7 ms·
We now believe that the game is over. LK-99 is not a superconductor
- fdgjgbdfhgb 3y agohttps://nitter.net/condensed_the/status/1688747919866814464 https://nitter.net/condensed_the/status/1688747919866814464
- santiagobasulto 3y agoQuestion for the smart HN community: If it's proven that LK-99 is NOT a superconductor, will still have any "real use"? Or it's going to be completely worthless. Is it "dihcotomic"? Either it's a superconductor and it's helpful for humanity, or it's not and it's completely worthless. Or being "enough" good of a conductor might have applications as well? Thanks!
- seewhydee 3y agoContrary to the linked tweet, there's some reason to think its diagmagnetism is pretty interesting. It might be the second most diamagnetic non-superconductive material known. Why this may happen may keep condensed matter physicists entertained for a while. Very little chance of direct technologicalapplications for the foreseeable future, though.
- taylodl 3y ago> Very little chance of direct technologicalapplications for the foreseeable future, though. Which means it's worthless. Remember, oil was "worthless" too when it was first discovered...
- hackerlight 3y agoIf this were true, would CMTC word the tweet like this: > Enquiring minds want to know: Is diamagnetism not interesting? The answer is that NO, diamagnetism is NOT interesting, many materials (e.g. Pb, Cu, P going into LK99) are diamagnetic. It is a run of the mill property. (There are more results, but CMTC cannot divulge them yet.)
- seewhydee 3y agoI would argue that CMTC is acting here more like a twitter drama queen than a proper scientist.
- mg 3y agoIf LK-99 turns out to be a hoax, would it be the one with the biggest media attention ever?
- sebzim4500 3y agoMaybe but I doubt it's an intentional hoax. It's much more likely to be a mistake.
- nisegami 3y agoTo use a word like hoax would require at least some hint of the authors falsifying data or intentionally misrepresenting things. LK-99 is still very magnetically interesting even if it is not a superconductor. Interpreting those interesting behaviors is where things seem to have gone wrong.
- fredoralive 3y agoSocial media attention perhaps? Mainstream media doesn't seem to have been paying much attention, and generally rather cautious over the whole thing.
- bigbacaloa 3y agoNothing compared to cold fusion
- hnlmorg 3y agoThat was my immediate thought too. That was an interesting time to be alive.
- fullstackchris 3y agoDefinitely not. This definitely sounds like recency bias. I'll bet 9/10 of your non hacker / engineering family/friends don't even know what LK-99 is. I know thats the case for me at least.
- eythian 3y agoNot a hoax but from memory a very premature announcement of results was that one from NASA about evidence of biological processes in a Mars rock. https://www.amnh.org/learn-teach/curriculum-collections/cosmic-horizons-book/fossil-microbes-mars https://www.amnh.org/learn-teach/curriculum-collections/cosm...
- cfcf14 3y agoWas fun while it lasted! Will be interesting watching the internal story of the original lab unfold as it all becomes public eventually.
- calderknight 3y agoJust because a Twitter said it's over doesn't mean it's over. Prediction markets still think there's a ~1/5 chance of it being legit.
- doitLP 3y agoCan you share which markets your following?
- calderknight 3y agoThis is the only one I'm following myself: https://manifold.markets/QuantumObserver/will-the-lk99-room-temp-ambient-pre?r=amFtZXNv https://manifold.markets/QuantumObserver/will-the-lk99-room-...
- ranting-moth 3y agoNo it wasn't. Things like this (or at least the dubious media frenzy around this) erode public's trust in science.
- alexmolas 3y agoScience is like that. The problem is not with science or with this material not being super-conducting. The problem is with how science is explained in media. Failing to test hypothesis is a critical step in the scientific method.
- gus_massa 3y agoIt's important that public understand the difference between a preprint in arXiv, a paper in a serious peer review journal and the truth. We've seen a lot of miracle cures during the covid-19 epidemic where all the support was a bunch of preprints (and some of the preprints were horrible, I read a few of them to write angry comments in HN). A paper in a serious peer review journal (if possible/relevant preregistered and with a randomized controlled group) is much better evidence, but it still can be wrong.
- tetrep 3y agoUhhhhh, as trustworthy as the source may or may not be (I have no idea who controls that account), I feel like such strong statements should directly reference strong evidence. I don't see any evidence supplied, only a very strong statement: With a great deal of sadness, we now believe that the game is over. LK99 is NOT a superconductor, not even at room temperatures (or at very low temperatures). It is a very highly resistive poor quality material. Period. No point in fighting with the truth. Data have spoken. What data?????
- thumbuddy 3y agoProbably not accounts trying to tip the market. Pay no attention to social media these days. Pay only slight attention to scientific articles. Pay more attention to preprints knowing they are preprints.
- Cthulhu_ 3y agoScroll up a little; it's the last ~tweet~ X in a thread of more scienticious ~tweets~ exes.
- sshine 3y agoNow that twitter became X, if you're lacking a better verb instead of tweet: excrete
- twtxthrow 3y agoTwitter no longer provides context unless you're logged in. You can currently view a single tweet if directly linked, but not the surrounding thread or replies.
- timeon 3y ago> You can currently view a single tweet if directly linked If you are lucky.
- cassianoleal 3y agoThere's nothing to scroll to. Nothing above, nothing below. Probably because I don't have an account.
- andai 3y agoIn previous threads I read that this material is very tricky to make, that nobody has succeeded in making a pure sample, and therefore we should expect many negative results and that they don't necessarily mean anything conclusive.
- nisegami 3y agoWhat's different here is that this sample is exhibiting some of the properties that a successful sample would, indicating that this is not an outright dud. They also seem to have an explanation for why/how they might observe those properties but not superconductivity. This is in contrast to someone claiming their sample did not exhibit any of the properties of LK-99 at all.
