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A room-temperature superconductor? New developments

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Re: A room-temperature superconductor? New developments

#141

Post by LordDragonfang »

scythmic_waves wrote: post #83
vasco wrote: post #66

How likely is this to lead to breaking all encryption by enabling way bigger superconducting quantum computers with way more qubits than are reasonable nowadays? Is this just going to turn into cyberwar on steroids?

There are post-quantum-computing encryption schemes [1], thankfully. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-quantum_cryptography

That still leaves all encrypted traffic on the current internet vulnerable to a store-and-decrypt-later attack, which is more concerning the nearer that "later" is.

Re: A room-temperature superconductor? New developments

#142

Post by failuser »

qbasic_forever wrote: post #81
bhouston wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure Elon also has SpaceX or something trying to replicate it as well. He sort of has to jump on each new trend anyhow. In a serious note, superconductors are likely useful in electric magnetic motors and probably in high power electronics and batteries in general, no?

LK-99 is already patented so even if Elon were making a ton of it, he couldn't do much in his products without licensing it from the creators.

As if that would have stopped him. He will argue that it’s XK-69, entirely different material and spend decades in litigation trying to bankrupt the inventors or worse.

Re: A room-temperature superconductor? New developments

#143

Post by ajuc »

daveguy wrote: post #122
pjmorris wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or the news that ChatGPT is attempting an LK-99 replication.

Yes. Using the well known ChatGPT manufacturing capabilities.

I.e. natural language injection when somebody from a capable lab uses ChatGPT to write an e-mail :)

Re: A room-temperature superconductor? New developments

#144

Post by dekhn »

largbae wrote: post #93
animatedb wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Superconductor means low resistance. Low resistance means less loss due to heat on a wire. Room temperature superconductor also means more efficient magnets for motors, coils, ending up in cars, MRI machines, etc.

Not just low... _zero_. That's where things get weird.

Well, you still lose current over time... for example, we had to dump a bucket of electrons into our superconducting, supercooled magnet about every month ago to keep things swirling properly.

(The EE I worked with later didn't believe me. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_magnet#Persist... and note that the loss was due to details of magnetic superconductors, not superconductors in general)

Re: A room-temperature superconductor? New developments

#145

Post by RyEgswuCsn »

mrtksn wrote: post #37
RandallBrown wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can someone explain how this video shows superconductivity?

[not an expert but...]It shows strong diamagnetism(being repelled by both of the poles of a magnet), which is a property of superconductors. Not necessarily a superconductor though, that’s still to be established but at least it shows that the inventors are up to something and it’s not complete fabrication.

I am no expert on this topic, but I feel this is similar to how ferrofluid forms "spikes" when placed near a magnet. Are they related?

Re: A room-temperature superconductor? New developments

#147

Post by dylan604 »

bilsbie wrote: post #107
mrtksn wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[not an expert but...]It shows strong diamagnetism(being repelled by both of the poles of a magnet), which is a property of superconductors. Not necessarily a superconductor though, that’s still to be established but at least it shows that the inventors are up to something and it’s not complete fabrication.

Why don’t they try heating it and seeing if the effect goes away? You could even try a welding torch or something.

or just stick it outside in a heat dome? don't you have one near you?

Re: A room-temperature superconductor? New developments

#148

Post by ironborn123 »

scythe wrote: post #18

I'm glad to hear that I'm not the only one who thought that the DFT computational preprints were very promising. Unfortunately, they also indicate that the desired substitution will be very hard to achieve — crucially, the "crush and separate the composite" suggestion a few commenters have made is unlikely to work, since the heterogeneity exists within the same crystal, depending on whether Cu substitutes into Pb {1}…

A question that arises, how good is chemical vapor deposition (albeit a very expensive way and hence for labwork only) in creating a pure sample with proper Cu substitutions?

Re: A room-temperature superconductor? New developments

#149

Post by valine »

qbasic_forever wrote: post #81
bhouston wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure Elon also has SpaceX or something trying to replicate it as well. He sort of has to jump on each new trend anyhow. In a serious note, superconductors are likely useful in electric magnetic motors and probably in high power electronics and batteries in general, no?

LK-99 is already patented so even if Elon were making a ton of it, he couldn't do much in his products without licensing it from the creators.

There's probably other similar chemistries that also super conduct at room temperature. Call it the marching tetrahedra of super conductors.

Re: A room-temperature superconductor? New developments

#150

Post by carabiner »

scythe wrote: post #18

I'm glad to hear that I'm not the only one who thought that the DFT computational preprints were very promising. Unfortunately, they also indicate that the desired substitution will be very hard to achieve — crucially, the "crush and separate the composite" suggestion a few commenters have made is unlikely to work, since the heterogeneity exists within the same crystal, depending on whether Cu substitutes into Pb {1}…

The widespread consensus among experts who have done DFT is that the preprint doesn't add anything to how they feel about LK-99. https://twitter.com/alexkaplan0/status/1686392015217741825 sums it up: Griffin's paper is neither proof of superconductivity nor even a very strong signal of it. Flat bands can mean many things; in fact, the crystal structure Griffin assumes may have been selected due to their likelihood.

CMTC says the Griffin paper doesn't really shift anything and they still believe replication is unlikely: https://twitter.com/condensed_the/status/1686373904044949504...

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