17 ms·
Possible Meissner effect near room temperature: copper-substituted lead apatite
- MadnessASAP 3y agoSo they've possibly discovered a material wlthat may have a property that could be indicative of superconductivity at room temperature? It's a shame I don't have any popcorn handy. I do however appreciate their dedication to not putting the word superconductor in the title.
- AnimalMuppet 3y agoWell, it's an Arxiv paper. Arxiv is perhaps not the best environment for clickbait headlines.
- highwaylights 3y agoGive the cesspit formerly known as Twitter a couple of hours and they'll be breaking out the laser eyes again, buzzword in the paper or not.
- checker659 3y agoAI bros can context switch to superconduction must faster than that.
- yinser 3y agoI know it looks silly but what was wrong with being optimistic about what would be the biggest physical discovery since the transistor? Acting like an expert when you’re not is something that I’d say happens on HN just as often as on Twitter. Learn to let it go
- j_maffe 3y agoThere's difference between raising hope and raising hype. Those Twitter gurus ride on any wave convincing of people of whatever they can just to get more traffic. It's mostly harmless until you find people obsessing over updates and start betting on it.
- highwaylights 3y agoThis - these aren't hopeful people with a layman's understanding cheering on the scientific method, they're hype bros looking to gather gullible followers and shill cryptocurrencies to them based on yet another thing they're utterly clueless about and don't care to inform themselves on.
- refulgentis 3y agoI love "They-ing" because if it's even lightly questioned someone will jump in to explain they know They, and add even more qualifiers. Ex. if we weren't on HN "tech bros" and "AI hype" would start being invoked. EDIT: I was wrong! On HN too! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38854412 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38854412
- appplication 3y agoI don’t think this is true. When I heard of LK-99, I remember talking of my friends about it and we sort of daydreamed about what it could mean for society if true. None of us are on social media anymore (except HN if you count that). Sometimes you just get excited, or want to be excited. Otherwise it’s back to wake up, work, eat dinner, sleep. When cool stuff seems to be happening, why wouldn’t we talk about it? Even if it ends up being a dud, it’s still something to talk about out.
- thepasswordis 3y agoThose "twitter gurus" were actively trying to recreate the paper, and a lot of those "twitter gurus" are actual founders doing actual hardtech startups with relevant degrees and labs.
- gfodor 3y agoYou know you can block and mute people on Twitter, right? The actual true grifters of the kind you are talking about are pretty rare in terms of a per user basis (though get get lots of distribution), and most of them are very bad at concealing themselves.
- lupusreal 3y ago
- throwawaymaths 3y agoThat's way better than people dunking on lk-99 in the name of "science", quick to judge themselves while criticizing early results as too quick to judge
- plorg 3y agoHN was absolutely choked with the same sort of would-be experts, reading the Wikipedia page for Superconductors and trying to post their way into a position of authoritative knowledge. Certainly there are more on Twitter as a consequence of the larger use base, but those two weeks involved some of the most unhinged hype-posting I've seen in the decade I've been following HN.
- burnished 3y ago'Nerds get excited and furiously try to catch up'? Everyone is acting like reading up on superconductivity and discussing it is this social ill - did I miss something? Did it turn into a ponzi scam?
- plorg 3y agoMore like people with relatively low familiarity with a field posting with the confidence of ChatGPT and, like LLM spam, recycling and reposting so much material that adds nothing to the conversation that any actually useful content is buried.
- ummonk 3y agoLooks like they have observed what they can only explain as apparent superconductivity, but consistent with the Sagan principle are being rather cautious with how they report it.
- sanxiyn 3y agoYou know what, one of the authors wrote pretty much the same elsewhere. 可以这样理解: 人类还没有仪器能测到理论严格意义上的迈斯纳, 所以加possible是出于对自然复杂性的敬畏. (Translation: It can be understood this way: humans do not yet have instruments that can measure Meissner in the strict sense of the theory, so adding possible is out of awe of the complexity of nature.) Source: https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/675576020 https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/675576020
- hinkley 3y agoI'm not holding my breath for room temperature semiconductors anymore. I've gotten excited too many times. If they come, great. If they don't, no emotional investment here. What interested me with this line of research is that it seems like even if they are completely wrong about it being superconductive, it looked like they might be on to some novel electromagnetic effects, which while not as exciting as hover trains or long haul EVs, might mean punctuated improvements in more mundane items.
- jonathan_oberg 3y agoIce broke last year … this may not be the one, nor maybe the next dozen materials but seems like we are on the right glide path now. <crosses fingers>
- yreg 3y ago> seems like we are on the right glide path now In what sense? Public interest? LK-99 wasn't an incremental step toward room temp superconductivity, was it?
