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Andrew McCalip demonstrates synthesis of LK99

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Re: Andrew McCalip demonstrates synthesis of LK99

#251

Post by stephenitis »

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 believe she said it wasn't a replication because she had changed the formula.

She seemed to have problems with the efficiency of the original formula, which is why I believe she doesn't believe it's replication what she produced may in the end not be LK-99.

It seems like she's in the process of getting X-ray diffraction analysis (XRD) done.

There has been several fake videos placed out there on the Internet.

There is a quote by jay-z I'll paraphrase

" Men lie

Women lie

But replicable science don't lie. "

The mixture of USSR tweets has patriotic Americans so ruffled that some can't see through their disbelief and rage.

Re: Andrew McCalip demonstrates synthesis of LK99

#252

Post by SubiculumCode »

stephenitis wrote: post #246
marklubi wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ponde…

a decent crypto strat is to buy a coin named after a major news event asap, then sell within a day

Re: Andrew McCalip demonstrates synthesis of LK99

#253

Post by delabay »

xvector wrote: post #147
sashank_1509 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, that Russian anime girl shud not be getting any credit, I don’t say this because of her anonymity but because of her absolute refusal to take a video or do absolutely anything that can make outsiders trust her claims.

I don't understand why she would be like this. Why would anyone hold back the production process for a material that could change humanity forever?

Anime cat girls contribution to this memetic superconductor conversation 5% smart sounding commentary, 5% test result and 90% cancer.

Re: Andrew McCalip demonstrates synthesis of LK99

#254

Post by alsaaro »

devwastaken wrote: post #172
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…

Private R&D has always towered above academics. People who can compete create significant innovations. People who can't compete stay as professors doing research because it's the easiest and most convenient pathway.

Maybe.

A better explanation for the slowness of the national laboratories is they their word will be taken more definitively on this issue than anyone else.

They are the ones with reputations and have to answer to critics in the private sector, amateur sector, and in Congress.

I think their slowness is an encouraging sign, it means LK99 isn't easily debunked.

Re: Andrew McCalip demonstrates synthesis of LK99

#255

Post by jcranmer »

anonylizard wrote: post #112
DoingIsLearning wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first pre-print came out on 22 July (if I am not mistaken). Not enough time has passed pure and simple. If I was an academic working on this, I would be following the Sagan Standard and triple checking my results before claiming anything. I think we are all suffering from 24 hour news cycles. The work in China and now Varda is very exciting but they are warp speed developments.

This is simply what post-peer-review looks like. Instead of a few anonymous peer reviews, you get the entire planet to replicate. