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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

#521

Post by tialaramex »

galangalalgol wrote: post #457
aydyn wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So they have a batch of the material as proof, but no idea how to exactly reproduce it? That would be a wild story if true.

Not that crazy. Steel was the same at first. Wild guess is that the dopant that creates wells doesn't always end up where it should. The paper that claimed superconductivity in layers of graphene at very particular angles also seems to be very sensitive. A similar one claimed graphene with alkanes was observed to superconduct. Perhapes whatever impure hydrocarbon they were using held the sheets at the perfect angle.…

No indeed. Lots of this in our history. You can't do most of electronics without semiconductors. But, if you have no idea what's going on you can make some rudimentary electronics experiments work - unreliably - without knowing that - e.g. the "Cat's whisker" crystal radio technology. The reason this actually works is because it's a semiconductor, but since you don't know what those are yet, you just know if you fiddle about with a fine wire and certain types of crystal, sometimes it does what you wanted, and if it doesn't keep fiddling with it until it does.

I'd imagine early history of sugar products is the same. Today you can precisely control the temperatures and so you can engineer getting exactly the desired products from sugar, but if you're not so good at either measuring or keeping careful control of temperature, you get... something. It's sugar so in most cases it's delicious anyway, but if you wanted fudge but you've made toffee you may be disappointed. With practice you can "eyeball" it without better equipment, like the cat's whisker, but with better equipment an idiot with no experience can make it do what they wanted because the numbers were correct.

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

#523

Post by psychphysic »

WaffleIronMaker wrote: post #25
ccity88 wrote: post #2

Iris 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.

Highlighting this tweet in particular: > Here's a chunk of pyrolytic graphite on the same magnet with the same stick. Even with less density and more surface normal to field.... It doesn't lift off. If it's diamagnetism it's a fucking absurdly strong one https://twitter.com/iris_IGB/status/1685804254718459904 Her findings, and suggestions of manufacturing process improvements, are very interesting.

Seems silly to compare to that absolute chunk of pyrplytic graphite. Shouldn't it be a similar size spec?

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

#524

Post by psychphysic »

FriedPickles wrote: post #515

Everybody's talking about reproducing the material which is great, but will take time. Why don't the authors supply their existing material to an independent lab for earlier confirmation?

If they really believe they have the only sample they won't let it out of their sight most likely.

It'll be superconducting tomorrow if it's really superconducting today.

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

#525

Post by r2_pilot »

kulahan wrote: post #401
TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #20

Saw 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…

I was absolutely certain I saw a photo of LK-99 floating over (partially, part of it was still touching) a magnet. Of course, this proves nothing as it's a photo, but I have this memory of seeing it, so maybe someone else saw it in some official capacity.

This is purported to be a video of what you saw a photo of: https://sciencecast.org/casts/suc384jly50n

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

#528

Post by dcow »

lolinder wrote: post #440
dcow wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but also why would they make it, publish a fake process and then go through all this rigamarole? This, from this subthread and directly from the comment I replied to, is what I was responding to. I don’t think I’ve missed some obvious point. I think you just misunderstood which topic I was responding to.

> > How do you know for sure that the existing sample was actually produced by the LK-99 process? > If the thing exists and someone can make it, the specific process doesn't matter (but also why would they make it, publish a fake process and then go through all this rigamarole?). You took one sentence out of context, reinterpreted it, then replied to your own reinterpretation. In the context of the full "if" sentence…

I didn't reinterpret anything and I don't think what you state as pretty clear is entirely clear to me (or I just didn't read into it as deeply). Anyway I simply responded with some reasons why one might publish a fake process and go through all the rigamarole. I probably should have quoted the sentence in my reply to avoid confusion.

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

#529

Post by someplaceguy »

macintux wrote: post #252
alchemist1e9 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The race to the bottom is all around us. You live in SF by chance? Because globally and historically that’s absolutely not what the data says about markets.

The “bottom” is also subjective. I see small-town grocery stores everywhere in Indiana dying due to cheap Dollar General stores popping up next to them. So much for fresh fruit & vegetables, so much for the Amish bakeries that would distribute baked goods through the local groceries. But hey, cheaply-made goods from China are more widely available.

Not every negative aspect of changes caused by a market-driven process is actually an indication that those changes are negative as a whole.

You should contemplate why the market caused resources to be allocated this way, instead of your preferred way, as usually the market allocates resources more efficiently than any single person could ever hope to achieve.

It may turn out that the negative changes you perceived are more than balanced by other positive changes that you weren't able to perceive. In your example, the lives ot Chinese people who benefitted from those changes may have improved a lot more than whatever setbacks you may have experienced. Or maybe people around you can now buy things they couldn't afford before.

That said, this is not always true, as markets don't take into account externalities.

But still, we don't know of any system of global resource allocation better than letting markets do their job while governments try to control their externalities.

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

#530

Post by marcosdumay »

dsign wrote: post #389

My two-cents from my armchair spaceship: I thought we had solved quantum mechanics! If this material is real, why can't somebody run a computer code and calculate its theoretical conductivity/resistance? Did I suffer all that childhood trauma with wave functions to now, in my forties, have to learn it was all smoke and mirrors?

Oh, Quantum mechanics is completely characterized. We have complete theoretical modeling of chemistry and most electric phenomenon.

But you just try solving the equations our models create.

A computer can certainly simulate this material, on the CS theoretical sense, where all computers are the same and time and memory are both infinite.

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