- sureglymop 3y agoPublic interest and popularity are not bad though. Raised interest, more funding etc. can all be good things and accelerate this research.
- yreg 3y agoI'm not saying it is, but I wouldn't say that previously we weren't on the right path to that discovery and now, thanks to public interest, we are.
- phkahler 3y ago>> In what sense? Public interest? LK-99 wasn't an incremental step toward room temp superconductivity, was it? It was an incremental step toward this material. It also had some interesting properties at higher temperatures even if superconductivity wasn't one of them. It seemed really strange to me that LK99 was tossed aside so quickly. It got discredited faster than cold fusion, which is still lingering today under different names BTW.
- yreg 3y ago> It was an incremental step toward this material. Could you please explain how?
- 3y ago
- admissionsguy 3y agoThis stuff is so 2023
- h0l0cube 3y agoCounterpoint: Imagine this line of inquiry that the west has given up on lands China the breakthrough of the century? Given the way the US and EU are conspiring to withhold key chip fab tech, it would be absolutely hilarious if China covertly discovered room temperature superconductivity and the government withholds it as a domestic advantage; blowing away AWS and Microsoft's compute offering with something orders of magnitudes faster and reverse the tech playing field.
- londons_explore 3y agoIf China discovers this, publishes papers on it, and patents it, you can be 100% sure that the west will just ignore any patents and fabricate it themselves.
- h0l0cube 3y agoKeyword was 'covertly'. As in withheld from publication and controlled by the government
- londons_explore 3y agoPossible, but many of the economic benefits would be lost if you needed to do it covertly. Can't exactly have room temperature superconducting monorails all over the nation without someone questioning exactly how you have room temp superconductors and nobody else does...
- h0l0cube 3y agoI’m fancying that a centrally managed economy might be able to do this, where a democratic capitalist economy may not. But I agree it’s a bit of a leap
- spacecity1971 3y agoGreat to see research continuing on this particular path.
- matheweis 3y agoWasn’t LK-99 a copper doped lead apatite? Is this different?
- sanxiyn 3y agoThis is a derivative, with slightly different chemical formula (namely, this includes sulfur, while LK-99 didn't).
- kuschku 3y agoThough the original, supposedly superconducting LK-99 sample, was produced in a way that caused it to be contaminated with sulfur. So this might be why their sample acted the way it did.
- londons_explore 3y agoIf I am understanding correctly, this 'hysteresis' effect could also be caused by tiny bits of iron contamination in the sample?
- hwillis 3y agoSimple answer: no. Ferromagnetic hysteresis increases with temperature, and the hysteresis here is stronger at lower temperatures. The amount of hysteresis they see at low temperatures is also too much to explain with undetected contamination. Plus, the scientists posted a picture of them fully floating a sample upside-down, which is pretty hard to explain away. Complex answer: Maybe. Copper sulfide does a lot of weird things, and it's very easy to screw with ferromagnetism in unexpected ways. It's totally possible there's a lot of iron in this sample, and the huge incentive for room temperature superconductors is a powerful temptation to slant your data... or fabricate it entirely: https://www.science.org/content/article/plagiarism-allegations-pursue-physicist-behind-stunning-superconductivity-claims https://www.science.org/content/article/plagiarism-allegatio... That's my alma mater :(
- Daneel_ 3y agoAre you able to link that photo? I've had a look through both the paper and various threads here and haven't seen it shown/linked. Many thanks.
- hwillis 3y agotop comment, just keep scrolling down farther: https://www.zhihu.com/question/637763289 https://www.zhihu.com/question/637763289
- DarmokJalad1701 3y agoDoes "cute" mean something different in Chinese? Examples from that page put through Google Translate: "Submitted by: Guided by the big assembly, with really cute stupid, wash the teacher,Sekiyama Pass, Fire Machine Immortal, Frog, Teacher Chen, etc" "The rivers and lakes are far away, and I still remember that the cute and stupid sent the statement of "don't do it, whoever likes to do it" several times, and began to return to the old business in a few days. Don't say it, I really believed it at the time. Only the scumbag told me, impossible, absolutely impossible, he burned dozens of furnaces, much more fierce than us."
