45 ms·
Observation of zero resistance above 100 K in Pb₁₀₋ₓCuₓ(PO₄)₆O
- tines 3y agoIsn't it a faux pas to put the degrees-symbol after the unit K?
- Nifty3929 3y agoYes
- extraduder_ire 3y agoIt's incorrect, yes. (about as incorrect as saying you're "1.8 degrees meters tall") But also, that's "U+2218 RING OPERATOR" on the page, not "U+00B0 DEGREE SIGN" but that may just be a typo.
- tnecniv 3y agoClearly K is an element of some kind of algebraic structure here
- DaiPlusPlus 3y agoAh yes, K, the Potassium Constant
- squirrel_fetus 3y agoPretty cool! The question is how cool?
- jfengel 3y agoCooler than dry ice but less cool than liquid nitrogen. (Wakka wakka wakka)
- segfaultbuserr 3y agoAccording to the paper: Tc = 110 K, or around -163 °C. This is still pretty "cool", the existence of room-temperature superconductivity remains unverified. But assuming this paper is true, it means the material would still at least be a legitimate high-temperature superconductor in its own right, and the original claim would probably be cleared from being a deliberate fraud.
- lifthrasiir 3y agoI'm very much conservative about this paper because while the graph in Fig. 3a says $T_c^{zero}$ being 110 K, the "zero" resistance is actually only 1e-5 Ω (!) and even if the sample is possibly superconducting its critical temperature would be much lower than 110 K anyway. I'm aware of the difficulty in obtaining larger samples, but the label in that graph is really misleading regardless.
- nukros 3y agoThe random jumps in the resistivity around 250 K suggests that there is very bad contact resistance or a possible alternate current path. The drop in resistance doesn’t look like a typical phase transition (it is very broad in temperature). My guess would be that the voltage leads are not very well connected to the region of the sample that the current is flowing through. This could actually give a drop in the measured voltage (and therefore “resistance”) even though the actual resistance is increasing as the sample is cooled. It would be interesting if they also included two-point resistance across the current leads.
- segfaultbuserr 3y agoOne of the authors commented in their previous video pre-announcement that they suspect it was a probe cleanliness problem, which they would investigate later.
- throwawaylinux 3y agoIs this kind of thing typical for experiments working to confirm such significant results, or is there a mad rush to publish? Do you really get a lot of prestige from confirming somebody else's result? I would have thought the risk to reputation from sloppy work would far outweigh it (see: the cold fusion shenanigans).
- ianai 3y agoProbably a lab that confirms any piece of it will get a significant share of attention and acclaim. I heard the research group got scooped by a former researcher. Former researcher outed them before they were ready for all the relevant questions. Not a particularly good thing to do for a career to out colleagues like that.
- crakenzak 3y agoSo exciting! Just FYI, the wikipedia page for LK-99 has a very useful tracking grid of replication attempts with sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LK-99 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LK-99
- swagmoney1606 3y agoWe'll probably know for sure within the month!
- generalizations 3y agoSomewhat disappointed the russian twitter anon isn't included, since they seem to have made the first replication attempt that might have panned out.
- lost_tourist 3y agoI suspect that account is just a troll who knows a bit about material science. They spend more time arguing and promoting the Soviet Union than sciencing. I gathered that after just 5 minutes of scrolling through their twitter. I suspect a retired and bored Soviet scientist maybe?
- yreg 3y agoAh this again. No offense to you, but yes, the obnoxious anonymous Russian troll who's only proof is a photo of a spec of dust (glued?) in a syringe, who refuses to take a video, who says she didnt follow the paper beause she immediately invented a better way to make a different room temp superconductor, who says she doesnt care about superconductors and who keeps tweeting bizzare USSR propaganda? I wonder why she's not included in the Wikipedia article. /s
- sashank_1509 3y agoAnon is fine, I’m inclined to promote anons who do credible replications. Russian anon is not one of them, she really should take a video at the very least, even then her speck is so small until she released detailed measurements one can’t in good faith trust her. I won’t be surprised if at the end of all this, she just claims she was trolling in good fun and we’re the fools for taking anything she says seriously.
