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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

#191

Post by danielheath »

tootie wrote: post #186
saberdancer wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think most people are just seeing the headline 110K instead of realizing the implications (not a scam, not a mistake, hard to replicate). I was quite sceptical earlier today due to unconvincing videos but this finding pushes it heavily into "This might be it" territory.

I'm still unclear. Why is the test limit 110K? If this is supposed to be usable at ambient temperature then this seems like not a useful finding. Is it just some artifact of how superconductivity is measured?

Some people say they can get it to work at room temperature, and others say they can't.

Testing a sample at superconductivity-friendly temperatures helps figure out whether there's something to investigate here, since most materials do not superconduct at any useful temperature.

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

#192

Post by golol »

tootie wrote: post #186
saberdancer wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think most people are just seeing the headline 110K instead of realizing the implications (not a scam, not a mistake, hard to replicate). I was quite sceptical earlier today due to unconvincing videos but this finding pushes it heavily into "This might be it" territory.

I'm still unclear. Why is the test limit 110K? If this is supposed to be usable at ambient temperature then this seems like not a useful finding. Is it just some artifact of how superconductivity is measured?

The common understanding seems to be that producing true LK99 is very difficult as you need to get the crystal structure just right. Many samples probably have mixes of the correct and other structures. That's why some float and some don't. The sample might be quite "dirty", meaning the critical temperature is lower.

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

#193

Post by carabiner »

d1str0 wrote: post #178
carabiner wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Assuming they discovered a low cost, room temperature, room pressure, superconductor, there are many HUGE technological advancements that can be made that would impact your daily life. Possibilities include improved battery longevity in all devices(probably in an order of magnitude), low friction transport improvements (ie. cheaper high speed rail), and faster and higher bandwidth wired connections. https://en.wikipe…

No I mean why is this "huge" when each time that's happened it's been deflated within 12 hours:

- initial LK-99 paper upload on Arxiv: HUGE, then it's probably nothing until replication (waiting)

- DFT release: HUGE, then probably nothing (DFT has poor predictive power)

- 110K SC: HUGE, then ... ?

In every case it's been the laymen saying HUGE, then the experts saying it's probably insignificant. Then the laymen settle on what the experts said.

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

#194

Post by valianteffort »

tootie wrote: post #186
saberdancer wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think most people are just seeing the headline 110K instead of realizing the implications (not a scam, not a mistake, hard to replicate). I was quite sceptical earlier today due to unconvincing videos but this finding pushes it heavily into "This might be it" territory.

I'm still unclear. Why is the test limit 110K? If this is supposed to be usable at ambient temperature then this seems like not a useful finding. Is it just some artifact of how superconductivity is measured?

I believe 110K is where it hit zero resistivity (the lower bound) but any increase from there and it was no longer presenting superconductivity.

If we are to trust the SK team, it's possible the design in the paper is outdated and in-house they have dialed it in to something stable at room temperature.

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

#195

Post by QuadrupleA »

Can someone with field expertise explain the implications if this material were real / replicable / cheaply manufacturable? I see a lot of breathless excitement in these comments, as if free energy and perpetual motion machines are right around the corner, but from the few details I've delved into it's more like the electric grid might get 10% more efficient, MRIs might get a little cheaper, etc.

What are the exciting and apparently obvious applications that have everyone so excited? Is it a fusion / tokamak containment thing, that the cost of cooling current superconducting magnets is one of the big barriers to net energy generation?

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

#196

Post by gus_massa »

spandrew wrote: post #157
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…

The initial claim was speculated to be room temp and ambient pressure superconduction. 110K is a far cry from that.

Everyone agree. Oversimplifying, there are 3 categories to classify the initial team:

1) A bunch of clowns.

2) Interesting

3) Next Nobel prize winners

I think they had a good reputation in the community, so the opinion of the hivemind was to discard 1. But there was still the possibility of a honest mistake or something weird.

If this post is correct, other team confirmed that they discovered a new family of "high temperature" superconductor. The old families have been tweaked and explored to death. A new family gives a lot of room to optimize the composition and building process. So perhaps they found it.

If this is confirmed they are definitively in the "interesting" category, at least.

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

#197

Post by lnenad »

Palpatineli wrote: post #119
matsemann wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't invalidate the original claim, as they haven't been able to make a pure sample to test with, as I understand it. Or at least that there is some difference between their samples and the others, but still it shows promise.

[flagged]

Holy shit what a statement.

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

#198

Post by valianteffort »

threatripper wrote: post #150
scarmig wrote: post #13

Interesting. Some people are getting strong diamagnetism at RTP, and now someone is actually seeing zero resistance at a low temperature. I'd take this as mildly positive news. It would be a surprising material if it were a high Tc (only in the LN2 sense) superconductor that is also strongly diamagnetic at room temperature (though I'm not sure if that's more surprising than a RTP superconductor).

If only part of the sample is superconducting and the other parts are ordinary conductors or isolators, the superconducting islands could show diamagnetism while being isolated from each other which means that eletrical current needs to pass resistive areas and therefore experiences resistance.

Could it not also mean an impure sample? Everyone is in a rush right now but none of these research teams are exactly experts of manufacture.

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

#199

Post by Obi_Juan_Kenobi »

gchadwick wrote: post #14

Certainly no expert here but if you take the original video and replications at face value it does exhibit strong diamagnetism at room temperature. Superconductors are diamagnetic due to the Meissner effect at their superconducting temperature. This would mean LK99 is a superconductor at low temperature and separately be strongly diamagnetic at room temperature (no Meissner effect if it's not super conducting). Would…

The premise is flawed because that assumes the samples they are studying are identical.

Replication is difficult, and particularly difficult for novel processes where the important variables are not well understood. It could be that the methods were reported as accurately as possible but still leave out critical detail(s).

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

#200

Post by refulgentis »

callalex wrote: post #184
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…

What prediction markets are you looking at? Are there any concrete examples of these markets being accurate, or just a venue for gambling addicts to feel smart?

One prediction market company spent a day spamming e v e r y tweet with a link to their own stuff, so it's adopted a meme-y link to LK-99 but it's honestly unrelated other than a clever marketing campaign
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