- sanxiyn 3y agoSome background: there were two Chinese teams publicly pursuing LK-99-derived room temperature superconductor, which I arbitrarily named "north China team" and "south China team". North China team was headed by Hongyang Wang (who lives in Beijing) and south China team was headed by Yao Yao (who lives in Guangzhou). They used different synthesis and different analysis, i.e. north China team used hydrothermal synthesis and used SQUID measurement, while south China team used solid state synthesis and used EPR measurement. This is a joint paper of both teams. They reproduced results of each other (this is unclear in the paper, but stated in their behind-the-scene posts) and measured a clear sign of superconductivity. It is "near room temperature", because they are sure about 250 K (hence "near"), but not sure about 300 K. As for "possible", the behind-the-scene post makes it clear it is false modesty. If you are interested, you definitely want to read behind-the-scene posts. Read them here: https://www.zhihu.com/question/637763289 https://www.zhihu.com/question/637763289 (they are in Chinese). Hongyang Wang is 真可爱呆 and Yao Yao is 洗芝溪.
- bloopernova 3y agoHow does 250 K compare to current[1] superconductors? [1] pun definitely intended.
- belter 3y ago250K is -23,15°C This post because, laziness is a science...
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- sanxiyn 3y ago250 K at ambient pressure is still revolutionary, as it can be reached by dry ice. The highest critical temperature at ambient pressure had been something like 150 K: still above boiling point of liquid nitrogen, and won Nobel Prize in Physics in 1987.
- 3y ago
- laserbeam 3y ago1. Here we go again, right? 2. Is this still a ceramic (therefore impossible to make into wires), right?
- 1970-01-01 3y agoStranded wire, yes. Rigid wire is possible. Think about it like iron plumbing or rigid electrical conduit.
- falcrist 3y agoI feel like we're just describing a narrow bus bar.
- local_crmdgeon 3y agoIsn't that approximately a wire?
- 1970-01-01 3y agoBars are a good guess, but the 3rd dimension should not matter. We could manufacture thin tile as the conductor, and PCB design would be done with superconducting Lego bricks.
- falcrist 3y agoAmong other things, critical current in bulk ceramic superconductors depends on cross-sectional area, so while it seems reasonable to make a ribbon-like structure, the 3rd dimension does matter. You can't make it effectively 2D.
- sanxiyn 3y agoYes, it is a ceramic, but you CAN make cables out of it. Commonwealth Fusion Systems did, SuperOx sells them (they have deployed references), etc.
- floxy 3y agoSecond generation ceramic HTS is deposited in thin films on to flexible tapes: https://www.superpower-inc.com/Technology.aspx https://www.superpower-inc.com/Technology.aspx (scroll down for image of tape bending): https://www.fujikura.co.jp/eng/newsrelease/products/2061942_11777.html https://www.fujikura.co.jp/eng/newsrelease/products/2061942_...
- m3kw9 3y agoAnyone feel this is going in circles?
- yinser 3y agoTo a non chemist it may look like it’s going in circles. When you’re not solving a bug and writing debug statements and throwing paint at the wall it looks like you’re going in circles. Everything is going in circles until it isn’t. Be optimistic!
- causal 3y agoExactly, just a long problem-solving loop.
- limaoscarjuliet 3y ago...and without any resistance! (sorry, could not stop myself)
- zamalek 3y agoThat's what functioning science looks like. Giving up the first time round is a sure-fire way to guarantee that RTP superconductors are never found. How many non-functioning light bulbs did Edison invent before he made the one that worked?
- gosub100 3y agoI wish there was a journal that only published experiments that have been replicated. That would save so much time for many of us who want to know what is, and not what's being tried.
- shakezula 3y agoReplication is great but it’s not the only way science learns and it would be foolish to put that kind of limit on publishing your work.
- threeseed 3y agoYou should just wait until the research has been commercialised then. That way your time is not being wasted and the rest of us can continue to focus on disseminating knowledge as early and often as possible.
- roflmaostc 3y ago[flagged]
- ziofill 3y ago250K is -23C, or -9F, I.e. like a cold winter day. That’s really almost room temperature!
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- GeoAtreides 3y agoCompared with the working temperature of NMR magnets (4K)[1], it _is_ room temperature! It's not STP (standard temperature and pressure, 0C/1atm), yet, but maybe soon! [1] https://www.indstate.edu/cas/chem_phys/filling-nmr-magnet https://www.indstate.edu/cas/chem_phys/filling-nmr-magnet
- margalabargala 3y ago> It's not STP (standard temperature and pressure, 0C/1atm Nit: STP is 20C/1atm, not 0C/1atm.
- GeoAtreides 3y agoNit's nit: depends on the defining body, IUPAC is 0C, NIST is 20C (as per wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_temperature_and_pressure#Definitions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_temperature_and_press...
- margalabargala 3y agoHuh, today I learned. In chem in college I was just taught 20C.
