Please can someone explain this to me ?
LK-99: The live online race for a room-temperature superconductor
301–310 of 659 posts
Re: LK-99: The live online race for a room-temperature superconductor
#302Isn't it sufficient to have another lab confirm that the existing sample is a super conductor? Then we can all sprint to replication.
Yeah, having another lab confirm the behavior and makeup of that sample would go a long way. I wonder why that isn’t happening? Does anyone have an explanation on why no one is examining/validating the sample they already have?
>I wonder why that isn’t happening?
Because it's been ~10 days since it was announced in a preprint article.
The complexity and resources involved are much higher than "building websites with React", so, things happen on a different timescale.
Re: LK-99: The live online race for a room-temperature superconductor
#303Whether or not this turns out to be real the whole incident has been extremely entertaining, way more than I would have expected. Replication attempts being documented in real time on Twitter and livestreamed on Twitch, news about infighting and drama among the researchers who published the paper, constant fluxations in the betting markets as new news comes out. It's been a wild ride.
It's a lot like the EmDrive incident, except replication attempts are easier. Both are strange discoveries that are poised to change the world as we know it. Hopefully this one turns out, unlike the EmDrive.
EmDrive was supposed to work better with Superconductors!
Re: LK-99: The live online race for a room-temperature superconductor
#304So, Russian anime cat girl seems to have cooked a sample and demonstrated some of the claimed properties, although she's explicit that it shouldn't be considered a "replication". https://twitter.com/iris_IGB/status/1685731177523449856
The "demonstration" is a photo of a single crumb of material inside a transparent pipette. It's claimed that the crumb is "levitating" inside the pipette, but what's stopping a random internet anon from gluing a crumb onto a pipette and taking a picture of it? I don't know about you, but if I had just succeeded in replicating a literally history-making experiment, I would perhaps take a video of it, and demonstrate h…
>but what's stopping a random internet anon from gluing a crumb onto a pipette and taking a picture of it?
Nothing, just like nothing would stop a random internet anon from faking a video of the same thing. Even if that existed, it still wouldn't be sufficient evidence (especially given this is a different synthesis than the one in the paper), it would just be much more overblown.
Wait for lab reconstructions, or at the very least, this anon's writeup, instead of following a live twitter blog and then complaining that it's not conclusive.
>I don't do videos of things I intend to be writing a text from. Ever. It's bad tone. I hate when it happens to me, and I don't want anyone to share this fate. >I will put a GdPO4 bead and one of the good samples onto paper ships and film >But it will be only After I will be sure I Got It, okay?
Re: LK-99: The live online race for a room-temperature superconductor
#305Earlier quoted context omitted.
This type of instictive negative reaction to prediction markets is, unfortunately, common, but, I think, misguided. Prediction markets are one of the (or just, the?) best ways of aggregating knowledge from multiple sources and producing the best predictions. Having good legible predictions of impactful events such as LK-99 replication is extremely useful for society - it would be an invaluable input for a savvy polic…
How about this scenario: I am the PI of a laboratory. I buy up the market and (falsely) announce that I succeeded in replication. Sell and make profit. Then a couple of days later I announce that I made a terrible mistake. How do you prevent this scenario? I did nothing illegal, I just "not noticed the mistake I made".
This is illegal btw.
Re: LK-99: The live online race for a room-temperature superconductor
#306Earlier quoted context omitted.
This type of instictive negative reaction to prediction markets is, unfortunately, common, but, I think, misguided. Prediction markets are one of the (or just, the?) best ways of aggregating knowledge from multiple sources and producing the best predictions. Having good legible predictions of impactful events such as LK-99 replication is extremely useful for society - it would be an invaluable input for a savvy polic…
Absolutely and people might be interested that in this case the prediction market for LK-99 is reacting in real time to new tweets from people trying to replicate. The “yes” spike to 32c yesterday was in response to a twitter account posting an image of a levitating grain in a tube. The credibility of that replication attempt was then evaluated by many and the market backed off afterwards. There is always a subtle an…
Re: nuclear weapon detonation, the implied probability of 9% (I take it source is: https://polymarket.com/event/will-a-nuclear-weapon-detonate-...) might be factoring in the premium for the insurance that participants that predict a detonation are interested in acquiring.
Let's say that the real odds of detonation are 1% and that everyone participating in the market knows and agrees to this. You would expect the implied probability that the market produces to be 1%.
But in practice, a nuclear detonation would be a highly disruptive event where the impact is hard to assess. This creates an asymmetry of interests. If you want to protect yourself financially from such an event, you would pay a premium for it (which in a prediction market implies placing a higher bet on "detonation will happen" than a perfect gambler). If you want to protect yourself from the event _not_ happening, you would also do the same, but no one really does that other than speculators.
Similarly, you can sell tornado insurance to a lot of people, but very few people are interested in insuring that a tornado _will_ happen (maybe concrete bunker architect studios?). So the underlying prediction market would skew towards overestimating the likelihood of tornados.
Re: LK-99: The live online race for a room-temperature superconductor
#307Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed. Stock markets are very similar to prediction markets. They are priced based on future projections, technical feasibility and probability of achieving certain milestone, ability to reach market first, internal and external factors, etc. I don't see much difference between a prediction market and a stock market. Theoretically, we could allow both of them and treat them similar. But one major risk I see is that…
"attempt to have the process replicated and buy options on the outcome once they confirm their findings in" This is called insider trading in stock markets and illegal. So your analogy breaks.
If some company claims to have discovered a way to make widget X and I make widget X at home and trade on that information, that’s completely legal.
Re: LK-99: The live online race for a room-temperature superconductor
#308I am surprised that anyone still thinks this thing is legit. I mean, I wish it was true, but the publication, the approach and the infights in the team do not instill confidence. To me, it seems they can not recreate the "effect" themselves. Otherwise they would be shipping their samples around the world by now.
I'm not necessarily saying I believe it's real, I'm still on the fence, but if anything, the in-fighting for credit from the researchers almost makes it more credible for me. Why would they be so desperate for credit if they knew their findings would be disproven in a week or two? It seems obvious they're vying for a Nobel Prize. So at the very least, I believe the researchers believe what they published is true.
Could well be experimental error, and they are fighting over a false positive result.
Re: LK-99: The live online race for a room-temperature superconductor
#309Whether or not this turns out to be real the whole incident has been extremely entertaining, way more than I would have expected. Replication attempts being documented in real time on Twitter and livestreamed on Twitch, news about infighting and drama among the researchers who published the paper, constant fluxations in the betting markets as new news comes out. It's been a wild ride.
The neat thing is that -- whether or not LK-99 is a hoax -- the public will have engaged with real scientists doing real science in a rather personal capacity. It's novel and interesting to be able to tune into the materials science equivalent of live-coding.
Re: LK-99: The live online race for a room-temperature superconductor
#310Isn't it sufficient to have another lab confirm that the existing sample is a super conductor? Then we can all sprint to replication.
Do we know they haven’t? The published papers were rushed (due to rogue ex-team member publishing one unauthorized) and they maybe weren’t ready. I’ve heard a rumor a team from MIT has travelled to Korea. Who knows right now.
I've heard those rumours as well, and also heard rumours that a sample was sent to a Chinese group.