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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

#302

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?

I’m just thinking aloud here but would this enable actual perpetual motion machines? For instance, wouldn’t the pushback from the quantum locked superconductor be an infinite source of energy?

In the same way that the pushback from the earth you're standing on is an infinite source of energy

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

#303
post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t waste your time, it’ll be disproved 10 times before your reactants get delivered.

By whom, if no one orders the ingredients to run the tests?

Presumably there are some labs with a very large spice cabinet.

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

#304
post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's true that pyrolytic graphite does this, but it's also worth noting that pyrolytic graphite is one of a very few materials that has such a strong conventional diamagnetism: the list includes pyrolytic graphite and metallic bismuth and ends there. I have actually searched the literature for such materials on a few occasions simply because they seem like they would make a fun decoration, and PG (and "highly oriente…

Definitely. Discovering another material besides pyrolytic graphite that exhibits strong enough diamagnetism to levitate wouldn't get your name in the history books like room-temperature superconductivity would, but it would already be a major career-making discovery, with at least enough commercial value to launch a niche company. It would be very strange to tarnish your reputation with fraudulent, easily-refuted claims of superconductivity if you've already achieved such a breakthrough.

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

#305

Raise your hand if you contacted Aldritch about the two pre-cursor materials :-) This is an excellent summary and like Derek I have high hopes (but low expectations) that by the end of this week we'll see some tentative confirmation. This stuff isn't particularly hard (or expensive!) to make so that should really make for interesting news and some very fun products if it is proven out.

Do handle these carefully, powdered lead oxide is no joke!

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

#306

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…

https://www.kci.go.kr/kciportal/ci/sereArticleSearch/ciSereA...

This one's in Korean but there are some plots here that I think several people said were missing.

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

#307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s nothing unless it turns out to be something. 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 who…

LLMs were/are massively overhyped though. Like it’s not even close to the sort of transformation they promised. Neat tech yes, world-changing solution to all of our problems? Very hardly, unless a very significant effort is spent (and yet undiscovered tech invented) to eliminate all of its significant practical problems. Academics (and similarly venture startup founders) like to sort of jump to conclusions along the…

Its already overturned the entire art world.

1.2 years ago if you claimed that an AI will just come out and make artists mass panic you would be laughed at. Now art is somehow just 'solved'. Progress is continuous and massive from Midjourney v1 -> v5

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

#309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LLMs were/are massively overhyped though. Like it’s not even close to the sort of transformation they promised. Neat tech yes, world-changing solution to all of our problems? Very hardly, unless a very significant effort is spent (and yet undiscovered tech invented) to eliminate all of its significant practical problems. Academics (and similarly venture startup founders) like to sort of jump to conclusions along the…

Its already overturned the entire art world. 1.2 years ago if you claimed that an AI will just come out and make artists mass panic you would be laughed at. Now art is somehow just 'solved'. Progress is continuous and massive from Midjourney v1 -> v5

Well, that’s exactly what I’m talking about - new unproven tech that created more problems that it solved. It didn’t “solve” art since that is meaningless without a human artist. Instead, it stole popular concepts and is regurgitating it without any originality or thought put into it, and then used “instead” of real artistical works by those who don’t really understand art, but just need “content”.

In other words, merely copying/reproducing something is emphatically not art.

The same thing happened with traditional (painting) art and photography - the latter didn’t really replace it but just supplanted it in the areas where one wasn’t really looking for art but for mere reproduction of reality. And then over time, photography itself has evolved into art, since people have learned how to channel their inner self through it, and aimed at quality instead of “quantity” (and unlike the former, the latter by itself became trivial). I don’t see the same happening with generative models quite yet (heck, they didn’t really replace photography either!)

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

#310
Given the ingredients have known semiconducting properties one would think they'd run it through the wringer to expel any doubts as to its superconducting properties. 2DEGs and such at room temp are common, GaN transistors do it and they have well known temperature dependent resistance characteristics.

The semiconductor characterization people at any fab could really get to the bottom of this.

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