- selimthegrim 3y agoNot 298K? (25C)
- stavros 3y agoNow you're nistpicking.
- Havoc 3y agoWhat encourages me on this is that we just need a single instance to pan out. Just one. And I get the sense that we’re getting closer each year.
- dtgriscom 3y agoIt isn't "one and done." Room temperature superconductivity will be an amazing breakthrough, but there will be many more barriers to overcome before it becomes a practical product.
- dexwiz 3y agoHardly. Just because you can make a chunk of it doesn’t mean it’s automatically useful. Is it ductile enough to make wires or sheets? Does it corrode quickly? Is it stable in the long term? Does it amalgamate with other metals too easily? Materials have a whole list of properties that are important in both manufacturing and usage contexts. Alternative processing methods can fix some issues but not all. That being said, finding one should be like kicking down the door to a whole room of related possibilities.
- nyokodo 3y ago> finding one should be like kicking down the door to a whole room of related possibilities You actually agree with the GP, you are just being more specific about what “one working” means, and providing more criteria for what getting “closer every year” would entail.
- TheRealPomax 3y ago*Two. Not one. It's not science until it's been independently reproduced. Until then, it's "cute, but we can't trust what you're saying until someone else shows you're not making things up". And that counter resets every single time someone does something slightly different and then claims that it works.
- ramraj07 3y agoIn that case it needs to be three, not two. No statistical method works on n=2.
- jmward01 3y agoUntil Anton Petrov does a video on this it isn't real.
- hinkley 3y agoHello wonderful people.
- jmward01 3y agoThat line is like "Don't Panic". He sets a great tone for his videos.
- darklycan51 3y agoHe really has become my source to go for most science papers lol, then after that its PBS guy and sometimes Sabine although I don't usually go to her stuff for 100% accuracy or them trying to at least
- weatherlight 3y agoSame here. wow. <3 Anton though, I know when I sit down to watch his vids, it's 8 minutes or pure information, no nonsense, consistent delivery. The man is a national treasure.
- calf 3y agoWho is PBS guy?
- CapsAdmin 3y agomaybe "pbs spacetime"
- turing_complete 3y agoI want to believe. I really do.
- ocschwar 3y agoThe implications are so profound that any hint at this sort of thing makes otherwise rational people go completely bonkers. Myself included.
- sergiotapia 3y agoImagine humanity liberated to such lengths. Sickness, poverty, energy, travel, entertainment - all for cheap and in abundance. Pray this is real!
- bmer 3y agoYeah, no. That's not going to happen even if we discovered room-temperature superconductors. The simple reason is that few of humanity's "ills" have to do with scarcity of anything but knowledge, motivation, and kindness.
- bordercases 3y agoUncentralizable energy overproduction would help.
- bawolff 3y agoNot a physicist but my understanding is superconductors have max amount of current you can put through it, so its not clear it can be used for free energy distribution at scale even if it is a super conductor.
- roarcher 3y agoEven if it allowed infinite current, the only thing that would become "free" is what we currently lose to inefficiencies in the conductors. There's still the cost of generating electricity, maintaining the distribution infrastructure (which would likely be far more expensive than what we have), etc.
- hakkikonu 3y agohere we go again
- CatWChainsaw 3y agoChrist. 2024 really coming in hot, we get a 7.6 magnitude earthquake on day 1, bombings killing over 100 people on day 2, and this shit again on day 3.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jiggawatts 3y agoA key effect of exponential growth is that more things will happen each year.
- CatWChainsaw 3y agoExponential curves usually prove to be sigmoid given enough time, so at least we can hope for that.
- feoren 3y agoI'd go so far as to say all apparently exponential curves are actually sigmoid, but the asymptote of the sigmoid often increases itself (in another, longer-term sigmoid). But I don't think we're anywhere near the carrying capacity of weird shit happening; we're still firmly in the exponential-ish zone of human development.
- CatWChainsaw 3y agoNot sure how much more humanity/civilization/the planet can take if we're still accelerating.
- voldacar 3y agoThis is true, by the Bekenstein bound.
- astrange 3y agoWell, not earthquakes. And hopefully not runway collisions either.
- codeulike 3y agoIts nice that all the major players seem to recognise that its better to do this sort of science in the open.
- isthispermanent 3y ago[flagged]
- changoplatanero 3y agoThere's also a huge reputational advantage to be the first to announce the discovery.
- Eji1700 3y agoWhile i'm still extremely skeptical there's anything to this, especially with the total lack of professionalism in the initial "discovery", I'm not sure something this big is within their ability to control, at least if they're not right on the cusp of it. This kind of science is almost inherently international, and I don't think they could possibly keep up "keeping quiet" all the potential successes. That said, if there was one, I do think they'd at least try and fail.
