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LK-99: Team of Southeast University observed zero resistance below 110 K

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Re: LK-99: Team of Southeast University observed zero resistance below 110 K

#161

Post by qwezxcrty »

modeless wrote: post #121

To me this is encouraging. 110K is really high! It's higher than YBCO which is what they make commercial "high temperature" superconducting tape out of. IMO if this is legit (I have no way of judging the source) then this is the first good third party evidence that the original researchers are not just doing some kind of fraud. A total fraud wouldn't have actually discovered a novel high-temperature, but not room tem…

For non-Chinese speakers: one can jump to 01:50 and 02:32 of the original video, the key figures (XRD and resistance) are presented with English captions.

The data look legit although there is a curious dip in resistance in Fig.3(a) between 200K and 250K. Fig.3(b) is also a bit weird as somehow the resistance behaves irregularly with magnetic field strength.

Re: LK-99: Team of Southeast University observed zero resistance below 110 K

#162

Post by modeless »

aqme28 wrote: post #154
modeless wrote: post #121

To me this is encouraging. 110K is really high! It's higher than YBCO which is what they make commercial "high temperature" superconducting tape out of. IMO if this is legit (I have no way of judging the source) then this is the first good third party evidence that the original researchers are not just doing some kind of fraud. A total fraud wouldn't have actually discovered a novel high-temperature, but not room tem…

> I'm surprised the prediction markets don't seem to be reacting. Which way would you have the prediction markets go? Is this evidence for or against room-temperature superconductivity?

Since IMO this makes fraud a less likely explanation, and it seems easily possible to me that there are many materials in this family with different critical temperatures, and it seems really unlikely that the original researchers would correctly measure superconductivity but simply get the temperature wrong by more than 200K, then it seems strongly positive to the probability that the original researchers discovered room temperature superconductivity. Not confirmation, of course.

Re: LK-99: Team of Southeast University observed zero resistance below 110 K

#163

Post by ramesh31 »

modeless wrote: post #121

To me this is encouraging. 110K is really high! It's higher than YBCO which is what they make commercial "high temperature" superconducting tape out of. IMO if this is legit (I have no way of judging the source) then this is the first good third party evidence that the original researchers are not just doing some kind of fraud. A total fraud wouldn't have actually discovered a novel high-temperature, but not room tem…

>At worst it seems to me like they discovered a cool new superconductor that may have commercial applications. At best, they may have a variant of this material that really is a room temperature superconductor. Either way, there is an important scientific discovery here.

I feel like this whole thing is going to be graphene all over again. A massive initial hype around "world changing tech" that ends up being very difficult and costly to scale and produce commercially.

Probably we'll see some niche applications in industry after a decade of further refinement, but I'm not holding my breath for hoverboards any time soon.

Re: LK-99: Team of Southeast University observed zero resistance below 110 K

#164

Post by Q6T46nT668w6i3m »

meepmorp wrote: post #156
Q6T46nT668w6i3m wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Credible? Their claim was “room-temperature superconductivity.”

It looks like they've at least discovered a novel high temperature (relatively speaking), low pressure superconductor. That does lend some credibility to the original claim, and perhaps reproduction of the result is trickier than originally thought.

There’s a Grand Canyon sized chasm between creating a “low pressure superconductor” and creating a room-temperature superconductor and, unfortunately, Evel Knievel wasn’t a co-author.

Re: LK-99: Team of Southeast University observed zero resistance below 110 K

#165

Post by devindotcom »

rfoo wrote: post #69
obituary_latte wrote: post #50

There are multiple mentions of "extraterrestrial super islands", is this a mistranslation of the Meissner effect? Great term nonetheless.

It's the mistranslation of room-temperature superconductivity. "super islands" is likely translated from 超岛 which sounds the same as 超导 (superconductivity). I have no idea how 室温 (room-temperature) became extraterrestrial, must be extraordinarily bad speech to text model. edit: could be 室温 (shi4wen1) -> shi4wai4 -> 室外(outdoors)/世外(out of this world) -> extraterrestrial

What a hilarious mistranslation. Somehow it is fitting though, as a totally unprecedented floating material.