- jesprenj 3y agoIs this one also written in Word so it automatically loses LaTeX-credibility, as was commented under the first paper? (:
- ant6n 3y agoMaybe some people wanna focus on the work and not on the geek cred. (I need to write some thesis like thing soon, like 15 years after my masters thesis that was written in latex, and do I really want to bother setting latex up again and futz with templates and fight for correctly positioned figures, or just use Word and be done with it?)
- marcosdumay 3y ago> just use Word and be done with it? One don't "just" use word, and it's certainly never done with. Unless you found a room temperature superconductor and half the people will simply not care if you wrote it in a piece of paper (yet half will care... for some reason), you will have to spend all your time fixing formatting issues and keeping things on their correct state. I was stupid enough to write a paper in Word once. Given the choice, I will never repeat the mistake.
- chungy 3y agoGive TeXmacs a shot.
- ramraj07 3y agoI would have said latex gatekeepers are the worst, but now I know eMacs geeks so no. Or was it vim? Can never tell!
- robotresearcher 3y ago‘eMacs’? It’s LaTeX that has the self-conscious capitalization!
- astrange 3y ago
- danbrooks 3y agoEncouraging evidence that the recent work on room temperature superconductivity might be real! Still waiting for confirmation from multiple labs.
- wsieroci 3y agoCould someone explain why this is important? What is the consequence of the existence of Superconductors like that?
- kvandy 3y agoMy understanding is that this unlocks future-tech... Post quantum computing, hyper efficient rail tech, fast charging batteries, etc. Pretty neat stuff, and even cooler to be able to follow this as it develops.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- n2d4 3y agoIn the most ELI5 way possible, a superconductor is a material that doesn't lose any energy or produce heat when used as a cable/wire, and at the same time also a very strong magnet. MRIs and powerlines are more obvious applications, but theoretically you can do a lot of cool stuff (batteries with zero energy loss, heat-efficient computers, etc [1]). If true, LK-99 would allow these things to happen at room temperature instead of negative whatever degrees, making them much more useful. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_applications_of_superconductivity https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_applications_o...
- booleandilemma 3y agoI like this HN comment explaining it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36978704 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36978704
- dgoldstein0 3y agoThe biggest near future tech for superconductors: fusion power. One huge area of exploration for fusion power is tokamok reactor design, which requires a very strong magnetic field to confine plasma within a round shape - typically a torus, though I think I read of one spherical shell. I suppose these don't necessarily need room temperature super conductors, but cheaper and easier to manufacture superconducting materials to use as the magnets could make a huge difference. And I do wonder if allowing higher temperatures could aid in the operability of these future devices. https://spectrum.ieee.org/fusion-2662267312 https://spectrum.ieee.org/fusion-2662267312 is one I read about recently, using YBaCuO as the superconducting electromagnet. Definitely sounds bottlenecked on production of it. Fusion power, as any energy source that massively increases the amount of energy humans can harness, could be planet changing.
- nyc_pizzadev 3y agoWorth noting that the sample used did not produce a Meissner effect, but was still superconductive at ~100K. > To further verify the superconducting properties, we conducted magnetic measurements on the sample, but unfortunately, no obvious Meissner signal was observed, indicating that the superconducting volume fraction of the sample may be very small. The preparation of high-purity samples are still a challenging task.
- klimt 3y agoThis is one of my key takeaways as well. It's a shame they didn't include their magnetization measurements, even if it didn't confirm superconductivity. The first conclusive paper will have to demonstrate a superconducting transition in both electrical resistivity and magnetization.
- soligern 3y agoIn the observations, this sample they tested did not exhibit the Meissner effect at room temperature. Which means it’s not the same thing the original team discovered?
- Levitating 3y agoThey stated no "obvious" Meissner effect was detected. Possibly because the sample includes too many impurities.
- downWidOutaFite 3y agoA 110k superconductor would not be revolutionary since we already have some in that vicinity.
- slavetologic 3y agoThat's what I'm not understanding about this frenzy. Seems like this already kind of exists?
