Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

science.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 501 posts

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

#111

Post by reaperman »

bluGill wrote: post #101
scarmig wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. BCS was proposed a half century after the first conventional superconductor was discovered, and even today we don't have a convincing mechanism for "regular" high-Tc superconductors. But if it superconducts, it superconducts, and research into the how is useful but not a blocker to using it.

That depends. If it super conducts, but it isn't useful in the real world, then we will be waiting for theory to - hopefully - give us some insight into how to improve things to useful. This only can carry a small amount of current. I'm not sure how to figure out what small means (numbers are given in the article if you know how to use them!), but if the losses using regular wire are less than the energy needed to ma…

> If it super conducts, but it isn't useful in the real world, then we will be waiting for theory to - hopefully - give us some insight into how to improve things to useful. This only can carry a small amount of current.

Thank you for this.

> This is made out of lead. Even if it is useful for transmission, the difficulty of working safely with lead in a factory may mean it is impractical.

Have you been to a hardware store lately? A huge amount of pipe fittings for gas and non-potable water are made from lead. Factories don’t find it hard to work with lead. It might be inadvisable but it’s not hard.

We can argue about the "working safely" part, but in terms of "does this make it impractical?" the answer seems to be no under the current global regulatory environment.

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

#112

Post by WaffleIronMaker »

carabiner wrote: post #92

Researcher on reddit thinks it's probably spurious measurement artifacts, not superconductivity: > I would say they are not faking it, but instead they just don’t understand what they are looking at. Based on what measurements they are doing, as well as how they are doing them, they do not have a good understanding of the standard processes to characterise a superconductor. Also, based on their analysis/discussion, t…

Another interesting analysis from that post:

> So, to clarify for my nonexpert brain, if this were a superconductor and their measurements were accurate:

> Fig 5 means the sample must be completely pure to be a superconductor

> The rest of the paper indicates the sample must have impurities.

> So it's pretty safe to say that either it's not a superconductor or their measurements are wrong (or most likely both). Since they never got it to the critical temperature and showed the full Meissner effect, if the measurements are wrong it's fair to say they don't have evidence for superconductivity anyway, just diamagnetism, which isn't really that big a deal

https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/159g2k4/comment/...

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

#113

Post by mrandish »

algo_trader wrote: post #8

> (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

South Korea: "We've developed reliable superconducting electricity."

North Korea: "We're still working on reliable electricity."

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

#114

Post by CSMastermind »

post-it wrote: post #106
prasadjoglekar wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I'm not super interested in watching Joe Rogan and RFK, is there a particular bit where they talk about bikes?

There's nothing about bicycles in the video he linked.

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

#115

Post by kube-system »

willis936 wrote: post #99
hatsunearu wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Lead is used in many places. You should avoid checking what battery is in your ICE vehicle. What matters is how lead is handled. With hope, mankind will never lead a generation the way burning millions of gallons of leaded fuel did. Certainly no use of a lead superconductor could hope to accomplish that level of damage.

This is a leading example of how homographs can lead us astray.

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

#116

Post by hatsunearu »

willis936 wrote: post #99
hatsunearu wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Lead is used in many places. You should avoid checking what battery is in your ICE vehicle. What matters is how lead is handled. With hope, mankind will never lead a generation the way burning millions of gallons of leaded fuel did. Certainly no use of a lead superconductor could hope to accomplish that level of damage.

I think you replied to the wrong parent?

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

#117

Post by macromaniac »

carabiner wrote: post #92

Researcher on reddit thinks it's probably spurious measurement artifacts, not superconductivity: > I would say they are not faking it, but instead they just don’t understand what they are looking at. Based on what measurements they are doing, as well as how they are doing them, they do not have a good understanding of the standard processes to characterise a superconductor. Also, based on their analysis/discussion, t…

He doesn't provide an actual counterargument,he just says he doesn't like the data without explaining why.

His earlier comment that graphite can do the same thing is untrue afaict. Graphite can repel the magnetic field but it would slide off, this is why in diamagnetic experiments multiple magnets are used to keep it in place. In the video it doesnt seem to be sliding anywhere, so imo the video is not showing diamagnetism.

https://sciencecast.org/casts/suc384jly50n

Edit: Actually, now I'm not so sure, it does seem like it's held in place by one corner which is always pointing towards the outside of the magnet, so maybe it is just diamagnetism. If anyone has some pyrolytic carbon and wants to try it out?

Edit2: 99% of YouTube videos on diamagnetism have multiple magnets, the only one I could find that has diamagnetism on one pole magnets shows it not working:

https://youtu.be/D-tW8_SRW3g

I think it's more than just pyrolytic carbon

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

#118

Post by cryptonector »

Analemma_ wrote: post #84
perihelions wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another example of this was Millikan's determination of the fundamental electric charge (of one electron). The first, famous experiment had a major error; and subsequently everyone who independently replicated the experiment, for two decades, came up with the same error, in the same direction. The people whose experiments got the correct value probably self-selected themselves out of publishing it. https://en.wikiped…

Room-temperature superconductors have so many urgent commercial uses that if this fake, I doubt the error will persist for that long. There's too much at stake.

Boiling-water-temperature superconductors. Pinch me, it feels like a dream.

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

#119

Post by whatshisface »

macromaniac wrote: post #117
carabiner wrote: post #92

Researcher on reddit thinks it's probably spurious measurement artifacts, not superconductivity: > I would say they are not faking it, but instead they just don’t understand what they are looking at. Based on what measurements they are doing, as well as how they are doing them, they do not have a good understanding of the standard processes to characterise a superconductor. Also, based on their analysis/discussion, t…

He doesn't provide an actual counterargument,he just says he doesn't like the data without explaining why. His earlier comment that graphite can do the same thing is untrue afaict. Graphite can repel the magnetic field but it would slide off, this is why in diamagnetic experiments multiple magnets are used to keep it in place. In the video it doesnt seem to be sliding anywhere, so imo the video is not showing diamagn…

It is clearly resting on the magnet. I don't know the mechanics off the top of my head, but that is enough mechanical constraint for a pair of permanent magnets to levitate.

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

#120

Post by xeonmc »

soligern wrote: post #66
NegativeLatency wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Contamination/impurities or something else in it that's not superconducting?

A strange exposition video then, I would try to remove the part that wasn’t superconducting (the part touching the magnet) before I released this. A completely floating piece of this superconductor would remove literally all doubt.

You say to do WHAT to the best piece of sample they synthesized?
Post reply on HN