Re: LK-99: Team of Southeast University observed zero resistance below 110 K

#166

Post by ianburrell »

distortionfield wrote: post #28
chaimanmeow wrote: post #7

credibility of LK99 claims is very very high. What are the medium term practical implications for all these potential applications?

It seems more and more like it's credible, but that synthesis is going to prove to be the issue. All these repro attempts are having too much success for there to be nothing behind the team's claims.

We also don't know its critical field strength. The original measurement from Korea was low. That could improve as they improve synthesis, but could be problem with the material. There are lots of high temperature superconductors that aren't useful; YBCO is important because of high field strength and liquid nitrogen coooling.

I'm sure there are lots of uses for low current room-temperature superconductor. But powerful magnets and long-distance power transmission require large currents and big magnetic fields.

Re: LK-99: Team of Southeast University observed zero resistance below 110 K

#167

Post by ianburrell »

monkeynotes wrote: post #46
distortionfield wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems more and more like it's credible, but that synthesis is going to prove to be the issue. All these repro attempts are having too much success for there to be nothing behind the team's claims.

Can you explain why -160c is a measure of success when the claim was room temperature? A super conductor functioning at -160c would make MRIs simpler, but it's not world changing.

I don't think -160C would change much since it would still need cryogenic cooling. Liquid nitrogen is the most common and cheapest cryogenic. YBCO is liquid nitrogen cooled and has the advantage that can make in large quantities and has high field strengths.

But if it was slightly warmer, over -153C, then it could use non-cryogenic refrigerants.

Re: LK-99: Team of Southeast University observed zero resistance below 110 K

#168

Post by jacquesm »

lambdasquirrel wrote: post #138
jacquesm wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's all unusual because it is uncharted territory. My guess would be assuming that it all pans out that this is due to various impurities and that it will take a while before we have a sample that is pure enough that all of these properties can be nailed down for good. What's strange is that drop at higher temps, that's either a measurement anomaly or something really odd.

According to wikipedia, that was observed by the original team in Korea. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LK-99#Replication_attempts > Claimed to have synthesized LK-99 and to have measured superconductivity up to a temperature of 110 kelvin. Claimed to have observed an abrupt drop in resistance between ~300K and 220K, aligning with the Korean LKK team's results. Claimed to have confirmed structural consistency with x-r…

Yes, but it does not drop nearly as far and there is the suggestion of equipment malfunction while at the same time that gear seems to work just fine around -110 C.

Re: LK-99: Team of Southeast University observed zero resistance below 110 K

#169

Post by carabiner »

saberdancer wrote: post #131

Huge news. This means it is not a scam as a discovery of this type of superconductor would be big enough. It also means it is unlikely they were measuring wrong for multiple years. My layman take is that Korean sample is just a better or different batch that is properly superconducting at room temperature.

As a layman, how do you know this is huge?

Re: LK-99: Team of Southeast University observed zero resistance below 110 K

#170

Post by AS04 »

borkt wrote: post #95
marshray wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Multiple teams have said they had to produce 10 batches just to get one sample with properties worth reporting on. Perhaps the simplest explanation is that different teams are all ending up with different variations of a common material, with different impurities, crystal structure, etc. There's likely a whole zoo of interesting materials here!

More than likely there is only one interesting material in this specific composition. But understanding the phenomenon we are observing in this material can potentially lead to the development of other materials which display these characteristics, and tune those to function in this way at specific temperature/pressure situations. If we develop efficient ways to produce these materials in bulk (which is orders of mag…

My friend, what exactly do you think is so energy intensive with LK99 synthesis? I've briefly taken a look and the process proposed is really not that onerous in terms of energy consumed. It is a matter of perfecting the process that is the hurdle, we already spend tons of energy happily in similar industrial processes.
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