
- justinclift 3y ago> making a bet does not really spend the money, it will just change hands Pretty sure most people would call the money changing hands "spending" that money.
- barelyauser 3y agoYes, but the original post means "spending" as "making good use of if" or "putting it to a productive end". People betting money has very little effect on the world. But consider the case where I pay you to be idle for an hour. I destroyed 1 hour of your labor, you got paid but we are not in any shape or form richer because of it. Or consider people attending a charity event. They pay to attend, then spent 1 hour having fun. After the event, they will have to in fact labor to provide the charity when the fund raising event starts to spent its money. There is no cheating nature.
- throwaway849755 3y agoIs there any HN effect by which enough contrary early opinion here could increase the odds of eventual triumph? On the chance that there is, I will do my part: In mice.
- ggm 3y agoMorphic Resonance theory https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rupert_Sheldrake https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rupert_Sheldrake
- twic 3y agoNo synthesis. Less critical current than YBCO. Lame.
- stevehawk 3y agooh god i understood this reference. we love you cmdrtaco
- moffkalast 3y agoThe naysayers say nay.
- oneshtein 3y agoCurrently, Cold Fusion used in small scale isotope breeders for medical purposes. One 2kWt breeder with CF can replace 100kWt traditional breeding plant.
- ggm 3y agoCite please. I think you've mistaken neutron feed sourced medical imaging radionuclide from low energy research reactions for cold fusion e.g. https://www.itnonline.com/content/fda-approves-additional-molybdenum-99-mo-99-filling-lines-northstar-medical-radioisotopes https://www.itnonline.com/content/fda-approves-additional-mo... NorthStar produces non-uranium based Mo-99 in collaboration with its manufacturing partner, the University of Missouri Research Reactor (MURR), in Columbia, Mo., using neutron capture technology.
- oneshtein 3y agoSee https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtfUeip4vyA&t=335s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtfUeip4vyA&t=335s
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ggm 3y agoThat's not "cold fusion" that's low energy fusion. It explicitly has surplus neutrons and radioactivity. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertial_electrostatic_confinement https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertial_electrostatic_confi... It's energy consuming. It's just lower energy than other methods, and it's emphatically not cold fusion.
- oneshtein 3y agoLow Energy Nuclear Reactions (LENR), AKA Cold Fusion.
- 3y ago
- optimalsolver 3y agoStone Age Bronze Age Iron Age LK-99 Age (source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36869209 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36869209)
- antupis 3y agoStone Age Bronze Age Iron Age I would add Steel Age here LK-99 Age
- askvictor 3y agoGiven that human flight and putting things in space rely on Aluminium, I think that's worth a mention too.
- tetrep 3y agoAnd the beverage can! While it seems mundane it's extremely effective at what it does and it's actually recyclable (unlike most things). I think a silicon age would be appropriate too.
- antupis 3y agoI was thinking steel reinforced concrete but yeah Aluminium or Silicon would fit here also.
- acjacobson 3y agoAnd Silicon after Steel
- Maken 3y agoDo not forget the Carbon Fiber age.
- jacquesm 3y agoSilicon?
- Phelinofist 3y agoDon't forget the plastics age...
- matusp 3y agoIt is interesting to see how much of the replication is done by the Chinese and how little is done by the Western countries. Is this the difference between the making-stuff-happen attitude and the sclerotic attitude?
- hobofan 3y agoI doubt the table is representative of actual replication efforts going on, as according to some tweets, suppliers everywhere are out of precursors due to a large amount of orders. I would guess that there are many labs that started trying to replicate as a side-project with an attitude of "if it replicates we'll go public, if not, we don't, as we don't want to spend a lot of efforts on retries". Based on that trying to connect that to wider cultural innovation trends seems quite far-fetched.
- h2odragon 3y ago[flagged]
- dang 3y ago"Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- aqme28 3y agoSomeone on Twitter spoke on this, so I cant' confirm its accuracy. They said that the reagents for this are usually made in China. As soon as this paper was published, labs in China bought out the reserves and they became hard to source in the West.
- perlgeek 3y agoWeren't the raw materials lead, copper, sulfur and phosphorous or something like that? Seems hard to to buy out elements that are so common in industrial and chemical processes.
- wg0 3y agoI'm pretty sure that by the end of this month we'll know that the discovery was either instrument, method, process or humam error.
