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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

#621

Post by semi-extrinsic »

dmitrybrant wrote: post #580
semi-extrinsic wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not that I agree with GP, but: Isaac Newton? Brian Josephson, certainly. Francis Crick. Werner Forssmann. Marie and Pierre Curie, the way they kept on working even when dying from radiation poisoning. Tycho Brahe (with the partying and the drunken pet elk). Pythagoras. Probably Paul Erdosz? And a good number of the people working on energetic materials research.

In what sense were any of them nut jobs? All of these were traditionally pedigreed scientists, doing groundbreaking research at their institutions, under their own names. I'm asking for a historical parallel of a researcher who published an earth-shattering result anonymously , from their home lab , in a field unrelated to their day job, on a random night off chilling and watching movies?

Ah, sorry for misunderstanding. I was thinking of traditional scientists who turned out to be partially crazy. The context here should have made me catch your logic better.

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

#622

Post by jacquesm »

oneshtein wrote: post #619
dang wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36940489 .

Why not to just shadow ban me again, but leave thread intact? Or cut it at one level up???

Because it is off-topic, wrong and distracting.

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

#623

Post by psychphysic »

CoastalCoder wrote: post #539
psychphysic wrote: post #524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Is that necessarily true? I'm 200% not a physicist, but it is possible that during transit, minor bumps / temperature changes / ionizing radiation / oscillating E-M fields could screw up the material in a way that matters?

I meant in the abstract sense. They seem to be able to make the stuff with albeit with a very poor yield.

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

#624

Post by jacquesm »

tialaramex wrote: post #521
galangalalgol wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fidd…

> you just know if you fiddle about with a fine wire and certain types of crystal,

Even an old rusty razor blade will work as a diode if you try hard and long enough.

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

#625

Post by Simon_O_Rourke »

m463 wrote: post #465
Simon_O_Rourke wrote: post #215

This is a race that I earnestly hope either someone wins quickly, or everyone loses... again rather quickly. For incredible claims you typically require incredible evidence, at the moment we're slightly better than hearsay but we've a long way to go get conclusive proof.

> everyone loses... again rather quickly that's the thing - if it is hard to manufacture and works maybe 1:10 tries, how can it lose quickly experimentally? In other words, what is a satisfactory proof that it doesn't work, apart from analyzing the original apparatus?

> that's the thing - if it is hard to manufacture and works maybe 1:10 tries, how can it lose quickly experimentally?

Simple, given enough (say > 3) fully accredited labs trying and failing to get a result with the published process, it's a fair conclusion to say that the results cannot be replicated.

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

#626

Post by jacquesm »

fbdab103 wrote: post #590
flamedoge wrote: post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More interesting that they found a way to work with poor quality iron

I have repeatedly read that Japan has poor quality iron, but what exactly does that mean? Iron is an element, so all of the reserves were in an unfortunate oxide requiring sophisticated refining? Just low total abundance?

Getting a pure ingot of iron is no simple task if you don't have access to a good furnace. So you'll end up with 'bad' (impure) iron if it doesn't come out of the ground in reasonably pure chunks.

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

#627

Post by oneshtein »

jacquesm wrote: post #427
oneshtein wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Temperature is statistics. Our bodies are penetrated by high-energy cosmic rays, but they do not change the room temperature. Cosmic muons can accelerate tens of thousands of nuclear fusion reactions in a deuterium-filled lattice, melting the metal, but it does not change the room temperature a lot. So, at what temperature do these reactions occur? On one hand, high energies are required to overcome the Coulomb barri…

> Temperature is statistics. Temperature is a measure of the kinetic energy of the molecules in a substance, a measure of velocity. > Our bodies are penetrated by high-energy cosmic rays, but they do not change the room temperature. They in fact do. Every time a high-energy cosmic ray interacts with a particle in the room the room temperature goes up. The chances of that happening are small because from the perspecti…

This doesn't looks like a healthy discussion. I will reply to healthy bits only.

> That's a novel interpretation of the words 'cold fusion', and uses 'low temperature' in a way that I'm not comfortable with, even if it stops short of getting into the millions of degrees.

I'm aware that many scientist are interpreting cold fusion as «room temperature nuclear reactions», then immediately discard the baby with the bath. It takes lot of energy to explain that «Low Energy Nuclear Reactions» doesn't mean «No Extra Energy Nuclear Reactions». It just LENR guys are trying to lower the Coulomb barrier or boost performance, to make reaction happen in cooler environment, while ITER guys are trying to make hotter environment.

> But do be aware that a single photon carries no more than 10^-19 Joules and that Watts are a measure of power, not of energy...).

I'm obsessed with ideas of reproduction of quantum effects at macro scale, so macro-photon is my goal №1. Of course I have no knowledge required to do that, because it will be for the first time, but I have an idea for the starting point.

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

#628

Post by jacquesm »

Enginerrrd wrote: post #584
weard_beard wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first time it demonstrated superconductivity they dropped the quartz tube it was in, cracking and accidentally oxidizing it at a specific point in the heating process and providing vibration that caused the formation of a crystal structure in the material. That's... not easily replicable.

I can't help but feel that is an awfully convenient story..

There are wilder ones. Penicillin, the pacemaker and the microwave for instance.

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

#629

Post by undefinedland »

LargeTomato wrote: post #612
LargeTomato wrote: post #593

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>They tried to submit a paper to Nature, but was rejected This should be "were rejected" because "were" refers to "they". It cannot refer to the paper even though that would make sense. You could say "but it was rejected" to force the sentence to refer to the singular paper.

Okay, if we don't correct English on HN that's okay. My foreign friends ask me to do this with them but I get that HN is a different forum and that we are not friends.

There was nothing offensive or corrosive about the way you stated the correction so I don't see why you should be down voted; as someone who is learning a foreign language, I can say that having this kind of correction is useful.

Rewarding the mob for its hysteria and stupidity by hiding away from them is the wrong move in my humble opinion; after all, you're only losing internet points which aren't real.

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

#630

Post by oneshtein »

jacquesm wrote: post #414
oneshtein wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am old enough to remember "The Storm in a Glass". Back then, there was a discussion about excessive heat, because the scientific community doubted the possibility of nuclear fusion reactions at such low temperatures and energy costs. My own hypotheses were: a) the reaction is caused by cosmic radiation (muons), and the deuterium filled lattice only amplifies natural high-energy cosmic radiation; b) the reaction occ…

> Why you think that they cannot boost it further? That's not how this works. Why do you think it can ?

I have not tried, but my idea (more than 10 years ago, before the war) was to cover the lattice with atom-thin blanket of depleted Uranium, then to shine at it with radiation from hot mix of radioactive isotopes, with hope that lattice will boost performance of Uranium by 1k-10k. The obvious problem for practical use of this idea is small cross-section of the Uranium blanket, so maybe thousands of thin layers of Nickel-Uranium will be required to make it work, or Nickel-Uranium alloy at 98%-2%.

PS.

The purpose for of the device is to heat homes, to avoid need of Russian gas, not to generate electricity.

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