Live data from Hacker News

Room-Temperature Ambient-Pressure Superconductor LK-99 preprint revision 2

arxiv.org

131–140 of 316 posts

Re: Room-Temperature Ambient-Pressure Superconductor LK-99 preprint revision 2

#131
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Silicon is not valuable because it is a good conductor, in fact it is actually more like an insulator in its natural state. However, mixing the right materials into it, it becomes a very good semiconductor . So it can let current flow easily or block it effectively, making it a good basis for transistors. The problem here are the normal (usually copper) wires between transistors that cause heat to build up whenever c…

How much of the cooling cost of current chips is due to wires, vs. the transistors themselves? Superconductors will not help with the latter.

[deleted]

Re: Room-Temperature Ambient-Pressure Superconductor LK-99 preprint revision 2

#132
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re PS: What’s gonna convince you?

What do they say, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. This is extremely ordinary 'evidence'

The claim is that the material in the video is the result of a replication attempt by the team at HUST and not something else, like an iron flake. This is their second attempt. Their first attempt failed. They’ve been posting about it all week.

Re: Room-Temperature Ambient-Pressure Superconductor LK-99 preprint revision 2

#133
post #82
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not possible. Theory comes first. Scientists need a theory first to know which experiments to do. Any interesting experimental results are interesting precisely because they do not conform to the existing theories. Edit: here's a decent writeup to show what I mean https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory-ladenness

> Not possible. Theory comes first. I used to think this way but it’s significantly more liberating and true to see theory as plausible explanations. Theories are very often afterthoughts, where the utility is prediction of new events, or narrowing the search space of experiments. A theory explaining past events only is not really a theory at all. But you can narrow search space in many ways without elaborate theorie…

Calling theories useful if they predict future events is called Instrumentalism and it’s a dead end if your goal is to understand reality.

“The magician will pull a rabbit from the hat” might reliably predict what happens, and be testable, but it is not a good scientific explanation because it doesn’t help anyone understand how the trick works.

Re: Room-Temperature Ambient-Pressure Superconductor LK-99 preprint revision 2

#134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Your [2] source only mentions statistics since 2012. It's disingenuous to think this could spread down to 1901 if you wish to use the 1.8% as a point to argue. Society was very different a hundred years ago. Women's access to education amongst other things has improved severely over time, and we do have seen an increase in female Nobel laureates compared to the earlier days. It's a matter of time.

Sure, it doesn't spread down to 1901, but the uptick started around 1970s [1].

Anyway, my main rant was about the inefficiency of giving awards to "lone geniuses", at most three, of expecting said "lone wolves" to exist in the first place, and then comes the discussion if the wolves are male or not. Unfortunately it got derailed into talking about pseudoscientific scalars such as IQ and sex binaries.

[1] "large scale changes began around the 1970s", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_STEM_fields

Re: Room-Temperature Ambient-Pressure Superconductor LK-99 preprint revision 2

#135
post #76
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not possible. Theory comes first. Scientists need a theory first to know which experiments to do. Any interesting experimental results are interesting precisely because they do not conform to the existing theories. Edit: here's a decent writeup to show what I mean https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory-ladenness

For the wetter sciences, the answer is somewhere in between. We usually have somewhat of an understanding of the prior theory. We then throw a lot of stuff at the wall…. Oh, this sticks? Eh, why? And then usually some more clever person will come up with reasons for why X works beyond what we already knew. A few years later, the field reaches some sort of consensus around one of the hypothesis.

The “oh this sticks” part is only ever interesting precisely because it doesn’t conform to the pre existing theory.

You cannot even make an observation without theories baked in:

- Normally these things do X

- My senses or instruments are detecting reality accurately

- This thing I’m measuring will result in something interesting etc

Re: Room-Temperature Ambient-Pressure Superconductor LK-99 preprint revision 2

#136
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not possible. Theory comes first. Scientists need a theory first to know which experiments to do. Any interesting experimental results are interesting precisely because they do not conform to the existing theories. Edit: here's a decent writeup to show what I mean https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory-ladenness

You are assuming that we have thought of all theories that an experiment can confirm, before conducting the experiment. Considering the large search space, that would be quite surprising.

Can you tell me why a scientist would decide to do a certain experiment without a theory about what to test and why? Why that experiment and not any of infinite others?

Re: Room-Temperature Ambient-Pressure Superconductor LK-99 preprint revision 2

#137
post #23

https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV14p4y1V7kS/ Latest update: the diamagnetism has been confirmed from a tiny LK-99 replica sample. The Author posted: > Under the guidance of Professor Haixin Chang, postdoctor Hao Wu and PhD student Li Yang from the School of Materials Science and Technology of Huazhong University of Science and Technology successfully for the first time verified the LK-99 crystal that can be magnetica…

love the atomic full screen button on the video player XD

Re: Room-Temperature Ambient-Pressure Superconductor LK-99 preprint revision 2

#139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Oh, did he write about this? Maybe I should check him out.

You are also exactly the type of person who will totally fall head over heels for Richard Heart, so you should invest all your money in HEX.

Re: Room-Temperature Ambient-Pressure Superconductor LK-99 preprint revision 2

#140
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arbitrary punishing rules of the Nobel prize is part of the fun of science. As far as I can tell either wise they'd have dropped all these insane rules ages ago.

Would be interesting if the rule were dropped given that in some fields like particle physics a paper may have dozens of authors…

Particle physics would have to discover something we didn't already know for that to be an issue.
Post reply on HN