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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

#371

Post by marcosdumay »

echelon wrote: post #292
Ajedi32 wrote: post #274

Whether 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.

The social event is similar. But the experiment is nothing alike.

The EmDrive was hard to replicate because it was a tiny reported signal in an ocean of noise.

Re: LK-99: The live online race for a room-temperature superconductor

#372

Post by supazek »

ajuc wrote: post #211
alchemist1e9 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t observe a frequent knee jerk like anti-markets reaction from comments across HN? What are good examples of their “disbenefits”?

Child labor. Slave trade. Sweatshops. 1000 different environmental catastrophes. You know, the reasons we have regulation. We had markets FIRST, then we got regulation on top of that, and we never looked back.

Child labor has been a thing since well before any market ever existed. Slavery has always existed and was made obsolete not due to some new moral prerogative but because it couldn’t compete with new labor saving devices. Sweatshops are basically the same as slavery and mostly exist in places which have not fully accepted free markets or where the value placed on human life is shockingly low. They can only obtain workers because their economy is absolutely unbalanced - there is no reason to believe a market wouldn’t fix that eventually. Regarding environmental catastrophes, that seems to be a result of technological advancement more so than “markets”, but markets are the thing that is most probably going to bring the third world out of poverty and make them actually care about it.

The only reason people like us are able to sit and argue on HN is because we aren’t worried about finding dinner for our 8 kids tonight. We live privileged lives. By demonizing the very thing that allowed us to move past these things you are basically attempting to pull up the ladder so no other unfortunate people can come up after you

Re: LK-99: The live online race for a room-temperature superconductor

#373

Post by jacquesm »

alchemist1e9 wrote: post #254
RedCondor wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All so-called "capital returns" are in reality produced by working people, and therefore people get to democratically decide what they do with them, through whatever decision-making forms they politically choose and consent to organize themselves under. Insofar as there are disagreements, because capitalist "geniuses" don't think their riches should be subject to democracy, we have a struggle between socialism and ca…

Except history shows us that in 100% of the cases that working people seize the production and allocate the gains they do a unbelievable bad job. Socialism is the single most failed idea in human history, yet we refuse to properly teach that in our education system. I suspect in the future it will be view a bit like refusing to teach other scientific subjects, like evolution. In reality a mob of people end up produci…

> Socialism is the single most failed idea in human history, yet we refuse to properly teach that in our education system.

Well... let's see until we have the capitalist end game before we draw that conclusion, there is a fair chance that it will make the failures of socialism look like a picnic.

> I suspect in the future it will be view a bit like refusing to teach other scientific subjects, like evolution.

Economic systems aren't science, they are just means of organizing large numbers of people in ways that are hopefully sensible. A system that maximizes for growth can work, for a while, but isn't long term sustainable. So depending on your horizon you may think it is a great idea or a terrible one. Markets aren't bad per-se, but they have the potential to lead to catastrophe and if you don't acknowledge that potential and deal with the risk then the chances of it happening increase.

Re: LK-99: The live online race for a room-temperature superconductor

#374

Post by Regnore »

MLH6ft1 wrote: post #98
tinco wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're producing the wisdom of the crowd, which is a real and highly accurate piece of information. It's quite difficult and expensive to produce information as fast and reliable by other means. And they don't cost much, it's mostly money being moved around. edit: I interpreted it as asking wether prediction markets in general produce value. In this specific case I'm 100% with you, they're absolutely useless in pred…

"They're producing the wisdom of the crowd" Yeah we saw how wise was the crowd's wisdom with crypto.

This is correct - the overwhelming majority of people did not get involved with crypto. Even for people and companies who did most put a fraction of their money into it.

Re: LK-99: The live online race for a room-temperature superconductor

#375

Post by zarzavat »

echelon wrote: post #286
DrBazza wrote: post #144

I'm resigned to disappointment for this. It's the modern days Pons and Fleischmann. Hopefully the lack of confirmation so far is due to people checking, double checking and triple checking, along with a healthy dose of "we don't want to be tarred with the same brush".

Reminds me of EmDrive. That was such a tease and then utter disappointment. Hope LK-99 doesn't go the same way.

The similarities are only superficial. A reactionless drive would violate the most fundamental physical laws.

Whereas room temperature/pressure superconductors are not believed to violate any physical law. If you asked “Will we find such a material this century?”, the answer would be a solid maybe. Which end of the century, who knows.

It’s more like proofs of the Riemann Hypothesis. Most mathematicians believe that RH is probably true, or at least hope so, but any claimed proof is viewed with extreme suspicion merely because of the sheer number of false ones.

Re: LK-99: The live online race for a room-temperature superconductor

#376

Post by bhouston »

bananapub wrote: post #300
bhouston wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

what are you talking about? the authors haven't given anyone a sample to inspect, so every other solid state physics lab in the world is instead trying to follow the notional recipe and test their own sample.

> the authors haven't given anyone a sample to inspect

Why not? It would help their case immensely, especially if replication is tricky.

Re: LK-99: The live online race for a room-temperature superconductor

#377

Post by jjk166 »

Lewton wrote: post #347
jjk166 wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Validation proves that the material exists, it doesn't prove that the specified process creates the material. A few samples are worthless if no one actually knows how to make more.

> A few samples are worthless if no one actually knows how to make more. If the samples are actual RTSC, knowing that such a thing can actually exist is pretty far from worthless

Researchers were already working under the assumption such a thing can actually exist.

Re: LK-99: The live online race for a room-temperature superconductor

#378

Post by jacquesm »

oneshtein wrote: post #160
tomrod wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aye, it produces neutron isotopes, but not at room temperature and not with a net excess of energy. It's the difference between going on a Sunday walk and a Monday commute. Yes, technically, your body is physically moving places, but the similarities don't extend much beyond that point nor would we encourage mistaking one for the other.

35 thousand Kelvin in a "cold" nuclear fusion reactor is much closer to room temperature than the temperature in a "hot" nuclear fusion reactor. Both types of reactors do not produce excess energy, but the cold reactor has already found application while the hot reactor will be ready in 25 years. Which kind of reactor is hoax?

The cold reactor fuses nuclei by virtue of energy input, the other tries to extract energy from a fusion reaction larger than its input. On a complexity level you're looking at 1:10000 difference or worse.

Re: LK-99: The live online race for a room-temperature superconductor

#379

Post by adad95 »

echelon wrote: post #292
Ajedi32 wrote: post #274

Whether 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.

I already completed forgotten about EMDrive.

Re: LK-99: The live online race for a room-temperature superconductor

#380

Post by ChemSpider »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #308
Hakkin wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That is exactly my guess. I have been in the lab, and I know how easy it is to see something because you desperately want to see it...
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