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Superconductor news: What’s claimed, and how strong the evidence seems to be

science.org

31–40 of 501 posts

Re: Superconductor news: What’s claimed, and how strong the evidence seems to be

#32

> (as well as an obvious instant Nobel prize). South Korea has been waiting for a (real, STEM) Nobel prize for decades. These guys will be worshipped as gods if they deliver

I'd bet the country would be transformed by this. SK universities (SNU, KAIST) would rocket in reputation for solid state physics research. Massive money inflows to the country from production of the material. Deep down I think most of us realize that this will probably turn out to be nothing.

Re: Superconductor news: What’s claimed, and how strong the evidence seems to be

#33

> (as well as an obvious instant Nobel prize). South Korea has been waiting for a (real, STEM) Nobel prize for decades. These guys will be worshipped as gods if they deliver

>"real nobel price" "maths"

psht, as if

Re: Superconductor news: What’s claimed, and how strong the evidence seems to be

#34
post #28

If this material does just what they say it does, what would it revolutionise? Or as the article talks about, is this just a pointer at other possibilities that would be the real game changers?

In the immediate short term, the power level supported is too low for the real shiny applications that everyone talks about. But the main one that is screaming at me for this technology sitting in front of us is SQUID sensors and RF antennas that will operate in the lower power range of the potential applications spectrum.

how does superconductivity benefit RF antennas?

AFAIK loss at AC still occurs with superconductors because the dielectric loss through the materials still exists.

Re: Superconductor news: What’s claimed, and how strong the evidence seems to be

#35
post #10
post #4

Lots of people are saying there should be a quick turnaround time here for trying the replication. I wonder how much it would cost to try and replicate this, in materials, labor costs, and vacuum furnace time/costs. My naive thought is that that labs in general aren't just going to drop everything to try an replicate every instance of someone declaring they've discovered room temperature superconductivity. Seems more…

If i make an analogy to p=np. If someone claimed to have a complex proof, i dont think people would stop and drop everything. If someone claimed to have a constructive solution to p=np, claimed to have implemented it, and put the code on github - yeah i think lots of people would drop everything to run it and see if it works. Im not a physicist, but maybe with the relative ease on making this material (according to o…

For real; the original paper is kinda shitty in terms of data presentation, and there's significant value to make a follow up paper to create data and try to get your name out there.

Re: Superconductor news: What’s claimed, and how strong the evidence seems to be

#36
While we’re waiting for experimenters to reproduce this, it’s worth comparing this amazing announcement to the Cold Fusion affair of 1989[1]

It’s notable that the first publications about attempts to reproduce the Cold Fusion experiment all reported positive results.

It’s probably because experimenters who got negative results decided they might have done something wrong so they kept trying, and delayed, and they did not publish until later.

Those early reports of positive results were largely retracted within a few weeks.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_fusion

Re: Superconductor news: What’s claimed, and how strong the evidence seems to be

#37

If this material does just what they say it does, what would it revolutionise? Or as the article talks about, is this just a pointer at other possibilities that would be the real game changers?

There’s a ton of electromagnets that are super cooled (like single digit K cold) so that it can maintain a large magnetic field. While this is only the first step, pretty much any application that does something similar can be replaced with this room temperature super conductive material.

Not only products would be impacted but experiments too, particularly particle experiments. All colliders need some sort of ridiculous magnetic field which uses a close loop helium chiller.

Long term wise, anything that uses electromagnetic fields would be impacted, like motors and generators. You in theory can get stupidly efficient motors (99%+) motors with super conductors.

Re: Superconductor news: What’s claimed, and how strong the evidence seems to be

#38
post #4

Lots of people are saying there should be a quick turnaround time here for trying the replication. I wonder how much it would cost to try and replicate this, in materials, labor costs, and vacuum furnace time/costs. My naive thought is that that labs in general aren't just going to drop everything to try an replicate every instance of someone declaring they've discovered room temperature superconductivity. Seems more…

> My naive thought is that that labs in general aren't just going to drop everything to try an replicate every instance of someone declaring they've discovered room temperature superconductivity. Seems more like a "there's a lull in paying work, so hey, why don't some of you junior technicians try this out" thing? Anyone have insight into this?

Labs all over the world are dropping everything to replicate this. It's simple self interest.

It only takes 2-3 days and the people involved in the paper are credible.

If it's real, your lab would be at the forefront of the biggest revolution since the transistor. If it's real, there will be hundreds of papers on the topic by next year. Your lab could be the one to discover a variant that can carry more current, that could have patent on the material of the future power grid. The papers that provide the basics for how this works and the data that everyone will be using will get 100k+ citations in a few years. The PhD students that become experts in this will be in high demand everywhere.

Re: Superconductor news: What’s claimed, and how strong the evidence seems to be

#39

So what kinds of cool stuff could be built with a room temperature superconductor? Better levitating trains?

The last line of the paper says this discovery will lead to a new age of humanity, and they aren't joking.

Re: Superconductor news: What’s claimed, and how strong the evidence seems to be

#40
post #17

This video ( https://sciencecast.org/casts/suc384jly50n ) showing the Meissner effect should be the easiest to replicate: just send a sample to another lab and put it over a large magnet. As far as I know, the only explanations for this occurring is room temp superconductivity, or a strong diamagnetism (which would also be very cool to see)!

I don’t know enough about this but shouldn’t the entire superconductor be floating above the magnet? Why is one part still attached (or maybe attracted) to the magnet?
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