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.
Not an answer, but if you think superconductor is weird, look up superfluid, now that's going to make your head spin.
Thanks for the interesting new thing. If they suffer no loss in kinetic energy and a wave can move forever, could we use a circular pool of superfluid as an an energy storage mechanism?
This is so reminiscent of what happened after Fleischmann & Pons. Labs attempting to replicate saw this property, or that property, but never the whole, unequivocal picture. Here we have a room temperature superconductor that isn't a superconductor at room temperature. A sample that has no measured Meissner Effect at any temperature. And the authors admit that some (many?) of the samples tested out as semiconductors.…
I agree with your first points, but the methods section states (somewhat unclearly) that they used this 4 point probe setup
Summary of events so far: The claim: Room temp (~300K) superconductor exists and we got it! The replication attempts: The production method is so poorly documented only a fraction of the samples being made shows any interesting properties. And among those interesting ones, results varies. Very few, if any, attempt actually completely shows the entire spectrum of properties and behaviors of a true superconductor at ro…
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?
The one-dimensional things seems like it could make it complicated to measure the resistance. Especially since the bulk material that seems like people are making isn't being laid down in thin films where you might know which direction the conductivity might go. What if there are superconducting grains/domains that abut to each other, but the 1-D paths are then not aligned? Even if you knew that the "domains" were aligned with each other, but didn't know the orientation, it seems like you'd measure a drop-off in resistance, but not to zero at the critical temperature. Maybe?
This is so reminiscent of what happened after Fleischmann & Pons. Labs attempting to replicate saw this property, or that property, but never the whole, unequivocal picture. Here we have a room temperature superconductor that isn't a superconductor at room temperature. A sample that has no measured Meissner Effect at any temperature. And the authors admit that some (many?) of the samples tested out as semiconductors.…
I agree that the setup is not satisfactorily documented.
> but what equipment?
But at least this individual question is actually included in the paper. It was the Physical Property Measurement System (PPMS), manufactured by Quantum Design Inc. From the photo, one can clearly see that the DC resistance test fixture was used.
Summary of events so far: The claim: Room temp (~300K) superconductor exists and we got it! The replication attempts: The production method is so poorly documented only a fraction of the samples being made shows any interesting properties. And among those interesting ones, results varies. Very few, if any, attempt actually completely shows the entire spectrum of properties and behaviors of a true superconductor at ro…
> Worst case scenario, we got another class of high temp (warmer than liquid nitrogen but cold enough that applications are limited) superconductor but nothing revolutionary since at this point, it is pretty conclusive that there is something interesting with LK-99. I don't think that's the worst case scenario. The worst case scenario is that there is actually nothing interesting with LK-99, and everything we've seen…
Waiting to see either way just like everyone else, but..
> I'm actually surprised by the sheer lack of people commenting in the more-or-less-perma-LK-99 threads who show skepticism of the results.
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…
> The log-scale here complicates my intuition
Logarithmic plots are a device of the devil. - Charles Richter
GPT-4 does it very well though. (Not saying OP used it, was just curious if that'd work.) Prompt: > Observation of zero resistance above 100∘ K in Pb10−xCux(PO4)6O > convert this to a title, with the correct usage of unicode Output: > Observation of Zero Resistance Above 100 K in Pb₁₀₋ₓCuₓ(PO₄)₆O
Wow, I would've never thought to use ChatGPT for this. Very cool.
I use ChatGPT as a word calculator for literally everything all of the time. It’s super great for achieving proper formatting easily!