- WizardClickBoy 3y agoThis month ends in about 10 hours depending on timezone, so they'd better get their skates on.
- alangibson 3y agoFrom what I've gathered, the ingredients of LK99 are common but cooking the right way is difficult. Supposedly the team itself only gets it right 1 time in 10. There have also been a lot of complaints that the patents and papers are missing info you'd want to have when reproducing. So that's making it even harder to reproduce. The upshot tho is that the discoverers seem to be available for tips by email. All in all were going to have to wait more than a few days for reproduction it seems.
- yreg 3y ago>Supposedly the team itself only gets it right 1 time in 10. Source?
- est 3y agoWhy does China alone have so many reproduction attemps? I assumed it would be tried everywhere.
- orangepurple 3y agoChina has more people, more money to spend on research, more equipment, more manufacturing base, more STEM graduates, more everything, and all of that by huge margins.
- senttoschool 3y agoI'm not sure about the other claims but the most logical reasoning is that China has better supply chains and way more STEM graduates.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Accujack 3y agoChina wants to gain a technological edge on all other countries. If they happen to be the first to turn a room temperature superconductor into usable commercial or military materials, then they'll have a huge military or economic advantage for some period of time.
- senttoschool 3y agoGod, this kind of thinking is so brainwashed. The relentless China demonization propaganda has made it so that people in the West don't actually believe that Chinese people have normal human behaviors. In a way, the western media has succeeded in portraying all of China as evil and themselves as good.
- ssijak 3y agoFor such an important discovery (if it is real), that seems it could be replicated in a few days, if I were the team that did the discovery, I would create a video recording of the whole process and all the measurements and share it with the textual article. It sounds like that would provide for an easier way to replicate plus more proofs of the discovery.
- bhouston 3y agoThe team that did the discovery seems disorganized and amateurish though, and with the multiple papers all submitted at the same time by competing factions, riff with infighting - but they stuck with a hunch for longer than anyone else and followed it doggedly. If it turns out to be true, it will be a great movie with an underdog making one of the biggest discoveries of the century.
- shepardrtc 3y ago> but they stuck with a hunch for longer than anyone else and followed it doggedly That's an understatement.
- local_issues 3y ago>discovery seems disorganized and amateurish though, and with the multiple papers all submitted at the same time by competing factions, riff with infighting - but they stuck with a hunch for longer than anyone else and followed it doggedly. Pretty good description of all of human history so far, to be fair
- m3kw9 3y agoDid you read some that said they were amturish or did you actually think that
- bhouston 3y agoThey are not well polished academia types who publish a couple papers or more per year using their students. I have some friends who do that, they get multiple papers accepted at top conferences every year and make increment progress on a regular basis. These guys are completely against the type here. Off in their own lab with no publications in years, having trouble raising money to fund their research, shifting to part time, then bringing in collaborators merely to get money, their attempt at publication is a mess as a result. Yes, compared to normal academia, they are amateurs or at least idiosyncratic weirdos. I'm rooting for them, do not get me wrong, but they are not normal academics.
- alecst 3y agoI’m not an expert, but I’ve used superconductors (I believe YBCO) when I taught physics lab. We cooled samples down with liquid nitrogen and put them over a magnet. They levitate, but not like in the video that the Korean team released. True superconductors enjoy “flux pinning”, meaning wherever you put them on a magnet, they’ll freeze in that position (or move around an axis of constant flux.) In the LK-99 video that they released, they show that the sample is repelled by a magnet. This seems to contradict the HTS claim and wondered if I’m missing something because surely so many experts can’t be this wrong. My background is in physics, but not superconductors.
- dawnofdusk 3y agoType-II super conductors may exhibit "flux pinning". Type-I super conductors do not.
- alecst 3y agoCool thanks. Gonna read up a little on that. Edit: yea it's interesting. Believe it or not, I studied L-G theory in grad school, taught a lab about (type-II) superconductors, but had no idea that type-I superconductors didn't flux pin. Just leaving this here from Wikipedia: > The superconductor must be a type-II superconductor because type-I superconductors cannot be penetrated by magnetic fields. Some type-I superconductors can experience the effects of flux pinning if they are thin enough. If the material's thickness is comparable to the London penetration depth, the magnetic field can pass through the material. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flux_pinning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flux_pinning
- adastra22 3y agoAlso to follow up on your original point, this is a purported example of a linear superconductor. There are parallel columnar lines of superconductivity inside the mineral, like a bundle of wires. No such thing has ever been demonstrated before, and it is unlikely to have macro properties like those you are familiar with. For example, flux pinning is (IIRC) due to circular currents induced in the superconductor. But how do you induce a circular current into a straight-line conductive wire with ~zero cross section?
