Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Origin of correlated isolated flat bands in LK99

arxiv.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 209 posts

Re: Origin of correlated isolated flat bands in LK99

#21

Post by npunt »

dtx1 wrote: post #3

Even if LK99 turns out to be a dud, it's proven that there's a great need and great opportunity for more direct communication from scientist on their experiments via the internet. Live Stream of the Synthesis, Twitter Threads giving life updates of different teams, etc.

Agree for sure, really love seeing the evidence and discussion in realtime as it shows us a better way to do worldwide science collaboration than traditional publishing. Really speaks to a need for a new medium specific to science's unique characteristics.

One caveat tho is that hype can also distort and there's a limited resource of 'the public's excitement with science' that depletes if it never delivers, so I wouldn't necessarily couple science education/comms with science process so tightly. Most science is lots and lots of boring toil, and I'd hope the $$s flow to the best scientists rather than the ones who tell the most twitter-friendly stories.

Re: Origin of correlated isolated flat bands in LK99

#22

Post by abtinf »

justrealist wrote: post #15

I really hope this unlocks a class of superconductors and isn't a bizarre oneoff compound, because the EPA of 2023 is not going to let us wire the country with thousands of miles of lead-based ceramic wire.

If this material works out and EPA takes that stance, it will be the end of EPA. So they won’t take that stance.

Re: Origin of correlated isolated flat bands in LK99

#23

Post by cubefox »

It's funny to read all those grammatical mistakes in the abstract. They are probably just not native English speakers, but to me it sounds like they were frantically typing the paper as soon as they finally got results after a 20 hour lab marathon and way too much caffeine. :D

Re: Origin of correlated isolated flat bands in LK99

#25

Post by jacquesm »

m3kw9 wrote: post #11
caesil wrote: post #7

Out of curiosity, since this seems like a real inflection point toward trending in that direction, if it becomes increasingly likely that LK-99 or similar material is indeed a high-TC superconductor, what will savvy people be positioning themselves to do? What are good investments? What companies will be started, or what will existing companies be pivoting toward?

Depends if this can scale, and can withstand environments and carry enough current density etc. If it’s brittle as f, then it limits its applications for example.

That's not that important. What is important is that if it is true that this is the first member of a new class of superconductors, a whole new family if you will and that once the principles are better understood materials scientists can go about their search in a smaller parameter space of which they have proof that at least one set yields results.

Compared to the steps that have been happening in the last decades this one would be absolutely incredible in terms of temperature range, if I understood it correctly they aren't even sure about the upper limit due to a restriction in their measuring gear.

Re: Origin of correlated isolated flat bands in LK99

#26

Post by losteric »

caesil wrote: post #7

Out of curiosity, since this seems like a real inflection point toward trending in that direction, if it becomes increasingly likely that LK-99 or similar material is indeed a high-TC superconductor, what will savvy people be positioning themselves to do? What are good investments? What companies will be started, or what will existing companies be pivoting toward?

Posting for Cunningham's law :)

* Green energy suddenly becomes way more viable. Megaprojects in the most efficient sites can send energy long-distance and store it with effectively no loss, somewhat mitigating regional variations (especially if we have a high-trust world order where a united global grid is viable). (I read LK99 might have some limitations carrying lots of current but presumably other approaches would do better)

* EVs: improved performance of motors, batteries, charge time, and weight - huge shift for the market. Much safer than most current car batteries too.

* Big breakthrough for computing in the form of fast, cool, and efficient zero-resistance transistors. Step change for cutting-edge component performance, all the cloud hyperscalers would completely revamp their compute. TSMC / ASML probably get huge volumes of new orders.

Obviously the first bet is following the patents. Otherwise, my play would be the industrial companies that build things that build things, like factory automation companies, followed by companies that would see a surge in demand from products incorporating room-temp superconductor technology, like TSMC, ASML (maybe Apple/AWS).

Re: Origin of correlated isolated flat bands in LK99

#28

Post by wilg »

mrandish wrote: post #6
dtx1 wrote: post #3

Even if LK99 turns out to be a dud, it's proven that there's a great need and great opportunity for more direct communication from scientist on their experiments via the internet. Live Stream of the Synthesis, Twitter Threads giving life updates of different teams, etc.

I fully agree that the traditional journal and academic publishing models are having significant negative impact on the conduct of science. I also really like that the Arxiv, open access publishing, open peer review, live science and similar new models represent a refreshing return to less gatekeeping, politics and institutional gamesmanship. Based on the early successes shown by applying social media platforms like…

I've always felt I love the idea of arXiv as a non-scientist who is interested in following science, but it's so esoteric and hard to follow (the density and format of scientific papers does not help). I would love something that was half arXiv and half-Twitter, and if papers were natively written for the web in an elegant and cross-linked way with rich explanations of related topics, interactive graphs with linked datasets, video, jargon explanations, etc.

Re: Origin of correlated isolated flat bands in LK99

#29

Post by [deleted] »

caesil wrote: post #7

Out of curiosity, since this seems like a real inflection point toward trending in that direction, if it becomes increasingly likely that LK-99 or similar material is indeed a high-TC superconductor, what will savvy people be positioning themselves to do? What are good investments? What companies will be started, or what will existing companies be pivoting toward?

[deleted]

Re: Origin of correlated isolated flat bands in LK99

#30

Post by bibabaloo »

raziel2701 wrote: post #10

Man, I'm feeling stronger about LK-99 being it. This paper is theoretical and she finds that particular Cu substitutions onto specific Pb atomic sites are key to enabling a band structure that is usually linked to high Tc superconductors. What this means for the more practical minded is that the synthesis of superconducting LK-99 is not trivial and you need to make the appropriate substitutional alloy for this to wor…

If this could be simulated, can you help me understand why we couldn't have used simulation to find promising SC materials to investigate further earlier? Are there just too many permutations to investigate?

It seems to my own naive self that if LK99 is the real deal, we mostly just got lucky finding it.

Post reply on HN