- internetter 3y agoThe original report is billed as a "room temperature superconductor" (iirc up to 28c). If it is indeed a superconductor at room temperature, it would be the first of it's kind and enable functional usages for superconductors previously impossible.
- dgoldstein0 3y agoThe original claim was Tc of 127c - above the boiling point of water. Plenty of reason to doubt it though. Of course I'm hoping it's real.
- internetter 3y agoWow, that's crazy! I guess I missed the 1 in front. I'd say the more I read the more optimistic I become. Fingers crossed!!
- modeless 3y agoAn entirely new category of superconductor could well be revolutionary even at this temperature, for several reasons. It could be the first one of a family with variants that go up to room temperature. It could be cheaper to produce or have other desirable properties for commercial applications. And it could lead to advances in theory that would allow prediction of other unknown superconductors.
- brianpan 3y ago
- mrandish 3y agoFor comparison, per this Wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-temperature_superconductivity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-temperature_superconducti...) currently, the highest temperature, ambient pressure superconductor is around 138 K (−135 °C). I'm no expert but based on my limited understanding, this result (if confirmed) while far from room temperature would still make LK99 a pretty interesting discovery in the SC world. And once a new SC like this is validated there are often methods discovered to improve the temperature or optimize other traits. To me, the positive news here is that (if confirmed), at least LK99 isn't "nothing". Together with the recently released simulation studies indicating LK99 may have interesting SC-like properties, this causes me to increase my personal Bayesian SWAG estimate on LK99 (or a related descendant) eventually being a meaningful step toward room temp superconductors.
- distortionfield 3y agoThe doping agents used in synthesis seem like interesting pathways towards finding something more stable and reproducible in their cook
- rwmj 3y agoIt's always interesting to discover a new class of materials that make high temperature superconductors even if they haven't discovered a room temp one.
- gabesullice 3y agoAgreed. Looking at the timeline on the Wikipedia page, a new 100K ambient pressure SC material is nothing to scoff at. It means LK99 is about as good as the other materials, at minimum. However, its chemical composition is different than any of the other materials on the chart (i.e. it is lead based). That probably means there's lots to learn and new phenomena to be understood and optimized. Furthermore, if this lab could achieve these results in a matter of weeks, perhaps labs with more exotic equipment and dedication will be able to get better results, raising the bar even higher.
- jjallen 3y ago
- keyle 3y ago> In conclusion, we successfully synthesized the compound Pb10-xCux(PO4)6O, and observed the zero resistance above 100 K. However, the Meissner effect has not been observed yet in our samples, which suggests that the superconducting volume is relatively low. In conclusion, ... nothing?
- ayakang31415 3y agoIt's definitely something, rather big something, to observe zero resistance above 100k
- awwkaw 3y agoNot compared to the claim of zero restance up to 400 K. But with how difficult the samples production seems to be, maybe we will get 400 K superconductors still
- DistractionRect 3y agoIt's likely that impurities in the bulk of the sample are why we aren't seeing the Meissner effect. Seeing super conductivity though is extremely promising. We've seen a sample be super conductors at 110k ambient pressure, diamagnetism, and (unconfirmed) flux pinning. So it's likely there's something here, but right now the main hurdle is synthesis. It's difficult to make and there's no clear path to consistency, purity or scale.
- userbinator 3y agoI completely ignored the authors (as I usually do) and started reading it, noticed the slightly odd phrasing, and then chuckled at "mad great efforts" and then "a very excited news" a short while later before looking at the authors and realising the country of origin.
- tomohelix 3y agoSummary of events so far: The claim: Room temp (~300K) superconductor exists and we got it! The replication attempts: The production method is so poorly documented only a fraction of the samples being made shows any interesting properties. And among those interesting ones, results varies. Very few, if any, attempt actually completely shows the entire spectrum of properties and behaviors of a true superconductor at room temperature yet. But those kinds of experiments take time so it isn't an indicator of problem. My take: It is probably something interesting but not well understood. Best case scenario, the original sample in the Korean lab probably won the synthesis lottery and is actually a true room temp superconductor. Worst case scenario, we got another class of high temp (warmer than liquid nitrogen but cold enough that applications are limited) superconductor but nothing revolutionary since at this point, it is pretty conclusive that there is something interesting with LK-99.