- dist-epoch 3y ago[flagged]
- coffeebeqn 3y agoInclusive of what?
- koheripbal 3y agoIs this comment serious?
- CrimsonRain 3y agoPeople like you will crucify whoever finds cure for cancer and pat yourselves in the back
- ly3xqhl8g9 3y agoRegardless if LK-99 is truly a Room-Temperature Superconductor or not, only 112 years passed since Heike Kamerlingh Onnes discovered superconductivity on April 8, 1911, 4 PM [1] [2]: resistance not futile, but "practically zero". The first loaf of sliced bread was sold commercially on July 7, 1928 [3]. The rate of progress is astonishing. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heike_Kamerlingh_Onnes#Superconductivity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heike_Kamerlingh_Onnes#Superco... [2] 2010, "The discovery of superconductivity", https://www.ilorentz.org/history/cold/DelftKes_HKO_PT.pdf https://www.ilorentz.org/history/cold/DelftKes_HKO_PT.pdf [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Frederick_Rohwedder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Frederick_Rohwedder
- DrBazza 3y agoI'm resigned to disappointment for this. It's the modern days Pons and Fleischmann. Hopefully the lack of confirmation so far is due to people checking, double checking and triple checking, along with a healthy dose of "we don't want to be tarred with the same brush".
- echelon 3y agoReminds me of EmDrive. That was such a tease and then utter disappointment. Hope LK-99 doesn't go the same way.
- zarzavat 3y agoThe similarities are only superficial. A reactionless drive would violate the most fundamental physical laws. Whereas room temperature/pressure superconductors are not believed to violate any physical law. If you asked “Will we find such a material this century?”, the answer would be a solid maybe. Which end of the century, who knows. It’s more like proofs of the Riemann Hypothesis. Most mathematicians believe that RH is probably true, or at least hope so, but any claimed proof is viewed with extreme suspicion merely because of the sheer number of false ones.
- pushkine 3y agoI've only seen one picture of an alleged successful replication yet: https://twitter.com/iris_IGB/status/1685731177523449856 https://twitter.com/iris_IGB/status/1685731177523449856
- Corrado 3y agoSince Twitter is no longer allowing public access to posts, it would be better to not link to it. Or better yet, re-post the tweet somewhere else and link to that.
- bhaak 3y agoThey backpedaled on that and restricted it to single tweets. So if not logged in you can see a single tweet now but no longer threads.
- Q6T46nT668w6i3m 3y agoThis is a very different experiment.
- Accujack 3y agoThe author has acknowledged that one as a fake.
- generalizations 3y agoWhere? I haven't seen that in her twitter feed.
- Accujack 3y agoThe report I had of it was false, sorry. Ignore the above.
- heliophobicdude 3y agoI've been live following this thread: https://twitter.com/iris_igb/status/1685731177523449856 https://twitter.com/iris_igb/status/1685731177523449856
- andersa 3y agoThis thread is super frustrating. The person posting it does not at all seem interested in actually demonstrating the effect works... how can you have such a sample and only post this one image which could easily be created by gluing a pebble to the glass? Where's the video of it in action! I want this material to be real so badly.
- Rzor 3y agoWe all do, andersa. We all do. I can feel the disappointment brewing. Deep down, I'm almost ready for the archetypal "measurement error".
- asimpletune 3y agoTo be fair a video could also be faked and they explain why they're not doing videos and that if you want a replication just wait for the big labs.
- 7373737373 3y agoAgreed, if they are unwilling or unable to demonstrate it well, why even bother, why waste viewer's time and attention? A bad/unconvincing/incomplete demonstration is indistinguishable from a scam If they want to show and distribute the capital-T Truth, they need to take their ego out of the equation
- Davidzheng 3y agolol they're just having fun let them be. She's not trying to claim anything
- yreg 3y agoI think it's an obvious fake, the account is trolling on multiple fronts.
