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

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

#301

Post by jacquesm »

overnight5349 wrote: post #260
bradhoffman wrote: post #5

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.

Portable MRI would be a huge deal. We'd also see superconducting motors in electric vehicles, along with marked efficiency gains in every part of EV systems. We could have a superconducting power grid with solar panels distributed across the planet. Superconducting batteries could give us grid level storage. It also reduces the cost of hypothetical fusion reactors, their magnets can be cooled with unpressurized water…

Those won't happen with the current magnetic field limitations. Ironically, this is the thing that makes me believe them more rather than less: it is plausible that if you find a material that is superconducting at room temperature that it isn't right away going to be ideal in every other respect, and it would have been very easy to fake that one too.

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

#302

Post by elisbce »

History always repeats itself. Anytime a potential groundbreaking result is announced with one or some of the following characteristics, more likely than not something fishy or problematic ensues.

1. Paper submitted hastily without all authors in agreement or even knowing. (Check, two separate papers were submitted with collaborators in the US missing in one paper)

2. Not all due diligence and checks were done, e.g. missing tests or providing half-assed "proofs". (Check, missing phase transition results, provided video proof for superconductivity shows imperfect samples and diamagnetism, no full levitation, no pinning effect in superconductivity. You would imagine they could have made good samples instead of broken ones and completed all necessary tests since the material was obtained at least 3 years ago)

So in all, they seem to be rushing to conclusions and public fame than being cautious and scientific.

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

#303

Post by GolfPopper »

scarmig wrote: post #280
faraggi wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if one lab *does* succeed, it means there probably is something of substance.

Cold fusion also replicated across multiple labs, before they all retracted shortly after.

My memory is fuzzy, but my recollection is that Pons & Fleischmann's non-discovery involved unclear "waste heat" measurements, and a setup that wasn't well described, making it difficult for other researchers to duplicate. That would seem to contrast with Sukbae Lee, Ji-Hoon Kim, and Young-Wan Kwon's work, where everything suggests they've provided a readily replicable description of the material and process, and the evidence (magnetic levitation) is going to be pretty obvious.

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

#304

Post by btilly »

paulddraper wrote: post #299
smallnamespace wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One lab is definitely not adequate. Replication attempts don't give you an unambiguous signal, many things can go wrong. If one lab hasn't succeeded in replicating the paper, does that mean the paper is wrong, or just that a necessary step wasn't documented clearly or followed correctly? More labs trying to replicate give you more independent signals.

Depends on the finding. Getting a false negative from a lab is plausible. Getting a false positive seems very unlikely.

Cold fusion got several false positives very quickly.

And if this is a diamagnetic that seems to do some of the right behavior, a false positive is quite possible here as well.

Hopefully all corrected in time.

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

#305

Post by [deleted] »

jncfhnb wrote: post #239
slashdev wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the most important thing is it proves it can be done. At one point it was thought impossible to run a 4 minute mile. There were all kinds of scientific sounding explanations why it just couldn’t be done. Then someone did it. Shortly after that, lots of people did it, because now people knew it was possible. If this is for real, it proves it can be done. Tons of money, work, and innovation will follow once peo…

I’ve heard this repeated. I vaguely recall it at least being a point of discussion in the novel Misery. But… that seems like such a stupid idea. What evidence could they possibly have suggested?

[deleted]

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

#306

Post by fizx »

scarmig wrote: post #201
techdragon wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yup. Also tickles me that I might have had better equipment than this team, though we still had to source sample carriers from McDonalds.

The multi-million-dollar measurement apparatus required us to put samples in disposable tubes that cost about a dollar each. They turned out to have the exact same physical properties as a McDonalds straw, so once a week someone made a food run and grabbed a handful on the way out.

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

#307

Post by 11101010001100 »

giarc wrote: post #242
foven wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Glad to see a realistic take on HN. Endlessly frustrating to see people be like "this will be replicated in days". Yeah, sure, let every other lab just drop what they're doing, order all the reagents on express, do a thorough characterization making sure they understand the impurities and crystal phase, then perform good airtight measurements in a couple days. Crystal growth always has complications many times outsid…

>Glad to see a realistic take on HN. From an account created 1 hour ago, claiming to have worked with the author. Take with a huge grain of salt.

Yes, this is the internet.

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

#308

Post by magicalhippo »

timerol wrote: post #204
MobiusHorizons wrote: post #200

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…

In superconducting magnets, this sudden loss of superconductivity is called a quench[1] and can be destructive. The LHC recently suffered from this, discussed here[2], and is undergoing repairs.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_magnet#Magnet_...

[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36811018

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

#310

Post by 11101010001100 »

lamontcg wrote: post #266
ncann wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the authors are disciples of a professor specialized in superconductor, their own Master and PhD were about superconductor, then they created a lab/company specifically for researching superconductor. This is contrary to my earlier belief that they were just normal chemists/physicists that happened to stumble upon an interesting material. Unless they're lying through their teeth, it's hard to believe they would no…

https://twitter.com/8teapi/status/1684571913908293633 Lee was stuck as an adjunct professor for 19 years. Kim thinks that physicists all have their head up their ass and he knows the shortcut to discovering superconductivity. And nature wouldn't publish their paper. Combined with their inability to accurately measure Tc and a lot of skepticism already out there that their graphs show what they say they do this looks…

He didn't say anything about a shortcut. He said trial and error.
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