- brucethemoose2 3y agoSome literature suggests its a "one dimensiononal" superconductor only kinda works in tiny monocrystaline grains. ...But maybe thats even more interesting for, say, microelectronics? Especially if the resistance orthogonal to the superconductivity is high, if such a thing is even possible?
- ThrowawayTestr 3y agoZero loss diodes seem pretty useful.
- distortedsignal 3y agoI don’t think this would be zero-loss diodes - it would probably superconduct in some x-axis while being non-superconducting in the y- and z-axis. Even then, it’s not clear to me what the conductivity is like in the non-superconducting axies.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- sedatk 3y agoOff-topic, but I admire the effort to translate the formula to Unicode characters in the title. It's not just a simple copy-paste from the article.
- Arnavion 3y agoThe submitter also fixed the incorrect use of the degree symbol before K, lol.
- 8n4vidtmkvmk 3y ago"degrees Kelvin" is wrong? Why's that?
- Arnavion 3y agoTechnically the units of temperature are "degrees Celsius", "degrees Fahrenheit", "Kelvin", etc. ie "degrees" is part of the name of the units "degrees Celsius" and "degrees Fahrenheit". "Kelvin" is the name of the unit by itself, so "degrees" is not supposed to be used before Kelvin. In practice everyone's so used to saying "degrees" for temperatures that they end up saying it with Kelvin too.
- rsfern 3y agoThe SI unit is just “kelvin” because it’s an absolute scale. Usually “degrees” is only used with Celsius and Fahrenheit scales because they are relative. Not sure about Rankine… https://www.nist.gov/si-redefinition/kelvin-introduction https://www.nist.gov/si-redefinition/kelvin-introduction
- archon1410 3y ago> zero on the Rankine scale is absolute zero, but a temperature difference of one Rankine degree (°R or °Ra) is defined as equal to one Fahrenheit degree But Rankine is an absolute scale. "By analogy with the SI unit, the kelvin, some authors term the unit Rankine, omitting the degree symbol." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rankine_scale https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rankine_scale
- homeslice23 3y ago[dead]
- Waterluvian 3y agoI don’t understand the physics, but it feels like a truly zero resistance conductor would violate some law of thermodynamics or something. Is a superconductor truly zero impedence or just very very very low? Because I’m seeing a lot of these graphs with something like: “0.00001ohm” as the y-axis floor.
- ramraj07 3y agoMRI machines work using superconducting magnets as does the LHC. So you better believe it buddy.
- Waterluvian 3y agoWhy do MRIs need zero resistance vs incredibly low resistance?
- wbl 3y agoThe more you crank up the field and gradients the better resolution you can get. Being able to take MRI of a beating heart depends on that sort of thing.
- jacquesm 3y agoBecause the resistance is the limiting factor in how strong a magnetic field can be made in a given volume using the conducting material. Copper across an area of 1 cm ^2 does about 300A, compare with https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8047038/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8047038/ for what some superconductors can do.
- robotresearcher 3y agoLink says 90 MA per cm^2, or 30,000X more than copper. Gulp!
- patrec 3y ago
- moralestapia 3y agoI really really wanted this to be true just so we can all take a look at how much wrong some things are in academia and science nowadays. Plenty of "knowledgeable" people and research groups put out a lot of discrediting (and actually ignorant) statements about this, a lot of them with a dash of xenophobia in the mix. Congrats to the people that actually push science forwards! Haters gonna hate but no one will remmeber them, ever.
- jcranmer 3y agoLooking at the key temperature-resistivity graphs, this feels like the data doesn't support the conclusion that there's a superconductor here. The temperature-resistivity graphs of superconductors I've seen all have a fairly steep cutoff--a sharp, vertical line at critical temperature. The log-scale here complicates my intuition, but what I see is a gradual transition into noise range. Also, the graphs I've seen have also demonstrated that the critical temperature varies with applied magnetic field. Here... there's no apparent variation in apparent critical temperature. I'm sorry, but this result just feels to me like people are assuming that the material must be a superconductor and are analyzing all the data under that assumption rather than asking the question "is this a superconductor?"
