9 ms·
The paper shows a clear phase transition to diamagnetism as the material is cooled. That would be seen in superconductors and not in regular diamagnetic materia
by scarmig 3y ago
The paper shows a clear phase transition to diamagnetism as the material is cooled. That would be seen in superconductors and not in regular diamagnetic materials. I'm not aware of any that have that kind of phase transition. Though since we're in weird territory here, it's important to note some weird non-superconductor behavior that's beyond regular diamagnetism might be going on as an alternative explanation. But it is weird.
ETA: also, in the presence of a magnetic field, that transition temperature decreases. That's pretty huge. Unless this paper is fraudulent, I take this as the biggest positive evidence so far that something besides simple diamagnetism is going on. And, cards on table, with the assumption that the paper is not fraudulent, this pushes my odds above 50% for the first time.
- bilsbie 3y agoWhat temperature?
- scarmig 3y ago326K (+127 deg F) and 340K (+152 deg F) for their less and more pure samples respectively. And, yes, if it's a superconductor as we understand them, that's the temperature at which it would have zero resistance as well.
- yreg 3y ago53°C and 67°C. Wow.
- seanthemon 3y agoSoon to be average temperatures, what luck!
- hksoftware 3y agoNonsense.
- yreg 3y agoIt's obviously a hyperbole. But if we once were to use these SCs to transport energy from solar farms in Sahara, it might have to operate in that temperature range.
- jacquesm 3y agoFive meters down in the desert you're under 25 degrees year round. It's the average that matters for soil temps, not the peaks. You can approximate this by taking the average air temperature and defining the surface as the top five meters. Below the 10 meter mark the day/night cycle influence is pretty much negligible (but that would be more costly). For instance: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Temperature-variation-of-underground-soil-with-depth-for-typical-days-in-Malaysia-15_fig3_256838899 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Temperature-variation-of...
- SamPatt 3y agoEarth's average temperature right now is ~17° Celsius. So...no.
- yreg 3y agoHave you included the insides?
- h0l0cube 3y agoBy comparison the hottest verified recorded air temperature in the world is 54°C > if the current record were to be decertified then the holder would be a tie at 54.0 °C (129.2 °F), recorded both at Furnace Creek and in Kuwait. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highest_temperature_recorded_on_Earth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highest_temperature_recorded_o...
- galangalalgol 3y agoOpen air. These days the interior of my car regularly exceeds 54 even with the windows cracked and a winshield shade up.
- bitcharmer 3y agoThanks, we really needed burger units here
- hinkley 3y agoSo that’s within the range of off the shelf cooling equipment to maintain superconductivity. Any speculation if that’s consumer, commercial, or industrial off-the-shelf? Sounds like we may be talking running an MRI off of a mini split system.
- cthalupa 3y agoLK99 isn't necessarily a stand-in for helium cooled superconductors - if all SC were equivalent to any other, YBCO and similar would have been enough to make MRIs significantly cheaper - LN2 is easy and cheap to produce.
- XorNot 3y agoThey got about 50 degrees C, but note that the bulk sample and the more pure tiny sample are different. It definitely contributes to the general feel that however this works, it's an inefficient synthesis that's problematically generating the material we want. It certainly makes me wonder if something like molecular-beam epitaxy would be able to directly grow a more pure sample (but I imagine that's expensive and time-consuming to setup, plus not really what we're hoping for if we want to use lots of it).
- concordDance 3y ago> this pushes my odds above 50% for the first time. Time for you to make some money then? :D https://polymarket.com/event/is-the-room-temp-superconductor-real/is-the-room-temp-superconductor-real https://polymarket.com/event/is-the-room-temp-superconductor...
- danbruc 3y agoCan one know how many people are in that market? When prediction markets where mentioned early during the LK-99 story, I looked a bit around out of interest, which platforms exist, which topics they cover, how many people participate in that markets. Where I could find the number of predictors, it seemed pretty underwhelming - one, ten, fifty, a hundred, I think the highest I ever saw was a bit over a thousand, but even then less than a hundred or so where using real money, the majority was using play money. Did I miss the place where everyone is? Is this to expected because the are so many topics you can bet on? Are the resulting prices still meaningful even with a small number of predictors only?
- epivosism 3y agoManifolds main market on LK99 has 4.6k predictors now. This is a pretty strict version, at 33% now by 2025 https://manifold.markets/QuantumObserver/will-the-lk99-room-temp-ambient-pre?r=U3RyYXlDbGltYg https://manifold.markets/QuantumObserver/will-the-lk99-room-...
- bobsmooth 3y agoWebsite says $1 083 678 has been bet so far. You can scroll down to see all the shares and their prices.
- EvgeniyZh 3y agoMagnetic transitions as a function of temperature are not unheard of, and it makes sense for them to depend on external field (they are magnetic after all). Lanthanum cobaltite for example has transition from diamagnet to paramagnet, likely due to change of spin state (see, e.g., [1]). I'm not saying that's what's happening, but transition (if it is there, hastily written papers tend to have subtle inaccuracies) doesn't rule out non-SC diamagnetism [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0925838819315889 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09258...