5 ms·
How would you *deny* the SC status? Replications keep failing until everyone is pretty sure it's not it. Proving the absence of something is rare to see.
by VHRanger 3y ago
How would you *deny* the SC status?
Replications keep failing until everyone is pretty sure it's not it. Proving the absence of something is rare to see.
- dralley 3y agoChecking the original samples, for one.
- jacquesm 3y agoI hope that ultimately it will come to that because I don't think anything else will put this to rest one way or the other (unless it is 100% confirmed/reproduced by another lab). It also seems to be the shortest path to a resolution.
- willis936 3y agoThat also adds little value. It would add no information on whether or not the sample is a fluke. We need to understand the material properties and its composition.
- jacquesm 3y agoIf it is a fluke or not doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is whether or not it is real, not how it was made. If it is real then we can expend a fortune on the 'how it was made' question, if it isn't real we can all descend from this holding pattern.
- willis936 3y agoWhat benefit does that bring?
- fastball 3y agoAppropriate allocation of resources is intrinsically beneficial.
- willis936 3y agoExactly right. If we concede that our present level of societal R&D is appropriate then it's easy to argue that resources are presently wasted pursuing less promising leads.
- woeirua 3y agoUntil we have definitive evidence that LK99 is a SC, there's no reason to believe that it is a promising lead.
- gus_massa 3y agoIf it's real, "we" can brute force a reproduction. Just make each graduate student that works in a superconductivity lab spend two random months trying variants of LK99. The attempts will fail. The idea is that the rest of the time the graduate student will be making standard superconductor to collect enough boring papers to escape the rat lab. But if the LK99 clone is a lucky one, everyone in the lab gets a groundbreaking paper.
- jacquesm 3y agoTo stop the waste of resources in case the whole thing turns out to be a dud. By providing proof that it is not many more resources would become unlocked.
- willis936 3y agoGrinding against worse leads is not a better use of resources.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- fastball 3y agoIf the original sample is superconducting, you can perform XRD / other analysis on it to establish a proximate structure and then simulate things / find better methods for synthesis.
- jefftk 3y agoCouldn't there be solid evidence that the observed behavior was due to a different effect?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Jweb_Guru 3y agoThere is, a combination of strong (but not amazingly strong) diamagnetism at low field strengths and soft ferromagnetism (in floating samples) at high field strengths. Which is exactly what the paper in the link observed while getting the same results everyone else has. The only unambiguous sign of superconductivity was the original resistance graph which can apparently be explained by contact issues with four point probes (you can argue that they must have done many experiments and surely didn't cherrypick just the one where they found "superconductivity", but consider the quality of the rest of the paper...)
- throwawaymaths 3y agoDoesn't diamagnetic levitation require a specific arrangement of the permamagnets that is not recreated in these videos?
- readyplayernull 3y agoMaybe the original LK-99 sample was contaminated with actual high temperature superconducting impurities.
- worrycue 3y ago> How would you deny the SC status? Maybe we should adopt the stance that it’s not a SC by default and have the people asserting that it is prove that it’s a SC.
- colordrops 3y agoOr even better adopt no stance on truth value and rather adopt a stance on whether there is sufficient evidence to expend further effort. No need to guess at the truth. Just remain agnostic until you know the truth.
- jacquesm 3y agoExactly. That's the only reasonable stance. Everything else is just jumping to conclusions, positive or negative.
- worrycue 3y agoSometimes a decision has to be made though - e.g. is a particular person a murderer. In most countries, the burden of proof is on the accuser and the accused doesn’t need to proven his or her innocence and is treated as innocent until proven otherwise.
- jacquesm 3y agoSure, but science isn't a murder trial, it is entirely evidence based. Show the evidence, if there is none we'll move on and if there is you get a Nobel (in the case of superconductivity at room temperature and ambient pressure). We (the rest of the world) can't prove a negative, so it is up to the claimant to supply the proof. Given proof it will be believed, no proof then it's a no-op. With the murder trial you can assume a-priori that there is a murderer, the question then is 'who', not if a murder is possible or not. These are entirely different problems for a logic perspective.
- whimsicalism 3y agoI think this is functionally equivalent to the status quo?
- phyzome 3y agoWhat you'd have to do is 1) create bulk LK-99, 2) prove that that's what you'd created, 3) possibly also show that it's monocrystalline or something, and then 4) show that there's electrical resistance. The problem is that the stuff is really quite difficult to synthesize reliably. Until that can happen, good luck finding out in either direction!
- evanb 3y agoCool it down until you DO see a SC transition far below room temperature.