- evancox100 3y agoNot a superconductor expert, but resistance exponentially decreasing with temperature is not a normal phenomenon in most cases!
- bandrami 3y agoMost semiconductors have a thermal regime where that happens, it's just a relatively small regime, I thought?
- evancox100 3y agoI should probably be fired for my prior answer because things like pn-junction diodes can definitely have an exponential-like dependence on temperature. In my head I was thinking of pure elements, like bulk metals. But there definitely could be more interesting things going on in the sample, like diode formation (internally or at the contacts) or weird doping profiles. That may be part of why it's hard to measure the properties!
- adrian_b 3y agoIntrinsic semiconductors or the semiconductors that are lightly doped with impurities have temperature ranges where the concentration of the free charge carriers increases exponentially with increasing temperature, like in the NTC (negative temperature coefficient) thermistors. This causes a decrease in resistance towards higher temperatures, so it has nothing to do with any explanation for a decrease in resistance towards lower temperatures. The diodes have increasing inverse currents towards higher temperatures, which also has nothing to do with any explanation for increasing currents towards lower temperatures.
- superposeur 3y agoQuestion for the cognoscenti: supposing that LK-99 superconducts with T_c = 110 K, how significant a discovery would this be? I.e., does it establish a brand new class of high-T superconductors, or is it merely one unremarkable member of a known class? Further, does it offer advantages over other high-T superconductors such as ease of fabrication or cost?
- cthalupa 3y agoIt's a brand new class. The material cost is lower than most superconductors - it's lead and copper - but no one has any idea on fabrication, yield size, etc., now, so no good answers there.
- superposeur 3y agoThanks.
- scheme271 3y agoTo add to the other reply, it'd be a new class especially since it would be at standard pressure. I think the current highest Tc SC at standard pressure is at much lower temperatures. Frankly, there's probably a lot that you can do with a superconductor that you can cool with liquid nitrogen even if it can't carry much current or handle high magnetic fields. Moving from liquid helium cooling to liquid nitrogen alone significantly reduces the cost and complexity of your cooling system.
- AnnikaL 3y agoDon't YBCO superconductors already work at liquid nitrogen temperatures?
- ibic 3y agoSo this almost means the holy grail has been found or we are pretty close?
- gandik 3y agoThis is so reminiscent of what happened after Fleischmann & Pons. Labs attempting to replicate saw this property, or that property, but never the whole, unequivocal picture. Here we have a room temperature superconductor that isn't a superconductor at room temperature. A sample that has no measured Meissner Effect at any temperature. And the authors admit that some (many?) of the samples tested out as semiconductors. Also, they don't happen to mention how they measured resistance. 1mA current, yes, but what equipment? And what setup? Micro-measurement of resistance is hard. We really need to know more about that.
- rsfern 3y agoI agree with your first points, but the methods section states (somewhat unclearly) that they used this 4 point probe setup https://www.qdusa.com/products/ppms.html https://www.qdusa.com/products/ppms.html I have more questions about that, like why not calculate sheet resistivity instead of just showing that the resistance hits the noise floor?
- segfaultbuserr 3y agoI agree that the setup is not satisfactorily documented. > but what equipment? But at least this individual question is actually included in the paper. It was the Physical Property Measurement System (PPMS), manufactured by Quantum Design Inc. From the photo, one can clearly see that the DC resistance test fixture was used. https://www.qdusa.com/products/ppms.html https://www.qdusa.com/products/ppms.html
- highwaylights 3y agoI see. So what you’re saying is that if we replace the palladium with LK-99 then cold fusion is back on? You know, because hype. This is, as the kids say, very bullish.
- hindsightbias 3y agoI’d be happy if it just makes UFOs in focus.
- carabiner 3y ago
- progrus 3y agoIt’s real, it works, the Navy has a linked patent from 2017. The UFOs are a PSYOP.
- declan_roberts 3y agoThe Navy does have a patent for a “lead zirconate titanate” super conductor which does sound awfully similar to what’s described in LK-99. https://phys.org/news/2019-02-navy-patent-room-temperature-superconductor.amp https://phys.org/news/2019-02-navy-patent-room-temperature-s...