- asimpletune 3y agoSo, Russian anime cat girl seems to have cooked a sample and demonstrated some of the claimed properties, although she's explicit that it shouldn't be considered a "replication". https://twitter.com/iris_IGB/status/1685731177523449856 https://twitter.com/iris_IGB/status/1685731177523449856
- fanick 3y agonitter link https://nitter.net/iris_IGB/status/1685268812663271424#m https://nitter.net/iris_IGB/status/1685268812663271424#m
- stainablesteel 3y agoits always the people with an anime pfp that do the most godly shit
- cubefox 3y agoProbably often people with autism.
- drexlspivey 3y agothere are some weapons grade anons with 30 followers
- Workaccount2 3y agoI think it's what happens when you just stack all of your character points in intelligence. Smartest person I ever met is now some kind of non-binary fox person. An ivy league masters in math, does risk modeling for some mega insurance company, and lives in a kawaii fever dream while doing it.
- spaceman_2020 3y agoIf you could magically erase all anime from the world, the global tech industry would come to a grinding halt :)
- distortionfield 3y agoIt’s a meme in cryptography too. Cutting edge cryptanalysis and furry profile pics go together like steak and red wine.
- ChemSpider 3y agoI am surprised that anyone still thinks this thing is legit. I mean, I wish it was true, but the publication, the approach and the infights in the team do not instill confidence. To me, it seems they can not recreate the "effect" themselves. Otherwise they would be shipping their samples around the world by now.
- wg0 3y agoDon't really get this extreme sensitivity to downvote. I mean - it seems what it seems. May be it seems really promising and trustworthy to some, good for them. That apart - it seems low hanging fruits in the nature are almost over. Scientific progress might not be as rapid and consistent as in past in coming decades especially when world seems to be heading towards multiple (avoidable) conflicts.
- Hakkin 3y agoI'm not necessarily saying I believe it's real, I'm still on the fence, but if anything, the in-fighting for credit from the researchers almost makes it more credible for me. Why would they be so desperate for credit if they knew their findings would be disproven in a week or two? It seems obvious they're vying for a Nobel Prize. So at the very least, I believe the researchers believe what they published is true.
- Workaccount2 3y agoCould well be experimental error, and they are fighting over a false positive result.
- ChemSpider 3y agoThat is exactly my guess. I have been in the lab, and I know how easy it is to see something because you desperately want to see it...
- Eduard 3y agothen reading about the many failed attempts of creating the first transistor will give you hope. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_transistor https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_transistor
- Simon_O_Rourke 3y agoThis is a race that I earnestly hope either someone wins quickly, or everyone loses... again rather quickly. For incredible claims you typically require incredible evidence, at the moment we're slightly better than hearsay but we've a long way to go get conclusive proof.
- m463 3y ago> everyone loses... again rather quickly that's the thing - if it is hard to manufacture and works maybe 1:10 tries, how can it lose quickly experimentally? In other words, what is a satisfactory proof that it doesn't work, apart from analyzing the original apparatus?
- Simon_O_Rourke 3y ago> that's the thing - if it is hard to manufacture and works maybe 1:10 tries, how can it lose quickly experimentally? Simple, given enough (say > 3) fully accredited labs trying and failing to get a result with the published process, it's a fair conclusion to say that the results cannot be replicated.
- asynchronous 3y agoI love being excited about science and research again. These are the kinds of things I truly enjoy seeing in HN.
- nmwnmw 3y agoIsn't it sufficient to have another lab confirm that the existing sample is a super conductor? Then we can all sprint to replication.
- bhouston 3y agoYeah, having another lab confirm the behavior and makeup of that sample would go a long way. I wonder why that isn’t happening? Does anyone have an explanation on why no one is examining/validating the sample they already have?
- junofan 3y agoI mean they already characterized it six ways to Sunday and posted a video of it levitating.
- bhouston 3y agoIndependent validation. Physical peer review. That basically helps rule out scammers or gross incompetence and ensures that even if initial attempts to replicate fail because of the complexity or lack of clarity, people keep trying.
- bluGill 3y agoAny physicist can make up something that sounds reasonable to other physicists. With a little trick photography (or CGI!) you can make a video something levitating that looks like room temperature super conductors. Don't read the above as an accusation. Only a justification to wait until it is replicated.
- bananapub 3y agowhat are you talking about? the authors haven't given anyone a sample to inspect, so every other solid state physics lab in the world is instead trying to follow the notional recipe and test their own sample.
