Currently, Cold Fusion used in small scale isotope breeders for medical purposes. One 2kWt breeder with CF can replace 100kWt traditional breeding plant.
LK-99: The live online race for a room-temperature superconductor
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Re: LK-99: The live online race for a room-temperature superconductor
#32Saw some people hyping up markets where people are betting on prediction markets whether or not LK-99 will replicate. Can't help but feel like that money would be better spent just paying off some labs to actually try to replicate the process. The response I got from a predictions market enthusiast was that having a sufficiently large market would motivate people to attempt to have the process replicated and buy opti…
Just making a bet does not really spend the money, it will just change hands, presumably from the less informed to the more informed, who should be able to eventually spend it more wisely. As far as forcing the outcome, if it turns out to be possible, but the market got it all wrong, there is your incentive to give it a shot regardless.
Re: LK-99: The live online race for a room-temperature superconductor
#33tldr; no successful experiment outside original labs reproduces the results. Fingers crossed...
OTOH only one lab announced a failure and they say they haven't followed the recipe.
Fingers crossed...
Re: LK-99: The live online race for a room-temperature superconductor
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
Assuming LK99 is legitimate, my hope is that the principles that make it work are more broadly applicable - and with that, refined production processes or newer alloys can be found. Simply knowing that it's possible would lead to a huge amount of research immediately focusing on this kind of thing. There's nothing more revolutionary than a discovery of a new class of materials. After all, we often name eras throughou…
> There's nothing more revolutionary than a discovery of a new class of materials. After all, we often name eras throughout our history after them :) (Stone age, etc) I wonder what was involved in the discovery of stone.
There are many different types of stones, and techniques for shaping them became progressively more sophisticated over time.
With instruction, it would probably take you less than an hour to learn how to make the types of simple chopping stones that human ancestors used 1 million years ago. However, it takes much more considerable time and skill to learn how to make the types of stone tools humans were using 100k years ago. You get the sense that each group of ancient humans probably had an old expert toolmaker who passed on the trade to the next generation.
Re: LK-99: The live online race for a room-temperature superconductor
#35Re: LK-99: The live online race for a room-temperature superconductor
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's also difficult to synthesize in bulk Is there any hard limitation that prevents synthesizing in bulk? If not, I would not worry about this at the moment and if it proves to be a material with desirable properties just leave it up to the engineers who will hopefully find a suitable production process.
There’s not really such a thing as superconductivity for a fine powder, so people are having trouble determining if this material even superconducts. edit to clarify: Bulk here refers to having a single chunk of the material, and does not refer to the total quantity. Some physical properties only exist or only surface in chunks of material, not in the powder form.
Conversely, the tape-type high temperature superconductors are generally made with a colloidal deposition process - which is based on a powder as a starter material.
Assuming this is real, that would be the obvious process by which to try and build useful conductors and magnets - it also suggests a refinement process (passing it over a magnet would quantum lock superconducting grains and let the rest slide off).
Re: LK-99: The live online race for a room-temperature superconductor
#37Currently, Cold Fusion used in small scale isotope breeders for medical purposes. One 2kWt breeder with CF can replace 100kWt traditional breeding plant.
Cite please. I think you've mistaken neutron feed sourced medical imaging radionuclide from low energy research reactions for cold fusion e.g. https://www.itnonline.com/content/fda-approves-additional-mo...
NorthStar produces non-uranium based Mo-99 in collaboration with its manufacturing partner, the University of Missouri Research Reactor (MURR), in Columbia, Mo., using neutron capture technology.
Re: LK-99: The live online race for a room-temperature superconductor
#38It is interesting to see how much of the replication is done by the Chinese and how little is done by the Western countries. Is this the difference between the making-stuff-happen attitude and the sclerotic attitude?
Re: LK-99: The live online race for a room-temperature superconductor
#39Could this be the new 4 minute mile? Will [humanity] evacuate on ourselves? Whatever this may be, it’s exciting.
I've seen the 4 minute mile myth posted a lot around LK-99 stories:
https://www.scienceofrunning.com/2017/05/the-roger-bannister...
Re: LK-99: The live online race for a room-temperature superconductor
#40Iris Alexandra's twitter is especially enthralling. Seems like so much discoveries and innovation happens from computer science to physics, chemistry and biology all from people with anime profile pictures.
There's a certain subset of people on the intersection of high IQ, high-functioning ASD and LGBT that produces a lot of high impact activity in STEM fields.
Well I mean at this point, if I think I'm sitting on a big discovery the first thing I'm doing is changing my avatar to an anime one.