- progrus 3y agoDing ding.
- FrustratedMonky 3y agoMan. I hope it isn't. That would be sad, all this was happening, and nobody had found the old study. Surely not.
- unsupp0rted 3y ago> The application claims that a room-temperature superconductor can be built using a wire with an insulator core and an aluminum PZT (lead zirconate titanate) coating deposited by vacuum evaporation with a thickness of the London penetration depth and polarized after deposition. > An electromagnetic coil is circumferentially positioned around the coating such that when the coil is activated with a pulsed current, a non-linear vibration is induced, enabling room temperature superconductivity.
- drtgh 3y agoFrom the same author https://doi.org/10.2514/6.2019-0869 https://doi.org/10.2514/6.2019-0869 , 2019 Salvatore Cezar Pais > It is important for the PZT coating to undergo a polarizing (poling) treatment prior to RTSC enablement, so that optimal domain alignment is obtained within the ceramic coating, by subjecting the coating to a strong dc current electric field, slightly below the Curie temperature (approx.200 0C, but possibly as high as 360 0C, depending on PZT ceramic composition). Furthermore, to increase the probability of vibration in one particular direction, as well as to alleviate the brittle nature of the ceramic material, it may be necessary to make the 'metallic' wire coating out of a composite PZT and highly conductive polymer, such as p-Terphenyl [4]. Another option is to sandwich the PZT ceramic in between two layers of aluminum, resulting in a wire design which may be planar rather than cylindrical in nature. This composite coating design would amplify piezoelectrically-induced vibrations and possibly render them unidirectional. From LK99 rumors: > At the beginning of 2020, Ji-Hoon Kim continued to do experiments as usual, suddenly he found a huge peak, he repeated the test + looked at his notes. But didn't find any special points. He started looking through the lab videos. He finally realized that the tube of sample came out with cracks on the quartz tube, and he hit his elbow on the table while transferring the sample out to the electronic scale. Introducing oxygen at the right moment + a violent impact would change the structure of the lead apatite crystals being formed. May be something, may be nothing, S.C.Pais: "to increase the probability of vibration in one particular direction" S.C.Pais: "piezoelectrically-induced vibrations [ and possibly render them unidirectional]" LK99: "oxygen at the right moment + violent impact would change the structure of the lead apatite crystals being formed"
- MichaelMoser123 3y agoLK-99 contains polonium? which has a half-life of hundred and something days.
- redox99 3y agoLol. Polonium is Po. PO is phosphorus and oxygen.
- MichaelMoser123 3y agothanks!
- More-nitors 3y agoguess it's safer to eat :)
- rvnx 3y agoOnly in a tea.
- EvgeniyZh 3y agoNote that there is no signs of phase transition (no jump) and the values below 110K are around reasonable measurement resolution. It may be that they just got the resolution threshold and misinterpret it as SC
- pyeri 3y agoAs a lay person not graduated in STEM subjects, can someone ELIFY how is this research useful to society?
- beanjuice 3y agoThis exact paper is the newest progress on recent hype regarding a semi-trustworthy not-peer-reviewed study claiming 'superconductors at room temperature'. 'Superconductors at room temperature' are cool because they would answer questions like "How would we get solar power from [your local desert] everywhere else for free?" and "How are we going to use MRIs when the helium runs out?" as two examples.
- elromulous 3y agoELI5, if these folks confirmed zero resistance at room temp and atmospheric pressure, isn't that confirmation of the original paper? Edit: I read 100 K as 100°c. Mea culpa.
- mcqueenjordan 3y ago100 degrees kelvin is about 338 degrees Fahrenheit below room temperature.
- elromulous 3y agoDuh. Thanks. I think my brain must have transposed that K to C.
- mcqueenjordan 3y agoI also did that the first time when reading the abstract. Very relatable. "It's on the front page of HN, so it must be a remarkable result," my subconscious seemed to assume on my behalf. ;) Fool me once...
- matsemann 3y agoThanks for making it even more confusing by introducing Fahrenheit, haha. ;)
- anonymousDan 3y agoCan someone point me to a list of exciting applications of room temperature superconductors? Trying to understand why such excitement about this!
