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

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

#121
post #9
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a reasonable enough paper, and replicating should be pretty easy (an undergrad could do it). Because the implications are so massive if true, people are going to jump on it. From the linked article: > You can bet that furnaces in solid-state materials labs around the world have been cooking yesterday and today to try to reproduce its synthesis and the properties, and we should be hearing about the results of the…

Yes, that quote from the article makes it seem like everyone is dropping everything and jumping right on it. I'm wondering how likely that is we'll find out this Friday vs. in the next couple of months, as people get around to it.

That depends on how easy it is to replicate, and if it is true. If it is easy (the 24 hour in the furnace is really long enough for everything to get to temperature - 10 minutes is enough in ideal cases) then we will get lots of success Tomorrow. If it is hard, well we will get a lot of failures, but a few will try again an in a month as they refine technique will report a success.

If it is false we may never get a final report, just everyone gives up on reproducing it. (though with the hype we may see it like cold fusion were a few not very good researchers keep it alive via badly done experiments).

Only time will tell.

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

#122

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…

I'm not a materials scientist but an electronics guy.

> 1b) shows the resistivity at some unknown temperature. They are applying current and measuring no potential drop. Just what? First, state the temperature, next measure it as a function of temperature. At the critical temperature the resistance drops to zero. All they have shown is that the contact inputting the current is probably disconnected…

this does not pass the sniff test for me. I explained on reddit myself why I think it doesn't make sense.

The only way that could work is if they just straight up fabricated everything, and in that case all bets are off.

I can't comment about the others since I don't know enough about it. Considering 1b) makes no sense with a modicum of knowledge, I really doubt the veracity of the rest.

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

#123
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RoHS has a number of exceptions. Ambient temp/pressure superconductivity will absolutely be excepted too.

Nope, sorry. The EU is probably just gonna pass on RT superconductors. /s

See? Brexit was a good idea after all ;)

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

#124
post #57

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…

I remember being interested enough to suspend disbelief for a little while with rossi's e-cat: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Catalyzer nothing happened, of course, but the idea of an elegant energy source was so seductive.

The experiments with the e-cat were measuring temperatures and estimating heat flow of the hot air flowing arround the device. That's too difficult to do acurately.

If you see a report of a groundbreaking experiment that only measure the heat of the air, you can safely press the "meh" button.

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

#125
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)!

That video reminds me of the way pyrolytic graphite floats on strong magnets. https://scitoys.com/scitoys/scitoys/magnets/pyrolytic_graphi... https://youtu.be/Wk3seHNmNs8

Yep, that’s strong diamagnetism.

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

#126

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?

Here's a few from the top of my head: - A global power net. No solar power during the night? Just produce it on the other side of the planet. - A superconducting computer. Less resistance when pushing bits around = 500x less power consumption. - A Superconducting magnetic battery. Store power indefinitely with high efficiency.

Wouldn't less power loss not just mean lower power consumption, but the ability to run it at higher speeds while keeping the same cooling technology we current have?

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

#127
I’m reminded of the paper, just over 10 years ago, that reporting measuring neutrinos travelling faster than the speed of light.

When published, the authors made it clear: this is probably wrong, but we can’t see where we made a mistake … so what if we’re right and just upended relativity theory?

That was turned out to be a measuring error [1]. This one may be the same, though the lead authors publishing two versions of the paper - one with only 3 names, ostensibly because the Nobel Prize can only be awarded to a maximum of 3 people - suggests less modesty and vulnerability on their behalf.

I hope they’re right though!

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2012.10099

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

#128

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.

??

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

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A classic Freudian clip.
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