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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

#651

Post by distortionfield »

rowanG077 wrote: post #643
nullc wrote: post #603

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If true, that is objectively insane. I dunno about that. Look at it this way: we don't know how to make a room temp superconductor, we don't know how to learn what we need to learn to make one. There were some more obvious ideas, they didn't work. There were a lot of less obvious ideas, lots of people tried them, they didn't work. At this point, one could argue that continued research specifically directed to makin…

How much money does actually go into this? I know it's an active research area, but I didn't get the idea this is some kind of "main" focus for humanity. For example a figure I could find is that US$24.5 billion is spend on cancer research (which frankly I find extraordinarily low). I couldn't find a figure online but I doubt it's even 10% of that. To me it just sounds more like we are just playing around a little bi…

If that cancer figure is true, that’s depressingly low for something so devastatingly common and increasingly common.

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

#652

Post by distortionfield »

stainablesteel wrote: post #221
asimpletune wrote: post #177

So, Russian anime cat girl seems to have cooked a sample and demonstrated some of the claimed properties, although she's explicit that it shouldn't be considered a "replication". https://twitter.com/iris_IGB/status/1685731177523449856

its always the people with an anime pfp that do the most godly shit

It’s a meme in cryptography too. Cutting edge cryptanalysis and furry profile pics go together like steak and red wine.

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

#654

Post by Tuna-Fish »

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?

Impurities.

Notably phosphorus is very hard to get rid of when it's in your metal. Before better metallurgy, the best steel worldwide was made out of low-phosphorus ores.

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

#655

Post by qubex »

WalterBright wrote: post #540
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.…

Samurai sword making took what, a thousand years of trial and error? The forgers had no idea how making steel worked, they just found a way to make it work.

Or bread… have you ever thought what must’ve gone through somebody’s head to think of grinding all those cereals, adding random stuff, and baking it? How the heck did anybody come up with that??

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

#656

Post by Ancalagon »

distortionfield wrote: post #651
rowanG077 wrote: post #643

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much money does actually go into this? I know it's an active research area, but I didn't get the idea this is some kind of "main" focus for humanity. For example a figure I could find is that US$24.5 billion is spend on cancer research (which frankly I find extraordinarily low). I couldn't find a figure online but I doubt it's even 10% of that. To me it just sounds more like we are just playing around a little bi…

If that cancer figure is true, that’s depressingly low for something so devastatingly common and increasingly common.

Actually a lot of strides have been made in cancer survivability rates from that funding - depending on type of cancer, many people can be essentially guaranteed survival these days when just decades ago e.g. prostate cancer was a death sentence.

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

#657

Post by kulahan »

r2_pilot wrote: post #525
kulahan wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was absolutely certain I saw a photo of LK-99 floating over (partially, part of it was still touching) a magnet. Of course, this proves nothing as it's a photo, but I have this memory of seeing it, so maybe someone else saw it in some official capacity.

This is purported to be a video of what you saw a photo of: https://sciencecast.org/casts/suc384jly50n

YES! That's the one!

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

#658

Post by rowanG077 »

Ancalagon wrote: post #656
distortionfield wrote: post #651

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that cancer figure is true, that’s depressingly low for something so devastatingly common and increasingly common.

Actually a lot of strides have been made in cancer survivability rates from that funding - depending on type of cancer, many people can be essentially guaranteed survival these days when just decades ago e.g. prostate cancer was a death sentence.

For sure! That also not what I was implying. The US solo spends something like 770 billion per year just on the military. That means even the entire world together spends 3% of that on cancer research. You can't really tell me this is even remotely sane.

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

#659

Post by radioactivist »

dawnofdusk wrote: post #96
alecst wrote: post #90

I’m not an expert, but I’ve used superconductors (I believe YBCO) when I taught physics lab. We cooled samples down with liquid nitrogen and put them over a magnet. They levitate, but not like in the video that the Korean team released. True superconductors enjoy “flux pinning”, meaning wherever you put them on a magnet, they’ll freeze in that position (or move around an axis of constant flux.) In the LK-99 video tha…

Type-II super conductors may exhibit "flux pinning". Type-I super conductors do not.

Even for type-II superconductors one may need single crystals if the material is anisotropic enough (e.g. if the flux pinning is confined mostly to 2D layers then randomly oriented grains in a powder aren't going to trap flux well)
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