3 ms·
> If true, that is objectively insane. I dunno about that. Look at it this way: we don't know how to make a room temp superconductor, we don't know how to le
by nullc 3y ago
> If true, that is objectively insane.
I dunno about that. Look at it this way: we don't know how to make a room temp superconductor, we don't know how to learn what we need to learn to make one. There were some more obvious ideas, they didn't work. There were a lot of less obvious ideas, lots of people tried them, they didn't work.
At this point, one could argue that continued research specifically directed to making a room temp superconductor, absent some kind of new externally originated discovery or a constraint relaxation (like ultra high pressure), is objectively a waste of time.
So we should also expect that the discovery will either be a bit insane or will be a totally unexpected accident from unrelated work (why are my results weird? oh this drug I was testing turned out to be a superconductor!)-- and maybe a combination. Perhaps it turns out that the LK-99 sample is superconducting but due to some accidental impurity in their synthesis, for reasons totally unrelated to their expectations, perhaps one that would have been discovered before but most people making new ceramics aren't testing them for superconductivity.
The sane people are busy making discoveries that if not quite guaranteed are at least in domains where many people haven't already failed.
- rowanG077 3y agoHow much money does actually go into this? I know it's an active research area, but I didn't get the idea this is some kind of "main" focus for humanity. For example a figure I could find is that US$24.5 billion is spend on cancer research (which frankly I find extraordinarily low). I couldn't find a figure online but I doubt it's even 10% of that. To me it just sounds more like we are just playing around a little bit and not actually taking finding a room temperature super conductor seriously.
- distortionfield 3y agoIf that cancer figure is true, that’s depressingly low for something so devastatingly common and increasingly common.
- Ancalagon 3y agoActually a lot of strides have been made in cancer survivability rates from that funding - depending on type of cancer, many people can be essentially guaranteed survival these days when just decades ago e.g. prostate cancer was a death sentence.
- rowanG077 3y agoFor sure! That also not what I was implying. The US solo spends something like 770 billion per year just on the military. That means even the entire world together spends 3% of that on cancer research. You can't really tell me this is even remotely sane.
- distortionfield 3y ago> one could argue that continued research specifically directed to making a room temp superconductor, absent some kind of new externally originated discovery or a constraint relaxation (like ultra high pressure), is objectively a waste of time. Really? I’m not convinced of that. If anything, the prior papers published by other authors pointing in this direction say the exact opposite to me.