5 ms·

My understanding is that the "99" in LK-99 is the year it they first synthesized the material, i.e. 1999. Assuming this is all true, why is it just now coming

My understanding is that the "99" in LK-99 is the year it they first synthesized the material, i.e. 1999. Assuming this is all true, why is it just now coming to light? Did they just not know what they had? (I have not been following this closely, maybe this has already been explained)

erulabs 3y ago
I’m very much a layman, but my understanding is that LK-99 itself is not necessarily a superconductor. It’s polycrystalline which means it’s a very uneven material - not all LK-99 is the same. They both didn’t know it was what it was and also couldn’t nail down the procedure for consistently making it so that it has the superconductor properties. It took a long time to get the resources required to investigate this far - the scientists had their own lives and careers and didn’t get back to this particular investigation until recently.
jvm___ 3y ago
Uniformed opinion. It takes a week to bake/whatever a test sample. Which is why this is playing out so "slowly". So, they had an idea and have been baking/testing/refining samples for decades. Science and funding takes a while. What idea they started with and why they kept at it for 20 years is beyond me, that's a long time to chase an idea of you didn't have results or a hint that your idea would work. Maybe they had a weird sample that came from some other process in 1999 and have spent the intermediate time convincing funding people and doing the repetitive lab work required to get it to this point.
- mptest 3y ago
  Speaks to a supreme confidence in the theory, surely? I'm a layman but imagine everyone is going to want to hear every wild idea these guys could think up if this works out. They might have been sitting on this for 20 years? Probably why I'm not, but If I were any vc person I'd be busting down their door trying to give them all my money
  - yetihehe 3y ago
    How would you find such researchers if they didn't have plausible real-world results yet? I have a theory for new high performance heat engine which I developed over 15 years already, but I don't think anyone would give me ANY money for making a prototype (which may not work in reality), so I have to somehow do it in the limited time after working two jobs (I had to earn enough to have a home with a proper garage). Do you have any tips for someone like me?
    - fragmede 3y ago
      Get involved with your local community of makers, get them intrigued by your idea and its potential, connect with people that will help you build it. Patent it, and then raise funds via the Internet to try and build it. Seek out local VCs. I know that's a lot to ask, on top of two jobs, but I didn't organize our economy.
      - yetihehe 3y ago
        Thanks for reply, I appreciate it a lot. > Get involved with your local community of makers, get them intrigued by your idea and its potential, connect with people that will help you build it. This will prevent me from patenting it. I can also make first prototype myself, I've started last year, will try to finish this year. Funding would just let me drop one job and make it faster. > Patent it, and then raise funds via the Internet to try and build it. Seek out local VCs. I know that's a lot to ask, on top of two jobs, but I didn't organize our economy. I don't have enough money for patenting something that might not work. That's why I need to make a prototype. That prototype will be MUCH cheaper than a proper patent but takes some time which I also don't have too much (but working on it slowly). When I'm sure it works, I already have enough connections to make it actually happen. At this moment, funding my prototype would just benefit humanity with earlier knowledge of whether it works, so of course no one sane will fund it, that's the sad reality with human priorities. > I know that's a lot to ask, on top of two jobs, but I didn't organize our economy. Yeah, I've only asked for tips just in case you have some, I don't blame you or anything. Thank you! This thread also describes WHY those LK-99 researchers sat on their invention for so long, they just couldn't find enough people interested in their material. Of course I could just publish my idea, but it's possible that no one would be interested in this and I would like to have some money from this to pursue some other ideas without begging people for support.
- xorbax 3y ago
