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Ask HN: Why is LK-99 public?

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Re: Ask HN: Why is LK-99 public?

#41

Post by michaelt »

mrtksn wrote: post #32

It appears that the development and the consequent publication was driven by vanity, that is the researchers really really wanted to claim the glory for their invention. Why I say this? The events of publishing, retracting and re-publishing the original paper happen over drama among the people involved with the discovery. It also appears that that the development wasn't a smooth sail as would a conspiracy may theoris…

> It appears that the development and the consequent publication was driven by vanity, that is the researchers really really wanted to claim the glory for their invention.

Or it's just public science funding working as it's supposed to - scientists with high-impact findings get rewarded with citations, prizes, tenure and further research funding.

To me it's no mystery why an academic researcher would want to publicise findings like this - I'm surprised they didn't rush to publish it 20 years ago!

Re: Ask HN: Why is LK-99 public?

#42

Post by rspoerri »

TekMol wrote: post #6

Im still trying to wrap my head around superconductors. When energy flows from one and of a wire made from a superconductor to the other end, then no heat is produced? Where did the energy go then? If CPUs were made from material without resistance, would they stay cold? How much of the heat a CPU expells is inevitable? Could (non-reversible) calculations be done without creating any heat? If yes, where did the energ…

Maybe watch this video about entropy. Its not about where energy flows, its about hoe entropy can be used to calculate.

https://youtu.be/DxL2HoqLbyA

Re: Ask HN: Why is LK-99 public?

#43

Post by baq »

XorNot wrote: post #22

Because the world does not work like conspiracy theorists think it does. Science is never obviously a breakthrough, people like to talk about and get credit for cool stuff they do, and revolutionary technology isn't necessarily of any benefit if no one knows about it. This is like asking why the US government didn't keep the transistor a secret: because the transistor is of no use to anyone until people made micropro…

You can beat roulette with like 12 transistors. In 1961.

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9085523

Re: Ask HN: Why is LK-99 public?

#44

Post by akomtu »

gambiting wrote: post #27
TekMol wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lets make a simple Gedankenspiel with only a wire made from LK-99 and a bunch of electrons sitting on the left end of the wire. After a moment, the electrons will be spread out evenly through the wire, right? So after a moment, the energy that was stored in the system (When all electrons were on the left) is lost. If no heat is emitted, where did the energy go?

Nowhere, it's still there - a loop of superconducting wire would also be a perfect energy storage because the electrons would just keep going around without any loss(it would be an extremely small capacity storage though, superconductors lose their superconductivity at high enough amperage which is basically what introducting more energy into the system would be).

I suspect that a circular trajectory implies acceleration and when a charged particle accelerates, it radiates away energy.

Re: Ask HN: Why is LK-99 public?

#45

Post by stoniejohnson »

bandrami wrote: post #40
TekMol wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lets make a simple Gedankenspiel with only a wire made from LK-99 and a bunch of electrons sitting on the left end of the wire. After a moment, the electrons will be spread out evenly through the wire, right? So after a moment, the energy that was stored in the system (When all electrons were on the left) is lost. If no heat is emitted, where did the energy go?

That's not how electric current works. It's more like a wave in an ocean. A wave may travel from Hawaii to California but no actual water molecule moves that far (or even very much at all). Electric current is a wave of excitation of electrons, which is what moves at the speed of light. The actual drift of individual electrons in the current is much, much slower (and IIRC in a superconductor is zero).

Veritasium has a cool video on this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHIhgxav9LY&pp=ygUVdmVyaXRhc...

Re: Ask HN: Why is LK-99 public?

#46

Post by Heliosmaster »

ahmadmijot wrote: post #24

If I'm not mistaken it's not that they 'published' the finding as in 'publish in a peer-reviewed article' but more like depositing pre-print in a database (arXiv) for not yet peer-review journal.

it's simply not published in a peer-reviewed journal, but it is published on arXiv, as per definition of 'publishing', i.e. "the business of making books, magazines, or newspapers available to the public" (https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/publishi...)

Re: Ask HN: Why is LK-99 public?

#47

Post by Symmetry »

A general or corporate exec looking at this from outside has no reason to take this groups claims seriously until it's been validated by the physics community. It took years of effort by multiple Noble prize winners to get the US government to invest in the atomic bomb. And probably getting LK-99 into a form ready for large scale deployment will take more effort than can be provided by the existing group.

Plus, the initial publication seems to have stemmed from dissension within the group. There's no way they could have kept this secret.

Re: Ask HN: Why is LK-99 public?

#49

Post by jakeinspace »

TekMol wrote: post #20
catboybotnet wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Where did the energy go then? Through the circuit. Heat is energy loss. The heat comes from the resistance. No resistance, no heat. To be more specific, the heat is from the kinetic energy of electrons bumping into the conductive material; no collision no heat.

Lets make a simple Gedankenspiel with only a wire made from LK-99 and a bunch of electrons sitting on the left end of the wire. After a moment, the electrons will be spread out evenly through the wire, right? So after a moment, the energy that was stored in the system (When all electrons were on the left) is lost. If no heat is emitted, where did the energy go?

Current in a conductor does not involve the potential energy of charges (electrons) being concentrated. This should be clear by the fact that currents cause magnetic fields, but do not give the conductive wire a charge gradient (or an electric dipole moment).
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