- tetris11 3y ago> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_applications_of_superconductivity#High-temperature_superconductivity_(HTS) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_applications_o...
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- febusravenga 3y agoI see lead (Pb...something) as main ingredient, isn't it banned in most industries because how toxic it is and how hard it's to handle in industrial scale? isn't that a problem for potential mass applications? (lots of comments about this discovery call this revolution that will change everything around us and that somehow implies mass production I guess)
- thomasmg 3y agoLead is still used for example in car batteries (lead-acid), bullets, and solders (electronic components).
- cycrutchfield 3y agoAirplane fuel...
- pjc50 3y agoIt's banned in the EU under RoHS .. but with a whole load of exemptions, which make it kind of pointless. I suspect this would be exempted pretty quickly once it became important.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- kolinko 3y agoA high chance that lead can be replaced with other metal, from what I heard. Also, it’s not extremely toxic - romans ate from lead dishes and didn’t even notice the toxicity. You don’t want to consume it, and you don’t want to breathe it, but it’s not as bad as say, asbestos. If you have an ICE car, it probably has a lead-acid battery, and the only thing that prevents us from using lead in grid storage is their short lifespan - not health or ecology :) Also, if you ever took an x-ray, you wore a lead jacket to prevent unnecessary radiation. If we cannot avoid lead in this alleged superconductor, it may limit applications slightly, but not by much.
- 3y ago
- ur-whale 3y agoAnd now for a slightly different take on the much-discussed room temp. superconductors: on the off chance that this LK-99 stuff is actually going to be a thing, how should that influence my investment portfolio over the course of the next five years? Should I buy lead mining stock ?(joke, obviously, but you get the point).
- dougmwne 3y agoIt would bias our energy markets towards electric and away from fossil fuels. But due to climate change, there’s already a lot of pressure to go in this direction.
- hamilyon2 3y agoWhy is western mass media silent? They always pick up emerging stories like that, but not in this case for some reason
- crote 3y agoWestern media isn't silent. It has been showing up in the science section of mainstream media for a few days now, with a healthy dose of skepticism around it. It's in the New York Post, on CNET, on CNBC, the Washington Post, Wired, New Scientist, Popular Mechanics, and plenty more. Just because CNN isn't covering it 24/7 doesn't mean the western mass media is "silent".
- hamilyon2 3y agoGood to know. So it means that the particular subset of media I am paying attention is silent. Thank you for the correction
- daemontus 3y agoI see a lot of "This must be real, why would labs publish this if they don't think it's real, they have nothing to gain." sentiment on HN lately. Or "Researcher's career would be ruined if they falsely claim to replicate.", and so on. I also want to believe! But I should add a bit of skepticism to the hype :) - "this could ruin their career": Depends. If they posted completely fake numbers or intentionally fake videos. Sure, that would be bad. But none of this is peer reviewed, and all of this can be retracted. A contaminated sample? Oops, retract. Bad measurement methodology? Oops, retract. Sure, somebody will remember that you made the controversial paper in the first place, but as long as you are not provably fabricating, a lot can be attributed to "an honest error". There are tons of peer reviewed papers out there with errors that completely change the outcome. Does not mean the authors are "finished". - "they have nothing to gain": Oh, they absolutely do. While "science should be fully objective", funding agencies very much aren't. Obviously, just like VC funding, science funding is not a complete coin toss. But having "the right" team and background is often as important as the idea itself. One way to get the right background is to "touch shoulders with the giants" and one way to get the right team is to be highly visible and attract talent. So overall, if LK99 is eventually shown to be a superconductor by someone else, you have a lot to gain, even if your own initial study is not perfect. Let's say your team synthesised something. It looks like LK99 and it has some properties that are not really superconducting but at least a bit unusual. This clearly isn't what you hoped for. Now, do you run a bunch of other controls to see if it is some form of contamination, process error, combination of both... or do you publish a vague click-bait paper on ArXiv and hope that other results will somewhat align with yours? Finally, I'm not claiming this paper or any other paper intentionally published untrue or misleading results. Just that scientists are also people. They have FOMO, they follow trends, they see what they want to see. As always, big claims require big evidence, and so far we don't really have that. But that does not mean there isn't some truth to the big claims :)
- jpambrun 3y agoA contaminated sample that materially change the composition but still yield a superconductor would be a novel finding. An error in manipulation leading to an external communication on something this high profile is sure to affect your career. It's like a biologist claiming to have found evidence extraterrestrial life and having to retract. I think I would consider hara-kiri..
