51–60 of 501 posts
So what kinds of cool stuff could be built with a room temperature superconductor? Better levitating trains?
Nuclear fusion much easier, quantum computing, lossless electricity transmission, insane batteries. Dirt cheap MRIs, Basically welcome to the Jetsons. Much easier to mitigate climate change to the point where we can just deal with it.
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…
Why did those early experimenters report positive reports? Did they inadvertently do something wrong themselves that looked like cold fusion?
This is an extremely useful summarization of the original paper. > The authors believe that the modified/strained structure of their material creates a large number of “quantum wells” between particular lead atoms and the adjacent oxygens of the phosphate groups bound to them, in effect making a two-dimensional “electron gas”. They propose that electron tunneling between these quantum wells, which are between 3.7 and…
Even better, it's a HUGE claim that is going to show how epistemology in science works (reproduction!!)
This is an extremely useful summarization of the original paper. > The authors believe that the modified/strained structure of their material creates a large number of “quantum wells” between particular lead atoms and the adjacent oxygens of the phosphate groups bound to them, in effect making a two-dimensional “electron gas”. They propose that electron tunneling between these quantum wells, which are between 3.7 and…
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…
Why did those early experimenters report positive reports? Did they inadvertently do something wrong themselves that looked like cold fusion?
Yes, probably
This blog talks about some of the many pitfalls that could mislead researchers: https://coldfusionblog.net/2019/03/13/the-case-against-cold-...
Some of the errors are very subtle. It’s not surprising that mistakes were made
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…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Catalyzer
nothing happened, of course, but the idea of an elegant energy source was so seductive.
This is an extremely useful summarization of the original paper. > The authors believe that the modified/strained structure of their material creates a large number of “quantum wells” between particular lead atoms and the adjacent oxygens of the phosphate groups bound to them, in effect making a two-dimensional “electron gas”. They propose that electron tunneling between these quantum wells, which are between 3.7 and…
That is a very strange explanation. As someone who has done a decent amount of solid-state physics work, I would expect the explanation to involve a mechanism for pairing of electrons. Mere tunneling between quantum wells has been a staple since the "metamaterials" of the 80s and 90s.
That said, the measured curves do not lie, and I haven't kept up with the field. So I'm all ears (and very much hoping the superconducting revolution is upon us!)
What do the "super forecasters" have to say about this? Was this predicted on prediction markets? Was the assumption of this tech existing already factored into prediction models?
> (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.
I’ll draw an analogy to the LLMs and diffusion models that have lately rocked the computer world. These things are straight up science fiction. I would have said computers would have never been capable of art and poetry. It was all fantasy until it was suddenly reality.
We’ll probably know if this can be replicated relatively soon. And if it can it will kick off a whole new branch of materials science and begin a multi-year race to commercialization.
We are facing gigantic challenges in energy and climate. We need the win, so my fingers are crossed.