- 3y ago
- Ajedi32 3y agoWhether or not this turns out to be real the whole incident has been extremely entertaining, way more than I would have expected. Replication attempts being documented in real time on Twitter and livestreamed on Twitch, news about infighting and drama among the researchers who published the paper, constant fluxations in the betting markets as new news comes out. It's been a wild ride.
- echelon 3y agoIt's a lot like the EmDrive incident, except replication attempts are easier. Both are strange discoveries that are poised to change the world as we know it. Hopefully this one turns out, unlike the EmDrive.
- m463 3y agoor the e-cat: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Catalyzer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Catalyzer
- BryanLegend 3y agoEmDrive was supposed to work better with Superconductors!
- throwawaymaths 3y agoYou might be excited about ivo quantum drive that is going to be tested in space, NET October
- m3kw9 3y agoThis some big leap type world changing stuff if it’s true. I wonder how gas prices would fall if this is true
- syndicatedjelly 3y agoI hope people work on something more interesting than making gas prices go down slightly
- andersa 3y agoGas powered vehicles would be obsolete.
- chunkyslink 3y agoPlease can someone explain this to me ?
- jerojero 3y agoThere is a lab in South Korea that claims to have discovered/developed superconductor that works at room (and higher) temperatures. This kind of discovery would be worth a Nobel prize and would probably give us access to a whole range of new/improved technologies in the future. All of this happened maybe 10 or so days ago, so other labs are trying to replicate the procedure to verify that the claims are legit, as I said, this would be a huge discovery so it has generated a lot of excitement everywhere in the world.
- danbruc 3y agoAs I learned from the Dave's EEVBlog video [1], their demonstration video [2] says in the description that the material was deposited onto a copper plate which could probably explain the interaction with the magnet. And as I just noticed, the description has since been changed and now says »The sample was thermally deposited on a enriched uranium 235 plate.« EDIT: Correction, I got the link to the video saying deposited onto uranium [2] from [1] but that is not the actual link from their web page which is [3] and still says deposited onto copper. So someone on eevblog.com was having some fun. [1] https://www.eevblog.com/2023/07/31/eevblog-1555-korean-lk-99-ambient-temperature-superconductor-demo-video-busted/ https://www.eevblog.com/2023/07/31/eevblog-1555-korean-lk-99... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-w2qc_BoEiU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-w2qc_BoEiU [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtVjGWpbE7k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtVjGWpbE7k
- andersa 3y agoThat's highly suspicious. I guess they're banking on nobody having an enriched uranium 235 plate at hand to verify what happens if you do this without any LK99...
- 7373737373 3y agoFor me, this, and the combination with the name ("Quantum Energy Research Center") is another push in the direction of ignoring everything named "quantum" too often quacksalver territory Is this really their channel? Why do they only have 1 video, 8 subscribers, and why is the video unlisted?
- n2d4 3y ago>ignoring everything named "quantum" This heuristic is probably a good one for non-scientific stuff but I'm not sure how accurate it is when we're looking at a group researching quantum effects
- knodi123 3y agoyou wouldn't expect a lot of subscribers to a channel with only unlisted videos, right? Some people use youtube solely for video publishing, and have zero or less interest in the social aspects of the site.
- KolenCh 3y agoOff topic: any tool to have a quick summarization like this? --- The blog post is about the discovery of a purported room-temperature-and-pressure (RTP) superconductor, labeled "LK-99". The discovery was announced in two papers published on arxiv.org on July 22, 2023. The first paper, which was short and seemed hastily written, had three authors: Sukbae Lee, Ji-Hoon Kim, and Young-Wan Kwon. The second paper was more detailed and had six authors, with Young-Wan Kwon being removed from the author list. The LK-99 superconductor, originally synthesized in 1999, is claimed to have a critical temperature of 127°C, above the boiling point of water. The synthesis method is simple: finely grind and mix Lanarkite (Pb2(SO4)O) and Copper Phosphide (Cu3P) and bake it at 925°C in a vacuum chamber for a day. The discovery has sparked a mix of skepticism and curiosity online. Young-Wan Kwon, the removed author from the first paper, crashed a science conference to talk about the discovery, adding to the intrigue. The blog post also discusses the implications of a room-temperature superconductor, which could allow for things like an infinitely long power cable without loss, or a portable MRI scanner. It also provides a timeline of events and a list of ongoing replication efforts by various academic and private groups. The author emphasizes that scientific research is a gradual process, and the validity of the LK-99 superconductor is still being investigated.
