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Observation of zero resistance above 100 K in Pb₁₀₋ₓCuₓ(PO₄)₆O

arxiv.org

41–50 of 389 posts

Re: Observation of zero resistance above 100 K in Pb₁₀₋ₓCuₓ(PO₄)₆O

#41
post #22
post #5

Is this one also written in Word so it automatically loses LaTeX-credibility, as was commented under the first paper? (:

Maybe some people wanna focus on the work and not on the geek cred. (I need to write some thesis like thing soon, like 15 years after my masters thesis that was written in latex, and do I really want to bother setting latex up again and futz with templates and fight for correctly positioned figures, or just use Word and be done with it?)

> just use Word and be done with it?

One don't "just" use word, and it's certainly never done with. Unless you found a room temperature superconductor and half the people will simply not care if you wrote it in a piece of paper (yet half will care... for some reason), you will have to spend all your time fixing formatting issues and keeping things on their correct state.

I was stupid enough to write a paper in Word once. Given the choice, I will never repeat the mistake.

Re: Observation of zero resistance above 100 K in Pb₁₀₋ₓCuₓ(PO₄)₆O

#43
I really really wanted this to be true just so we can all take a look at how much wrong some things are in academia and science nowadays.

Plenty of "knowledgeable" people and research groups put out a lot of discrediting (and actually ignorant) statements about this, a lot of them with a dash of xenophobia in the mix.

Congrats to the people that actually push science forwards!

Haters gonna hate but no one will remmeber them, ever.

Re: Observation of zero resistance above 100 K in Pb₁₀₋ₓCuₓ(PO₄)₆O

#44
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The random jumps in the resistivity around 250 K suggests that there is very bad contact resistance or a possible alternate current path. The drop in resistance doesn’t look like a typical phase transition (it is very broad in temperature). My guess would be that the voltage leads are not very well connected to the region of the sample that the current is flowing through. This could actually give a drop in the measur…

One of the authors commented in their previous video pre-announcement that they suspect it was a probe cleanliness problem, which they would investigate later.

Is this kind of thing typical for experiments working to confirm such significant results, or is there a mad rush to publish?

Do you really get a lot of prestige from confirming somebody else's result? I would have thought the risk to reputation from sloppy work would far outweigh it (see: the cold fusion shenanigans).

Re: Observation of zero resistance above 100 K in Pb₁₀₋ₓCuₓ(PO₄)₆O

#45
I don’t understand the physics, but it feels like a truly zero resistance conductor would violate some law of thermodynamics or something.

Is a superconductor truly zero impedence or just very very very low? Because I’m seeing a lot of these graphs with something like: “0.00001ohm” as the y-axis floor.

Re: Observation of zero resistance above 100 K in Pb₁₀₋ₓCuₓ(PO₄)₆O

#47
Looking at the key temperature-resistivity graphs, this feels like the data doesn't support the conclusion that there's a superconductor here. The temperature-resistivity graphs of superconductors I've seen all have a fairly steep cutoff--a sharp, vertical line at critical temperature. The log-scale here complicates my intuition, but what I see is a gradual transition into noise range. Also, the graphs I've seen have also demonstrated that the critical temperature varies with applied magnetic field. Here... there's no apparent variation in apparent critical temperature.

I'm sorry, but this result just feels to me like people are assuming that the material must be a superconductor and are analyzing all the data under that assumption rather than asking the question "is this a superconductor?"

Re: Observation of zero resistance above 100 K in Pb₁₀₋ₓCuₓ(PO₄)₆O

#48
post #7

Could someone explain why this is important? What is the consequence of the existence of Superconductors like that?

The biggest near future tech for superconductors: fusion power.

One huge area of exploration for fusion power is tokamok reactor design, which requires a very strong magnetic field to confine plasma within a round shape - typically a torus, though I think I read of one spherical shell.

I suppose these don't necessarily need room temperature super conductors, but cheaper and easier to manufacture superconducting materials to use as the magnets could make a huge difference. And I do wonder if allowing higher temperatures could aid in the operability of these future devices.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/fusion-2662267312 is one I read about recently, using YBaCuO as the superconducting electromagnet. Definitely sounds bottlenecked on production of it.

Fusion power, as any energy source that massively increases the amount of energy humans can harness, could be planet changing.

Re: Observation of zero resistance above 100 K in Pb₁₀₋ₓCuₓ(PO₄)₆O

#49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some literature suggests its a "one dimensiononal" superconductor only kinda works in tiny monocrystaline grains. ...But maybe thats even more interesting for, say, microelectronics? Especially if the resistance orthogonal to the superconductivity is high, if such a thing is even possible?

Zero loss diodes seem pretty useful.

I don’t think this would be zero-loss diodes - it would probably superconduct in some x-axis while being non-superconducting in the y- and z-axis. Even then, it’s not clear to me what the conductivity is like in the non-superconducting axies.
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