- JoeAltmaier 3y agoReliable production of the material is an engineering problem. If it can just be shown to work once, then the goal will be to mass-produce it in useful forms and structures. Replication has been partially successful, exhibiting remarkable new results that are already worth celebrating.
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- ajnin 3y agoI'm puzzled by this, looking at the resistance versus temperature graph they're not demonstrating zero resistance at 110K, they're demonstrating that at 110K the resistance becomes so low that it reaches the noise floor of their instrument. It's a stretch to call that superconductivity because when it come to that it needs to be actually zero, as in "I can put a current in a loop made of the material and come back one year later and it will still be there". Exponential decay will quickly catch up with a non-zero value, even very very small. Still this exponentially decreasing resistivity looks interesting, I have no idea if that's unusual or if that means anything. The weird dip at around 230K will need to be explained as well. I'm just an interested bystander, that goes without saying.
- Sharlin 3y agoWell, that's one of the reasons demonstrating the Meissner effect is considered a better evidence of superconductivity. Of course any physical experiment always has a noise floor and a finite error. You can't exactly ever measure zero resistance because your probes and the probe-sample interface have nonzero resistance… But looking at that graph, it would be an incredible coincidence if the resistance dropped like it does and then suddenly stabilized to some very small but nonzero value… That would probably require entirely new physics to explain and would be a much bigger news than "merely" a 110K Tc superconductor!
- foven 3y agoGroups that typically do resistivity measurements on regularly measure low-temperature resistivities on conducting materials of ~ 10s of micro Ohm m. So if you're measuring in this range on a conducting material and hitting the noise floor with a SHARP drop, that's a pretty big indicator of superconductivity (assuming you haven't just broken your contacts which is a concern when cooling things down). I'm not so familiar with PPMS systems, but I imagine it has some built in auto-adjust on the sensitivities to where you can be pretty confident your noise floor is below these values. What is complicating the interpretation here is the log scale (and lack of conversion to resistivity): It is amplifying the impression of the noise below what they call Tc, and making it harder to interpret the approach of the material to the transition point. The behaviour at the approach to Tc also doesn't really look like a metal, which should scale as propto T, or a semiconductor which should increase with decreasing temperature. Possibly a result of it being some horrible mixed phase ceramic.
- boringuser2 3y agoThe most compelling evidence offered thus far is from actual scientists that have reviewed the LK-99 paper and determined the scientists involved aren't very good at science.
- nmca 3y agoI wish we had real money prediction markets. Afaict it would be legal to run such a business in the UK.
- parineum 3y agoI remember seeing something like this that ran on bitcoin a while ago. It was completely user driven and lines were dynamically calculated by the action. I'm not sure how the resolutions to the bets were determined exactly, perhaps there was a requirement of a third party indicator of some sort, I don't recall.
- wwarner 3y agoHere's Brian Keating interviewing Jorge Hirsch from UC San Diego and Inna Vishik of UC Davis [0]. Prof Hirsch was/is a leading critic of the U Rochester papers, but thinks that LK-99 could work. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQnDatnAWP4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQnDatnAWP4
- mmastrac 3y agoI'm impressed that Pb₁₀₋ₓCuₓ(PO₄)₆O is completely representable in Unicode.
- hcks 3y ago- it’s an easy to make room temperature superconductor! - ok it’s hard to make but still RTSC! - ok it’s superconducting at 100K but its a novel class of SC! <= you are here - ok it’s not a superconductor but it still has interesting properties! - ok it doesn’t have singular properties but it could have! I predict there will still be LK99 truthers in 20 years arguing that this amazing discovery was buried by big copper conspiracy.