- babypuncher 3y agoSo how long before NileRed takes a crack at it?
- dsign 3y agoMy two-cents from my armchair spaceship: I thought we had solved quantum mechanics! If this material is real, why can't somebody run a computer code and calculate its theoretical conductivity/resistance? Did I suffer all that childhood trauma with wave functions to now, in my forties, have to learn it was all smoke and mirrors?
- marcosdumay 3y agoOh, Quantum mechanics is completely characterized. We have complete theoretical modeling of chemistry and most electric phenomenon. But you just try solving the equations our models create. A computer can certainly simulate this material, on the CS theoretical sense, where all computers are the same and time and memory are both infinite.
- r0m4n0 3y agoI’m just curious as a layman, why aren’t the paper authors helping in this race whatsoever? It seems a lot of folks are guessing on the recipe. I haven’t seen any communication from the LK from LK99. Seems like radio silence
- Eduard 3y agomaybe NDA, maybe trade secret. commercialization is a valid reason not to be all too chatty
- ncann 3y agoThey are, if you follow the threads they are apparently quite available through email and has responded to quite a number of people. Though probably not everyone, given the amount of email that they must be receiving right now.
- psychphysic 3y agoIf they have this unicorn superconducter. Then they have it next week, and next year. And it's patented. There's no rush for them. If they are faking, then there's still no rush.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- code51 3y agoDamn, why is nobody talking more about the theory of it? What I see to ponder: - (1970, brinkman, rice) "application of gutzwiller's variational method to the metal-insulator transition" - (2001, hyun-tak kim) "extension of the brinkman-rice picture and the mott transition" - (2002, hyun-tak kim) "extended brinkman-rice picture and its application to high-Tc superconductors" - (2021, hyun-tak kim) "Room-temperature-superconducting Tc driven by electron correlation" even briefly reading relevant research (other than these papers) says even if a group could not replicate lk99 at first try, there's more to it. cooking the right way should be insanely difficult because this is a probabilistic event after all. should not be happening homogenously and should not be happening in a wide-band of parameters. I think the groups will eventually reach a narrow range of parameters to replicate but will take a lot of effort.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- dkqmduems 3y agoThe brinkman paper is interesting, but the others are a bit too hand wavy.
- drtgh 3y agoBy the rumors that I read in forums, Sukbae Lee and Ji-Hoon Kim hit the first sample (the prototype of LK-99) in 1999 trying to prove the theory of their professor Choi Dong-Shik. Around 2017 YoungWan Kwon joined to the team and they got investment enough for to buy an SQUID and a EPR. In 2020, L and K hit with LK99. They tried to submit a paper to Nature, but was rejected. They contacted with HyunTak Kim after read his 2021 paper (the one you point), and HyunTak Kim joined to the team. The above are rumors. I'm not sure if such 2021 paper may give tips in the theory or synthesization behind LK99.
- LargeTomato 3y ago>They tried to submit a paper to Nature, but was rejected This should be "were rejected" because "were" refers to "they". It cannot refer to the paper even though that would make sense. You could say "but it was rejected" to force the sentence to refer to the singular paper.
- code51 3y agoWe thought Oppenheimer was the way to instill a love of physics to young people but turns out LK-99 was the way to winning people's hearts and minds to delve more into physics.
- legi0nary 3y agoDon't understand how a movie largely about the psychological horrors of developing and using a nuclear weapons is being construed to be "pro physics" lol. If anything it's the opposite
- Freedom2 3y agoYeah, it sounds like GP hasn't even seen the movie, the themes conveyed are quite clear.
- yreg 3y agoIt's a movie about changing the world by calculating equations and understanding how they describe reality. Of course it is empowering for STEM people.
- stathibus 3y agoOne of the themes of the movie that gets repeated over and over is "these boneheads who draw equations on whiteboards but can't follow security rules are literally the most important people in the world."
- oceanplexian 3y agoI was massively let down by Oppenheimer. It’s 90% interpersonal/political drama (Including a bunch of unnecessary nudity thrown in for dramatic effect), a few token scenes with Albert Einstein, a 10 minute detonation with decent SFX, and a small fraction of real physics and engineering. If you’re actually interested in the Manhattan Project you’ll be way more inspired by a history channel documentary than anything in that movie.
