Similar to how a magnet works. A magnet can hold something forever, so seems like a violation of thermodynamics. But "holding" isn't work, it's just force. (Which is still kinda spooky, admittedly) Similarly, conducting itself isn't work, it's just conduction.
It's a lot less spooky when you consider that your desk can hold your coffee mug forever. It's exerting force on the mug, but not doing any work.
even more so as the mug literally levitates above the desk, the atoms of the mug are not really touching the atoms of the desk.
I'm curious why every tracker lists Argonne, though no status or progress listed. I'm sure there are a hundred other labs who've either done nothing, or are doing something without fanfare, so why Argonne?
Argonne is a highly regarded national lab; results from there would be highly credible. Also an Argonne staffer has gone on record[0] saying that they're attempting to replicate, while other labs have not said whether they're trying or not. Personally I'm waiting for the Argonne results which should be done by the end of the week. [0] https://www.science.org/content/article/spectacular-supercon...
With you there. A lot of Chinese labs are listed e.g. but my own experience trying to replicate materials science results from "credible" Chinese labs has led to a lot of disappointment.
The most compelling evidence offered thus far is from actual scientists that have reviewed the LK-99 paper and determined the scientists involved aren't very good at science.
> 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…
There’s plenty of skepticism. It’s the zero-cost position here. But there are good and bad skeptical positions. The good one involves people attempting to replicate and publishing results whether positive, negative or somewhere in between. The bad one consists of sitting in forums and threads being, “the voice of reason”. If there’s a real problem, it’s that we have still not made publication of negative results suff…
> The bad one consists of sitting in forums and threads being, “the voice of reason”.
I refer to these folks as the "boring universe brigade." The heuristic seems to be that if it's in any way exciting it's probably bullshit. It's a blind overreaction to memetically-optimized pseudoscience.
Well, it's at a 1mA test current (I'm assuming a 4 point probe to mitigate contact resistance) so 10u Ohm would give a 10nV DC signal. That's a pretty small voltage signal and comparable to a fairly standard chopper stabilized instrumentation amp rms noise at room temp near DC. I'm not sure whether higher currents are all that reasonable. Cooling the precision amp is an option to reduce the noise figure, but at that…
A comment above says they are using https://www.qdusa.com/products/ppms.html with the DC 4-wire option. All my instincts would prefer they were using the AC 4-wire option, given any reason to question results, and/or issues with contact effects, etc.
Thanks! That's great information. We had to make our own, but it's good to see that there are decent off the shelf systems. I agree that contact resistance on these tiny samples has got to be a huge issue (can they use mercury?). However, what I've seen suggests that even the low frequency AC measurements are more complex due to capacitive coupling effects. However, narrow bandwidth lock=in should improve noise... the equipment still just claims 10u Ohm.
So exciting! Just FYI, the wikipedia page for LK-99 has a very useful tracking grid of replication attempts with sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LK-99
That grid is a direct copy of this one here: https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/claims-of-room-tempe... …but isn’t sourced, presumably because they don’t consider SB to be professional enough.
Does not seem to be a direct copy (the Wikipedia missing things like Progress/Status, Reliability of Claim) and also, the Wikipedia page can be collaboratively kept up to date, while the other is a random forum post "owned" by one user and the owners of the platform.
Such things are possible, and not even very uncommon. The human body has tissues with conductivity different in different dimensions. If you'd like to create one yourself, take a bunch of parallel insulated wires. Conductivity will be low along the wires, and high perpendicular to them. Or alternated high-resistivity and low-resistivity sheets. Conduction will be low parallel to the sheets, and high going through the…
> human tissues > isolated wires > alternated sheets The thinks you describes are systems made of multiple materials. Are you aware of a materials that behave that way by its own ?
I wish we had real money prediction markets. Afaict it would be legal to run such a business in the UK.
I remember seeing something like this that ran on bitcoin a while ago. It was completely user driven and lines were dynamically calculated by the action. I'm not sure how the resolutions to the bets were determined exactly, perhaps there was a requirement of a third party indicator of some sort, I don't recall.
There’s plenty of skepticism. It’s the zero-cost position here. But there are good and bad skeptical positions. The good one involves people attempting to replicate and publishing results whether positive, negative or somewhere in between. The bad one consists of sitting in forums and threads being, “the voice of reason”. If there’s a real problem, it’s that we have still not made publication of negative results suff…
> The bad one consists of sitting in forums and threads being, “the voice of reason”. I refer to these folks as the "boring universe brigade." The heuristic seems to be that if it's in any way exciting it's probably bullshit. It's a blind overreaction to memetically-optimized pseudoscience.
How can we forget that- 34 years ago- Pons and Fleischmann made a claim that was incorrect! /s