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Room temperature, ambient pressure superconductivity – this time for real?

scanalyst.fourmilab.ch

201–210 of 362 posts

Re: Room temperature, ambient pressure superconductivity – this time for real?

#201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love the colorful play-by-play. It could almost be a kdrama. It's also kind of crazy that one of the authors did over 1000 experiments until he found LK-99, regardless of whether it checks out. Talk about a grind mindset.

Material science can be like that … you’re pretty sure your theory works and your results don’t wildly invalidate it, but they aren’t good enough or are missing a property or something… and it turns out you could very easily have made a bad batch, poorly aligned fibers, badly mixed epoxy, or any number of possible issues… so you try again and again to get it right… sometimes it’s for very little incremental progress…

In undergrad, I spent countless hours with a mortar and pestle, sintering, and annealing to research a particular superconductor, never getting much sleep because I had to wake up every couple hours to make sure nothing had gone awry... It tickles me that they were doing the same thing. Hoping that they get the big win here, for all of our sakes.

Re: Room temperature, ambient pressure superconductivity – this time for real?

#202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While these are all cool applications, I can perfectly see them used in the most awful dystopian world imaginable.

I can't remember the last time a new technology became widely available that wasn't somehow used against us. There's always a catch. New products are often designed to work on behalf of people other than the "owner", and often are designed to prevent the "owner" from being able to do what they want with the product.

[deleted]

Re: Room temperature, ambient pressure superconductivity – this time for real?

#203

I am going to attempt to address the common nitpicks in one fell swoop: 1. Rushed publication, plot quality, grammar, etc. Get over yourselves. This is a pre-print for an instant-Nobel, next-tier-of-civilization level discovery. The proper publication will come in due time. Waiting for a more complete verification is a sheltered view. Being first matters. Things changed after the J/Psi discovery in 1974. For those th…

If it's real, the paper could be written in crayon on a strip club napkin.

Hoping it's real... but it doesn't seem like the substance is anything nearly exotic enough. Isn't this somehow supposed to be unobtanium?

Re: Room temperature, ambient pressure superconductivity – this time for real?

#204

Can someone help me understand what it means for a superconductor (which should have zero resistance) to have such a low current capacity? Does this mean it's possible to have a voltage drop across the superconductor? Does that voltage drop somehow not result in power dissipation? Is it something like capacitive or inductive reactance?

Superconductors aren't always superconducting. There is a set of circumstances in which superconduction happens. If the current is below this limit, voltage is 0. If current is above this limit, then voltage is more accurately predicted from bulk resistivity numbers. This image is on it's side from a normal I-V curve, but accurately describes the relationship: https://i.stack.imgur.com/5Irds.jpg. At Ic the material stops superconducting.

Note that there are temperature and magnetic field effects on the value of Ic, which in every other currently-known material is 0 at 300 K.

Re: Room temperature, ambient pressure superconductivity – this time for real?

#205
post #7

Just for fun: Am I the only one who thinks there's connection between this and the UAP news that's coming out? RTSC would probably enable a lot of incredible energy & maneuverability capabilities... Sorry, indulging in a little off-topic conspiracy theorizing.

We've known about superconductivity since 1911. For the sake of argument that Mussolini's UFO showed the way to "better" implementations of superconductivity, it wouldn't have taken this long if someone wanted to gradually leak it out, so I do think we did this all on our own.

UNLESS they were leaking it out with careful timing, using a proxy lab!

Sorry sorry I know conspiracy theories are a rabbit hole of 'but what if' but damnit I WANT TO BE GEORGE JETSON!

Re: Room temperature, ambient pressure superconductivity – this time for real?

#206

Can someone explain why this is a big deal? The author cites that it doesn't need an explanation, but I definitely need one lol.

Could make cheap MRI and maglev trains, high-density electronics, quantum computers, fusion power, and many other potential applications.

Re: Room temperature, ambient pressure superconductivity – this time for real?

#207
post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a week there will be a lot of thinkpieces on how the internet got this so wrong. A lot of people just want to believe, full of hope, because their life situations (poverty, housing crisis, hot weather) are so dire.

As far as HN's discussion goes, I'd say the community has been getting it right. The conversation has been curious and substantive, everyone knows it's probably not true, but most are not making shallow dismissals. There's a shared sense of waiting for the replications to succeed or fail, and in the meantime, discussion of the details as well as what the impact would be if it does turn out. Also driving interest is t…

Dang, Dang. Well said.

I enjoy HN most in times like this.

Re: Room temperature, ambient pressure superconductivity – this time for real?

#208
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conduct electricity with zero resistance. This has been possible at cryogenic temperatures (powers supermagnets, MRI etc) but running at room temperature _and pressure_ means in theory that you don’t need expensive support machinery. Has been the holy grail for the field. If true, this specific case is only low current, but demonstrates such a thing is possible - almost certainly winning an instant Nobel Prize.

Does this mean there would be no heat waste? And devices like phones and computers wouldn't get hot?

One of the biggest use cases (for superconductors that meet their requirements) would be long distance power transmission, where as much as 30% of the power is lost over long distances.

Essentially, (and very top level) you could produce 30% more power, without adding any more production capactity.

Re: Room temperature, ambient pressure superconductivity – this time for real?

#209
post #182

The Wikipedia article on LK-99 now references a Korean source claiming that this was submitted to Nature in 2020 but that the paper was rejected.

From other comment in this thread.

synapsomorphy 4 minutes ago | prev | next [–]

The lead author says (translated): “In 2020, I submitted my research results to Nature for the first time, but Nature felt burdened about publishing the paper because of Professor Dias’ case, and asked for it to be published in other professional journals first.”

https://n.news.naver.com/article/366/0000920152

Re: Room temperature, ambient pressure superconductivity – this time for real?

#210

Can someone explain why this is a big deal? The author cites that it doesn't need an explanation, but I definitely need one lol.

I asked a similar question and got the answer that we could technically put a ton of solar panels in the Sahara and use this new material to transmit that power to anywhere in the world (without losing any power). Currently you couldn't do that since transmission lines lose power over distance.
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