  I have the same thought: "25 years? Why the fuck. Buy a new salt and publish a fucking paper." I suppose they saw something favorable in that 99 sample and nobody else knew. The vagaries of chemical synthesis helped. But it doesn't seem like they could have had a worse sample than what they fucking have now, while getting data that made them waste a quarter-century. As much as people hype and have 'reproduced' it, I...dunno. If it's real, the autobiography will be worth an expensive translation.
lt 3y ago
As I've read it, the first lead to the material was 99. 2018 They got funding to research it further, 2020 was a first attempt of publication at Nature that was retracted, further improvements were made until 22/23 were two patents were filled, then suddenly 10 days ago Kwon, one of the co-researchers jumped the gun publishing a paper with the details, on one hand fearing a leak of someone else publishing first as that was too simple to replicate, on the other hand excluding everyone else from the paper and only listing him and Lee/Kim (LK) as authors as a Nobel prize can only be shared by three people. 2.5hrs later LK published again listing other 5 authors but him.
- arriu 3y ago
  Im sure I’m not the only person thinking 24 years is way too long for such an important advancement. Huge respect for those in this field or others that don’t give up after so many years. Thank you
  - xorbax 3y ago
    24 years is nothing in the scale of the universe If it increases entropy as much as many suspect and it only took 1/3 of a couple humans' lives to open that phase space, the Universe has done what it wanted - to hasten heat-death.
    - odyssey7 3y ago
      Interesting angle — but if heat death were possible it would have happened by now.
      - cthalupa 3y ago
        Huh? Heat death of the universe is going to take an incomprehensibly large amount of time. Like, 10^106 years. The universe is A LOT younger than that.
        odyssey7 3y ago
scythe 3y ago
>Assuming this is all true, why is it just now coming to light? Did they just not know what they had? This is why the calculations by Sinéad Griffin looked so interesting to me: they suggest that the superconductivity depends on an unconventional substitution pattern that might not (in fact should not) occur in most samples of Cu-doped lead apatite. So the active structure was only present in tiny quantities, requiring a long period of trial-and-error optimization. Again, this is far from proof, but I thought it was at least very curious to have some theory that explains not just a mechanism for superconductivity but also why the samples seem to teeter on the edge of superconductivity so frustratingly. The replies to my previous post ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36958419 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36958419 ) suggesting that flat bands appear simply because copper doesn't belong in that lattice seem inconsistent with the fact that a flat band was not observed when copper substituted at the wrong type of lattice site. If flat bands appear merely because of the unpaired copper electron, they should appear when it is substituted only at Pb {2} sites, but they don't. The appearance of this band structure plus the observance of diamagnetism just takes us from happenstance to coincidence, so we need one more to conclude it is enemy action. FWIW I don't work in condensed matter physics but I have taken the classes at grad level a few years back. I also should really be doing other things, but this is probably the most fun scientific news cycle since 'Oumuamua at least. (COVID doesn't count as "fun".)
- alexose 3y ago
  > but also why the samples seem to teeter on the edge of superconductivity so frustratingly. Interesting! The uneven chunk shown in the original video was probably the best specimen they had after decades of attempts. When I first saw it, my first thought was, "geez, why not at least try to make it uniform"...
fnordpiglet 3y ago
There are various timelines on HN and elsewhere but it boils down to essentially they saw some blips on sample measurements that they assumed were errors. But the head of their lab thought differently and as he was dying asked his former students to reinvestigate it. They secured funding in 2018 but it was a bumpy road with personality conflicts etc.
anhner 3y ago
wild assumption, but maybe they accidentally made a small sample of high grade LK-99 back in 1999 that displayed the superconductor properties, and they had difficulty replicating. Maybe they spent all these years refining the process

