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Andrew McCalip demonstrates synthesis of LK99

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Re: Andrew McCalip demonstrates synthesis of LK99

#241

Post by dclowd9901 »

sanxiyn wrote: post #80
sashank_1509 wrote: post #40

This makes me extremely bullish about Varda Space, they have engineers of high quality and expertise that they could do a decent replication very quickly (if they got access to raw materials earlier, they might have been first to do so, comparable with the Chinese Groups) while working on their off time (from what I’ve seen of their twitter) and not a single big academic lab has managed to complete any sort of replic…

World first replication was done by Iris Alexandra using her own accelerated process and there is no way Varda Space could have beaten her.

_biggest eyeroll ever_

That person’s twitter feed reads like the howlings and scribblings of someone in a manic depressive cycle. I’m a little surprised _anyone_ would take them seriously.

Re: Andrew McCalip demonstrates synthesis of LK99

#242

Post by _jal »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #228
anonylizard wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This, its utterly shameful. Hot takes here, hot takes there, skepticism here, tell people to calm down there. Yet not a single replication! China has gone through multiple failed and successful replications so far. And the first US replication is from an amateur. If LK-99 works out, expect some congressmen to use this as a bludgeoning tool against the state of US public science.

To be fair, no one in the us has a grant to replicate something that came out this week. Its also the academic summer. A good amount of PIs are probably nowhere near their labs on vacation currently.

> To be fair, no one in the us has a grant to replicate something that came out this week

And yet researchers in other countries managed to find the money this week. That would seem to point to a real relative weakness that's worth thinking about.

Whether it is the result of gatekeeping, bureaucracy, academic squabbling, or something else, a cranky (and hilarious) Russian did better, faster work in her kitchen. Even putting aside professional scientific dysfunction, that seems to indicate a strategic cranky kitchen chemist gap.

Re: Andrew McCalip demonstrates synthesis of LK99

#243

Post by ThePhysicist »

floxy wrote: post #224
ThePhysicist wrote: post #212

Honestly I don't see anything that would prove superconductivity in this video. If LK-99 is a type-II superconductor you should observe flux pinning i.e. you would be able to move the flake with a tweezer and it would be stuck in place as the magnetic flux lines are pinned to defects in the material. I haven't seen any details on the supposed properties of the material like the coherence length, but from the original…

There have been some people saying that LK-99 might only be superconducting in one dimension. Does anyone know how that (or even just 2-D/planar superconductivity) would effect the levitation of samples? For the 1-D case, maybe there would be issues in creating loops in the bulk material for persistent currents to flow in? It might be hard to make a Josephson junction unless you knew the orientation of the supercondu…

The superconducting wave function can have different symmetry, e.g. most/all low-temperature superconductors have s-wave symmetry (meaning the wave function amplitude is the same in all directions), whereas high-temperature superconductors have d-wave symmetry, which means the wave function amplitude has lobes and drops to zero along the diagonal axes. There are no p-wave superconductors to my knowledge (which I guess is meant when they talk about a 1D superconductor, i.e. the wave function has p-symmetry, but not even sure if that's what they mean).

I know the main researcher has brought forward a modified BCS theory that combines insulator-metal transition physics with superconductivity, no idea though what to make of that.

Re: Andrew McCalip demonstrates synthesis of LK99

#244

Post by swader999 »

dm_me_dogs wrote: post #92
gabesullice wrote: post #2

Nitter: https://nitter.net/andrewmccalip/status/1687405505604734978#...

My online life has been way less stressful since I both deleted my Twitter account, and set up my own Nitter instance. Same goes for Reddit.

HN is all I have left. Been this way for a few years. I guess I still use Twitter, but just for local emergency news.

Re: Andrew McCalip demonstrates synthesis of LK99

#245

Post by mardifoufs »

marklubi wrote: post #231
jjoonathan wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Theranos raised $724 million using intentional deception. LK99 is an incomplete paper that someone posted to arXiv.

My comment had nothing to do about the money that Theranos raised, but about how the hype feels. Theranos was sooooo hyped on HN early on, and now we know how it turned out. This feels like practically a carbon copy of that hype.

Theranos had very little external hype. No one talked about Theranos until it blew up, outside of pretty niche fields. The founder tried to build some hype but it was still a pretty typical "tech startup founder hyping themselves up" type of situation

Re: Andrew McCalip demonstrates synthesis of LK99

#246

Post by stephenitis »

marklubi wrote: post #231
jjoonathan wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Theranos raised $724 million using intentional deception. LK99 is an incomplete paper that someone posted to arXiv.

My comment had nothing to do about the money that Theranos raised, but about how the hype feels. Theranos was sooooo hyped on HN early on, and now we know how it turned out. This feels like practically a carbon copy of that hype.

The hype is more warranted here because I think material and physics scientists are excited and publicly and clearly skeptical.

There is a wider knowledge that this may be nothing or somewhere in between. The rollercoaster following the developments is why the wider public is enjoying following it as science entertainment.

On Twitter it seems like crypto bros are trying to scam with a LK-99 coin.

AI/ML crowd is pondering what happens to computing power in 5-10-15 years if LK-99 is proven applicable to advance current technologies.

There is a large mix of aspirational futurism and a lot of tempered real science going on here.

All in real time, on active, Twitter, WeChat/Billibili(?) etc

Re: Andrew McCalip demonstrates synthesis of LK99

#247

Post by sudosysgen »

mycologos wrote: post #195
sanxiyn wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

World first replication was done by Iris Alexandra using her own accelerated process and there is no way Varda Space could have beaten her.

I don't understand why people are attaching any weight to Alexandra's claims. AFAIK, it's a pseudonymous account that has provided no evidence that couldn't be easily faked. You might object that the evidence provided by the non-pseudonymous scientists could also be faked, but the key distinction is that they're attaching real, professional identities to their claims. There are reputational consequences to making thi…

Not quite pseudonymous - she says her name is Iris Alexandria and that she's affiliated with the IGB in Russia and is now collaborating with the MEPI in producing more and measuring samples and that this is the reason why she doesn't publish any data as it's not hers and is bound for a publication, and that some of the researchers there are familiar with alternative superconducting theories which LK99's late PI was basing off on.

Of course it could all be faked, but she is prima facie attaching real, professional identities to her claims.

Re: Andrew McCalip demonstrates synthesis of LK99

#248

Post by ThisIsMyAltFace »

sanxiyn wrote: post #109
iamshs wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Her rock actually floats. Did it all in the kitchen too. She should rightly be credited as first one.

More than that, she calculated how high it will float, and how height will depend on temperature, before starting the experiment, and confirmed all her predictions.

Where did she do this? I haven't found anything in her twitter feed

Re: Andrew McCalip demonstrates synthesis of LK99

#250

Post by sudosysgen »

ThisIsMyAltFace wrote: post #217
sashank_1509 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A worthless replication. Grainy photos of supposed samples floating. When asked for videos she just insulted the people asking for videos to no end and to date has not provided any. No measurements provided either.

It wasn't even a replication by their own admission! https://nitter.net/iris_IGB/status/1685774956330635264#m They won't publish a preprint on their version because they think it would be "unfair"! https://nitter.net/iris_IGB/status/1687020011548770304#m Every post this person makes throws up more red flags. I have no idea why people believe any of their claims besides "haha anime girl"

I think you're misinterpreting the second tweet, I read it as "I can't publish a preprint myself since I'm not the only one working on it now, and my team doesn't feel our work is ready for publication". Of course it can still be bullshit but it makes sense that a biochemist doesn't have the means to test this material and that a credible physics institute wouldn't want to rush publication if they aren't sure of their results.
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