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A room-temperature superconductor? New developments

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Re: A room-temperature superconductor? New developments

#381

Post by CPLX »

ajuc wrote: post #335
CPLX wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is your argument that China’s increasing technical prowess will not inevitably result in the US hegemony ending?

Japanese and South Korean increasing technical prowess didn't, why would Chinese be any different? China has serious fundamental problems and if you account for its gigantic population - it's seriously underachieving not only compared to US, but even compared to the rest of the developed world. It's fashionable to talk about China taking over, but it's far from guaranteed. China is pretty much confirmed to be falsify…

Those countries are allies.

China doesn’t believe in western democracy and has as a stated goal ending American hegemony.

It’s not even slightly confusing or subtle, not sure why American elitist types like to just handwave it away.

Actually I am sure. Everyone is making too much money. Until they aren’t.

Re: A room-temperature superconductor? New developments

#382

Post by exoque »

deeg wrote: post #165

I'm astounded that the MSM seems to be ignoring this ATM. I did a Google news search on LK-99 and saw nothing from major publications. A search on the NYTimes returned an article from 1974.

Really? Here’s an article from one of switzerland’s biggest newspapers: https://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/ein-supraleiter-fuer-den-alltag...

Re: A room-temperature superconductor? New developments

#384

Post by _yb2s »

dirtyid wrote: post #329
_yb2s wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not looking at official numbers here, but in my field (academic biotech research) I still don't see much innovation coming out of China. All of what you say is true, yet in academic research China is still far behind the USA in nearly every field. They haven't yet been able to build institutions with the staff, structure, and culture needed. That will likely change in time, but at present the best Chinese scienti…

Varies by field but last few years PRC been reaching parity to topping various science and innovation indexes, PRC institutions also breaking global top100 and general trend of moving up rankings. TLDR is PRC science exploded after mid 2010s - lag effect from academic reform in 00s. Biotech/bioeconomy a outlier though - just got elevated to strategic sector with 500b usd investment in last year's 5 year plan, so expe…

I’ll take what you are saying at face value, but point out that academic career pipelines are slow- it’s often about 15 years to go from college freshman to starting out as a “young” PI in the USA. If what you are saying is true, it will still be another 5+ years before we start seeing top students that stayed in China publishing as PIs. Edit: Which lines up with what you said at the top of your post.

Re: A room-temperature superconductor? New developments

#385

Post by mrandish »

wredue wrote: post #360
mrandish wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Additionally, it appears some of the original team members were concerned about possible industrial spying or leaks and that 'other parties' might be moving to replicate which was part of the impetus for rushing to publish. So, it's possible that some team(s) in China may have already been starting, underway or at least thinking about it.

Where was this? I haven’t seen this, but it definitely explains the drama surrounding this whole situation. It couldn’t have come at a worse time for drama either, as the right wing is currently on possibly their most massive anti-science tirade world wide that they’ve ever pushed.

> it definitely explains the drama surrounding this whole situation.

It was in a Twitter thread linked on an HN thread a couple days ago wherein someone had done some digging online into resumes, publication histories, etc and recapped a bunch of the apparent history of LK99 and the related scientists and institutions. Sorry, I didn't bookmark it. But it contained quite a bit more drama including possible team conflict over potential Nobel credit and a deathbed promise to the team's mentor, one of the initial LK99 discoverers.

No matter how this turns out, there's probably a helluva good book or movie in the backstory as it appears to be a team of unlikely underdogs stubbornly pursuing a long-shot while scraping together minimal funding over many years, being passed over for tenure, taking on unrelated side work and having their initial paper rejected by Nature, etc. It makes me extra hopeful that LK99 is at least an interesting novel material, even if not a superconductor.

Re: A room-temperature superconductor? New developments

#386

Post by Scene_Cast2 »

Geee wrote: post #225
agnokapathetic wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That 40kJ/L is for the entire system including the cyronics. Get rid of the cyronics and the system gets far far more energy dense.

Yes, that's quite likely how they come up with this number. But is it enough? What's the most energy dense configuration that can be made with room temp SC and does it compete with lithium batteries?

I just took a look at the source paper [0]

""" Although the attainable magnetic flux density limits the energy per unit volume given by Equation (1) ( B2 /2μ o), the real limit of the energy stored in a SMES is mechanical. [...] The relation defines the minimum mass of the mechanical structure in pure tension to support the radial electromagnetic forces. Force-balanced coils [5] minimize the working stress and thus the mass of the structure. """

So it looks like they 1) don't look at cryo and 2) the limiting factor is the stress due to EM fields.

[0] https://snf.ieeecsc.org/sites/ieeecsc.org/files/CR5_Final3_0...

Re: A room-temperature superconductor? New developments

#387

Post by lolinder »

jcranmer wrote: post #301
deeg wrote: post #165

I'm astounded that the MSM seems to be ignoring this ATM. I did a Google news search on LK-99 and saw nothing from major publications. A search on the NYTimes returned an article from 1974.

To be frank, the available evidence at the moment is pretty shaky. Derek Lowe here is pretty optimistic, but most of the comments I've seen from the superconductor folks are pretty pessimistic [1]--and given that Derek Lowe isn't in the field, I'm inclined to favor their views over his at this point. The original articles are a pair of papers posted to arxiv in a field which I believe isn't well-known for arxiv publi…

Thanks for that link!

My feeling watching all this has been that it's weird people are getting so excited about the replication when the actually interesting question (is it truly a superconductor) hasn't even been answered yet. Glad to see that isn't just my ignorance.

Re: A room-temperature superconductor? New developments

#388

Post by irthomasthomas »

dang wrote: post #309

The major threads so far, in reverse order—have I missed any? Huazhong University demonstrates LK-99 diamagnetism - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36953819 - Aug 1, 2023 (265 comments) LK-99 crystal verified to be magnetically levitated (with video) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36953396 - Aug 1, 2023 (10 comments) Room-Temperature Ambient-Pressure Superconductor LK-99 preprint revision 2 - https://new…

Any idea why the Science article links to a HN post as the source?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36953396 (10 comments)

Re: A room-temperature superconductor? New developments

#389

Post by Ericson2314 »

mvalente_ wrote: post #364
ASalazarMX wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The force of tradition is amazing. Imagine centuries knowing how to make something that explodes violently, and using it for entertainment instead of weapons. Just like how Mesoamerican civilizations invented the wheel, but only used it on children toys and not for transportation. There were no draft animals in the region, but they didn't even make wheelbarrows. https://www.mexicolore.co.uk/aztecs/home/the-concept-of…

Is there a name for this kind of effect?

The "untyped languages are just fine" effect :P

Re: A room-temperature superconductor? New developments

#390

Post by nomel »

verytrivial wrote: post #217
drexlspivey wrote: post #8

New replication video coming from China https://twitter.com/lereguy/status/1686363900651151360

Hang on, wouldn't a sliver of any magnetic material behave like this within a moving magnetic field? This replication is a fail, yes?

A magnetic material would orient itself to the magnet, and then move towards the magnet, not get "stuck" in its fields.
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