erulabs 3y ago

I’m very much a layman, but my understanding is that LK-99 itself is not necessarily a superconductor. It’s polycrystalline which means it’s a very uneven material - not all LK-99 is the same. They both didn’t know it was what it was and also couldn’t nail down the procedure for consistently making it so that it has the superconductor properties. It took a long time to get the resources required to investigate this far - the scientists had their own lives and careers and didn’t get back to this particular investigation until recently.

jvm___ 3y ago

Uniformed opinion. It takes a week to bake/whatever a test sample. Which is why this is playing out so "slowly". So, they had an idea and have been baking/testing/refining samples for decades. Science and funding takes a while. What idea they started with and why they kept at it for 20 years is beyond me, that's a long time to chase an idea of you didn't have results or a hint that your idea would work. Maybe they had a weird sample that came from some other process in 1999 and have spent the intermediate time convincing funding people and doing the repetitive lab work required to get it to this point.

mptest 3y ago
Speaks to a supreme confidence in the theory, surely? I'm a layman but imagine everyone is going to want to hear every wild idea these guys could think up if this works out. They might have been sitting on this for 20 years? Probably why I'm not, but If I were any vc person I'd be busting down their door trying to give them all my money
- yetihehe 3y ago
  How would you find such researchers if they didn't have plausible real-world results yet? I have a theory for new high performance heat engine which I developed over 15 years already, but I don't think anyone would give me ANY money for making a prototype (which may not work in reality), so I have to somehow do it in the limited time after working two jobs (I had to earn enough to have a home with a proper garage). Do you have any tips for someone like me?
  - fragmede 3y ago
    Get involved with your local community of makers, get them intrigued by your idea and its potential, connect with people that will help you build it. Patent it, and then raise funds via the Internet to try and build it. Seek out local VCs. I know that's a lot to ask, on top of two jobs, but I didn't organize our economy.
    - yetihehe 3y ago
      Thanks for reply, I appreciate it a lot. > Get involved with your local community of makers, get them intrigued by your idea and its potential, connect with people that will help you build it. This will prevent me from patenting it. I can also make first prototype myself, I've started last year, will try to finish this year. Funding would just let me drop one job and make it faster. > Patent it, and then raise funds via the Internet to try and build it. Seek out local VCs. I know that's a lot to ask, on top of two jobs, but I didn't organize our economy. I don't have enough money for patenting something that might not work. That's why I need to make a prototype. That prototype will be MUCH cheaper than a proper patent but takes some time which I also don't have too much (but working on it slowly). When I'm sure it works, I already have enough connections to make it actually happen. At this moment, funding my prototype would just benefit humanity with earlier knowledge of whether it works, so of course no one sane will fund it, that's the sad reality with human priorities. > I know that's a lot to ask, on top of two jobs, but I didn't organize our economy. Yeah, I've only asked for tips just in case you have some, I don't blame you or anything. Thank you! This thread also describes WHY those LK-99 researchers sat on their invention for so long, they just couldn't find enough people interested in their material. Of course I could just publish my idea, but it's possible that no one would be interested in this and I would like to have some money from this to pursue some other ideas without begging people for support.
xorbax 3y ago
I have the same thought: "25 years? Why the fuck. Buy a new salt and publish a fucking paper." I suppose they saw something favorable in that 99 sample and nobody else knew. The vagaries of chemical synthesis helped. But it doesn't seem like they could have had a worse sample than what they fucking have now, while getting data that made them waste a quarter-century. As much as people hype and have 'reproduced' it, I...dunno. If it's real, the autobiography will be worth an expensive translation.

lt 3y ago

As I've read it, the first lead to the material was 99. 2018 They got funding to research it further, 2020 was a first attempt of publication at Nature that was retracted, further improvements were made until 22/23 were two patents were filled, then suddenly 10 days ago Kwon, one of the co-researchers jumped the gun publishing a paper with the details, on one hand fearing a leak of someone else publishing first as that was too simple to replicate, on the other hand excluding everyone else from the paper and only listing him and Lee/Kim (LK) as authors as a Nobel prize can only be shared by three people. 2.5hrs later LK published again listing other 5 authors but him.

arriu 3y ago
Im sure I’m not the only person thinking 24 years is way too long for such an important advancement. Huge respect for those in this field or others that don’t give up after so many years. Thank you
- xorbax 3y ago
  24 years is nothing in the scale of the universe If it increases entropy as much as many suspect and it only took 1/3 of a couple humans' lives to open that phase space, the Universe has done what it wanted - to hasten heat-death.
  - odyssey7 3y ago
    Interesting angle — but if heat death were possible it would have happened by now.
    - cthalupa 3y ago
      Huh? Heat death of the universe is going to take an incomprehensibly large amount of time. Like, 10^106 years. The universe is A LOT younger than that.
      - odyssey7 3y ago

scythe 3y ago

>Assuming this is all true, why is it just now coming to light? Did they just not know what they had? This is why the calculations by Sinéad Griffin looked so interesting to me: they suggest that the superconductivity depends on an unconventional substitution pattern that might not (in fact should not) occur in most samples of Cu-doped lead apatite. So the active structure was only present in tiny quantities, requiring a long period of trial-and-error optimization. Again, this is far from proof, but I thought it was at least very curious to have some theory that explains not just a mechanism for superconductivity but also why the samples seem to teeter on the edge of superconductivity so frustratingly. The replies to my previous post ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36958419 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36958419 ) suggesting that flat bands appear simply because copper doesn't belong in that lattice seem inconsistent with the fact that a flat band was not observed when copper substituted at the wrong type of lattice site. If flat bands appear merely because of the unpaired copper electron, they should appear when it is substituted only at Pb {2} sites, but they don't. The appearance of this band structure plus the observance of diamagnetism just takes us from happenstance to coincidence, so we need one more to conclude it is enemy action. FWIW I don't work in condensed matter physics but I have taken the classes at grad level a few years back. I also should really be doing other things, but this is probably the most fun scientific news cycle since 'Oumuamua at least. (COVID doesn't count as "fun".)

alexose 3y ago
> but also why the samples seem to teeter on the edge of superconductivity so frustratingly. Interesting! The uneven chunk shown in the original video was probably the best specimen they had after decades of attempts. When I first saw it, my first thought was, "geez, why not at least try to make it uniform"...

fnordpiglet 3y ago

There are various timelines on HN and elsewhere but it boils down to essentially they saw some blips on sample measurements that they assumed were errors. But the head of their lab thought differently and as he was dying asked his former students to reinvestigate it. They secured funding in 2018 but it was a bumpy road with personality conflicts etc.

anhner 3y ago

wild assumption, but maybe they accidentally made a small sample of high grade LK-99 back in 1999 that displayed the superconductor properties, and they had difficulty replicating. Maybe they spent all these years refining the process