- kkzz99 3y agoChina filed more IP than rest of world combined in 2022. There is no reason to keep it secret with IP-Laws and Patents. https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202312/12/WS6577b803a31040ac301a7454.html https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202312/12/WS6577b803a31040ac...
- ldjkfkdsjnv 3y ago99% of these patents are bogus
- earthnail 3y agoI don’t think the CCP gets this stuff or its importance.
- parl_match 3y agoIt's actually really hard to keep discoveries like this secret or restricted. The real value worth protecting often is how to manufacture and mass produce. The nuclear bomb is a perfect example: It's actually a very simple mechanism, and the steps needed to refine the materials and make the mechanism are extremely well documented. However, the capability to actually reliably and safely make it is quite difficult.
- andrewp123 3y agoNot this again.
- penjelly 3y agogot a bit frenzied by the last superconductor drop, gonna sit this one out
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- roomey 3y agoAnyone got a link to a good forum tracking this?
- brucethemoose2 3y agoPossibly SpaceBattles again, once the hype heats up: https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/claims-of-room-temperature-and-ambient-pressure-superconductor.1106083/post-97893523 https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/claims-of-room-tempe... I really should peruse oldschool forums more... HN and a few subreddits are still nice, but most other social media feels like manipulative filler.
- tim333 3y agoHaving followed the LK99 saga a bit it seems the visual appearance of the proper Meissner effect floating above the magnet and holding in a different position if you prod it (https://youtu.be/F9ukYM4cSOk?t=11 https://youtu.be/F9ukYM4cSOk?t=11) looks very different to the diamagnetic stuff LK99 did - one end touching the magnet and wobbling a bit. Until they show a video looking like the above count my skepical.
- httpz 3y ago250K is -23.15°C. I happened to search Moscow weather today and it's -23°C ~ -26°C. So not quite room temperature but it's outside temperature in some cities.
- grishka 3y agoIt's actually a somewhat rare occurrence, it doesn't usually get this cold in Moscow. Typical winter is above -10.
- virgildotcodes 3y agoLink to a picture of a sample floating beneath a magnet: https://nitter.net/pronounced_kyle/status/1742725029450916111#m https://nitter.net/pronounced_kyle/status/174272502945091611...
- jiggawatts 3y agoThere were many similar LK-99 pictures that were later identified as caused by other magnetic / optical effects. One popular theory explaining the LK-99 "levitation" pictures is that the material is diamagnetic (repels magnets), but has iron impurities (attracts magnets). So a small fragment might have a tiny fleck of iron in a corner, which is stuck to the magnet, but the bulk is repelled. This makes the sample "half float", with one corner always touching. After a while you start noticing the consistent look of the samples almost-but-not-quite floating askew. Another effect is that if a picture is taken in a dark room with a camera that has the iris wide open, optical effects can blur the point at which the sample touches the magnet. A macro shot of a tiny sample especially is susceptible to this effect, and it can make the sample look like it is truly floating, with a visible "gap". Better focus (or focus-stacking) would reveal the small point still in contact with the magnet.
- lamontcg 3y agoWe're really taking this bullshit seriously again?
- oakhaven 3y agoI'm in Finland now and it's -30 C (-243 K). I could mag-levitate to work if I had proper superconductor shoes.
- oakhaven 3y agoI'm in Finland now and it's -30 C (~-243 K). I could mag-levitate to work if I had copper-substituted lead apatite shoes.
- tim333 3y agoAnd a large magnet.
- pyinstallwoes 3y agoThe skepticism is laudable. The pessimism is laughable. The hindsight is predictable. In the skies, they streak, these UAPs, so sleek, A dance of lights, TR-3B secrets they keep. At the edge of science, a silent peak, Superconductivity at psyop strength, not for the meek. Whispers of tech, beyond our grasp, a sign, In the shadow of stars, conspiracies align. Truth obscured, in a skeptic's design, But in hindsight's glow, the patterns entwine.
- sciencecomm24 3y agoInterview with the lead author of the paper: https://sciencecast.org/casts/u1mlp8tkn7w4 https://sciencecast.org/casts/u1mlp8tkn7w4
- selimthegrim 3y agoThere’s a good sciencecast discussion of this pre-print with one of the authors and a couple other physicists including Victor Galitski at UMD https://sciencecast.org/casts/u1mlp8tkn7w4 https://sciencecast.org/casts/u1mlp8tkn7w4