This is an unreviewed preprint coming out of South Korea. If it’s reproducible it would be the biggest scientific discovery of the last hundred years. It will literally reshape the world. However, the most likely thing is they made a mistake and the paper will be withdrawn. But imagine if it’s true.
The first room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductor?
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Re: The first room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductor?
#62This is an unreviewed preprint coming out of South Korea. If it’s reproducible it would be the biggest scientific discovery of the last hundred years. It will literally reshape the world. However, the most likely thing is they made a mistake and the paper will be withdrawn. But imagine if it’s true.
To change the world it has to be manufacturable at scale, stable, etc.
Re: The first room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductor?
#63This is an unreviewed preprint coming out of South Korea. If it’s reproducible it would be the biggest scientific discovery of the last hundred years. It will literally reshape the world. However, the most likely thing is they made a mistake and the paper will be withdrawn. But imagine if it’s true.
Even if we found the perfect material, where it was easy and cheap to create long strong wires for power transmission as well as semiconductor-scale nano wires, we'd be gaining something like (wild ass guess) 20% gain in efficiency. 20% would be nice but would it really beat the last hundred years of discoveries? I don't think so, especially with digital tech's profound world-reshaping continuing to accelerate.
Re: The first room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductor?
#64Will they invite a wide range of experts to publicly test their material?
The instructions they provide in the paper seem fairly straightforward and reproducible, I'd expect that if this is in fact legit, there will be many attempts to replicate the result quite quickly.
Re: The first room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductor?
#65Will they invite a wide range of experts to publicly test their material?
Re: The first room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductor?
#66This is an unreviewed preprint coming out of South Korea. If it’s reproducible it would be the biggest scientific discovery of the last hundred years. It will literally reshape the world. However, the most likely thing is they made a mistake and the paper will be withdrawn. But imagine if it’s true.
> the biggest scientific discovery of the last hundred years I would say that electronic computers would take take the first spot for me, but I don't deny that room-temperature superconductors would be pretty close to the top.
As a singular discovery goes, it’s hard to think of something that tops this. Of course, even if this is true, bringing it to market in a practical way will probably look a lot more like the invention of electronic computers.
Re: The first room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductor?
#67This is an unreviewed preprint coming out of South Korea. If it’s reproducible it would be the biggest scientific discovery of the last hundred years. It will literally reshape the world. However, the most likely thing is they made a mistake and the paper will be withdrawn. But imagine if it’s true.
> the biggest scientific discovery of the last hundred years I would say that electronic computers would take take the first spot for me, but I don't deny that room-temperature superconductors would be pretty close to the top.
So that wouldn't be in the last 100 years.
However unlike computers, if this idea works, it will get productized quickly.
Re: The first room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductor?
#68big if true. far from a chemistry expert here, but synthesis looks basically trivial (if you consider 10e-5 torr vacuum to be trivial), and the materials are readily available. hell, from the instructions alone i could probably make it at home. i mean the search space is unfathomably large, so i suppose it’s possible that something like this exists, but the paper quality itself doesn’t.. spark joy? :) i’ll maintain a…
Re: The first room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductor?
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
To change the world it has to be manufacturable at scale, stable, etc.
I don't agree. Producing something at scale is only relevant if the goal is mass commercial distribution. Communication satellites changed the world and they are practically all (i.e., some exceptions such as space-x constellation) one-off builds of single-shot projects.
Re: The first room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductor?
#70Ohh ... this could actually be relatively big. From abstract: "The superconductivity of LK-99 originates from minute structural distortion by a slight volume shrinkage" There was previously research done investigating how changes in atomic structural alignment affect superconductivity (such as by cooling). I think researchers were trying to maintain the spacing that superconductors had while cool even when it was hea…