- lifthrasiir 3y agoBut that's not enough, because this sample alone doesn't explain the extreme variability of other samples. This conclusion is only possible under the assumption that all other samples are bad or incorrectly measured---a highly unlikely event. In particular they were needlessly critical of Southeast University before [1], which reported the increasing resistance up to ~230 K, then a sudden drop til ~255 K, then back to the normalish curve. I previously criticised that the purported "zero resistance" below ~110 K is misleading, while I was unsure about the drop, but at least it does show the completely opposite trend to the PKU result and CMTC should have explained (or refuted) this as well. [1] https://twitter.com/condensed_the/status/1686895266329174016 https://twitter.com/condensed_the/status/1686895266329174016
- alexmolas 3y ago> It is a very highly resistive poor quality material. Period. No point in fighting with the truth. Data have spoken. The way this phrase is worded is weird in my opinion. It sounds more like a political statement rather than a scientific one.
- harrid 3y agoThis isn't the first unprofessional message from that Twitter account during the lk99 saga. Their biased tone makes them untrustworthy. Even more than anime girl et al
- lamontcg 3y agoThey're citing a study from the International Center for Quantum Materials at Peking University in Beijing (which has several Alumni from the Condensed Matter Theory Center at U of Maryland which is the twitter account) which goes into the matter in some depth and finds that chunks of the material are ferromagnetic and some chunks are diamagnetic and the whole thing is a semiconductor. They also replicate the half-levitation effect from the original video and which some people have replicated: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2308.03110.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/2308.03110.pdf The twitter account may have had a biased tone because they're actual experts and qualified to have a strong opinion.
- JoeAltmaier 3y agoIs somebody trying to manipulate the market? With random unsupported tweets? Good luck with that.
- thumbuddy 3y agoIt's surprisingly effective...
- gerikson 3y agoWhat market?
- JoeAltmaier 3y agoe.g. https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/AMSC https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/AMSC Which is indeed down today
- gerikson 3y agoThanks! I didn't know there were commercial interests behind LK99.
- JoeAltmaier 3y agoIts not really. Just has the word 'superconductor' in the company name. It's called the 'halo effect'.
- bigbacaloa 3y agohttps://arxiv.org/abs/2308.03110 https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.03110
- JaneLovesDotNet 3y agoI wonder if there's been a scientific study that tries to correlate the tone of a statement, with its reliability. My gut feel is that such emotionally charged statements are likely inversely correlated with accuracy. I'm surprised this is the twitter account of a reputable organization.
- skc 3y agoThis whole saga has still been thoroughly exhilarating and compelling. The sort of stuff that in the past might have nudged young people into the sciences. Rather than being deflated, I want more of this.
- lamson 3y ago[flagged]
- bhouston 3y agoThe prediction markets still give a 25% chance of it being an SC at room temperature? https://manifold.markets/QuantumObserver/will-the-lk99-room-temp-ambient-pre https://manifold.markets/QuantumObserver/will-the-lk99-room-... This other prediction market only gives it a 5% chance of turning out: https://www.metaculus.com/questions/18090/room-temp-superconductor-pre-print-replicated/ https://www.metaculus.com/questions/18090/room-temp-supercon... IF the game is over, shouldn't arbitrage be possible between these various markets? I guess the timeline is very long for these bets and time is opportunity.
- simplyskeptic 3y agothe prediction markets? why don't we just flip coins over it, that sounds scientific as well!
- tarsinge 3y agoMarkets are just the average sentiment of a mass of greedy people trying to make a buck, there is no inherent prediction power.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- CyberDildonics 3y agoThe prediction markets still give a 25% chance of it being an SC at room temperature? Prediction markets are just uninformed gambling? They don't mean anything if the money is from people with low information? Don't rely on a prediction market to predict validity of a supposed scientific breakthrough?
- selestify 3y ago> They don't mean anything if the money is from people with low information? Why wouldn’t that incentivize someone with high information to come in and make a quick buck?
- unpopularopp 3y agoThe whole LK99 saga reminds me to, not surprisingly, another korean story https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hwang_affair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hwang_affair
- OscarCunningham 3y agoI've been using the prediction market https://manifold.markets/QuantumObserver/will-the-lk99-room-temp-ambient-pre https://manifold.markets/QuantumObserver/will-the-lk99-room-... as a way to track consensus opinion without having the expertise myself. It's currently near 20%, down from 30% in the last day. So we're not quite at the 'game over' phase.
- hooande 3y agoI think this was overall positive as a social phenomenon. It did not result in a superconductor future, but it got a lot of people interested in science and practical experiments. The biggest cost was several labs doing work they wouldn't have done otherwise. And that seems fairly minor when compared to the cultural exposure that their work received. It's unfortunate that it probably won't work out. But this was fun. Good story, good experience.
- out_of_protocol 3y agoever heard of Russell's teapot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot ? LK99 is more like broad area than very specific substance
- awwkaw 3y agoWhat really annoys me is that we have not seen a single reproduction of LK-99 yet. A lot of the arxiv papers will measure PXRD. Then they will say stuff like "the position of the peaks is almost identical" (https://arxiv.org/pdf/2308.03110.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/2308.03110.pdf) (emphasis is mine). Anyone who knows anything about diffraction knows that almost identical means different. The original paper specified that LK-99 requires a 0.48% contraction of the unit cell volume. if you are off by a small fraction (either from over- or under-doping) the sample is not LK-99. it is something different. so far all "reproduction" papers have stated that they created the wrong material, then gone on to show that it does not behave as a superconductor. I'm not saying that LK-99 is definitely a room temperature superconductor, only that I have not seen a single reproduction attempt actually report the same unit cell parameters as reported by the original paper. Thus not a single reproduction attempt has thus far reproduced LK-99.