- lukeholder 3y ago
- dom96 3y agoI feel like I am out of the loop on this one. But everything I am seeing makes me skeptical, can anyone explain why I should be excited about this being anything more than just a fake paper?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jiggawatts 3y agoMultiple authors instead of a single quack. Former leader (now sadly deceased) was a respected superconducting material researcher. They ran the essential tests, albeit not very well. They were at it for years in silence, and it was only after this current material's synthesis that they were tripping over each other to publish, with the apparent firm belief that they were onto a Nobel Prize level discovery. The theory they proposed -- while perhaps wrong -- also makes intuitive sense. Cold fusion had many of those elements also, but the difference is that superconductivity is easier to verify. Many people like the overall concept of using doped crystals to produce compressed or stretched lattices, which seem to be one of the enablers for superconductivity. Compare with cold fusion, where there was no reasonable theory to explain how the palladium lattice would bring hydrogen nuclei close together.
- FriedPickles 3y agoEverybody's talking about reproducing the material which is great, but will take time. Why don't the authors supply their existing material to an independent lab for earlier confirmation?
- psychphysic 3y agoIf they really believe they have the only sample they won't let it out of their sight most likely. It'll be superconducting tomorrow if it's really superconducting today.
- CoastalCoder 3y agoIs that necessarily true? I'm 200% not a physicist, but it is possible that during transit, minor bumps / temperature changes / ionizing radiation / oscillating E-M fields could screw up the material in a way that matters?
- psychphysic 3y agoI meant in the abstract sense. They seem to be able to make the stuff with albeit with a very poor yield.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- foven 3y agoNot necessarily true. Complex compounds can be susceptible to oxidisation and generally decay and degrade over time.
- kurthr 3y agoApparently, they've offered samples to "serious experimental groups". "Condensed Matter Theory Center (a Twitter account affiliated with University of Maryland) says they will send samples." - sanxiyn 2 days ago https://twitter.com/condensed_the/status/1684960318718406656 https://twitter.com/condensed_the/status/1684960318718406656
- koreanguy 3y ago[dead]
- Vicinity9635 3y ago[dead]
- jiggawatts 3y agoIt's not looking good so far. This team reproduced several variants of the formula, and none of them behaved in an interesting way: https://nitter.sneed.network/altryne/status/1686029047053090816#m https://nitter.sneed.network/altryne/status/1686029047053090...
- raziel2701 3y agoIt's only been a week! I'm a materials scientist and the recipes for material growth are true for their systems. I have to find the truth on my system, so if a recipe calls for a deposition temperature of 100 C and anneal at 600 C I may find I need to anneal at 675 C to get similar results to that in the paper. I'd be surprised if someone had already reproduced it so soon. These things take a few months to get right.
- fullstackchris 3y agogotta say, this is slowly looking like a giant nothing burger
- namuol 3y agoSo much speculation but I don’t see anyone asking this: Who has access to samples from the original lab? If synthesis hasn’t been cracked yet, wouldn’t the next-best thing be independent validation of the original samples?
- addisonl 3y agoThis has been asked over and over again in this thread.
- n2d4 3y agoApparently that's what they're doing: https://twitter.com/condensed_the/status/1684960318718406656 https://twitter.com/condensed_the/status/1684960318718406656
- Rebelgecko 3y ago>Odds for 2 (1) below have increased (decreased) exponentially Can someone help me parse this? Is it referring to #2 or #1 in the quoted tweet? Have the odds increased or decreased?
- u320 3y agoIncreased for 2, decreased for 1.
- codethief 3y agoOdds for option 2 have increased, odds for option 1 have decreased.
- saithound 3y agoThis is a common pattern in academic writing, which compresses two sentences into one, like so: > In sunny (cloudy) weather, the sky looks blue (gray). So the sentence above means that odds for scenario 2 have increased, while odds for scenario 1 have decreased.
- carabiner 3y agoArgonne National Lab has synthesized LK-99 and is beginning analysis: https://twitter.com/BenShindel/status/1686115699779878912 https://twitter.com/BenShindel/status/1686115699779878912 Jorg Maser (PhD, Gottingen) at Argonne is working on it: https://twitter.com/8teAPi/status/1686000150777614336 https://twitter.com/8teAPi/status/1686000150777614336
- xvector 3y agoWhich companies are yall investing in?
- overnight5349 3y agoI love that this is happening realtime in the open. I can just about follow the science, and it's so incredibly exciting to watch this unfold live
- I_Am_AGI 3y ago[flagged]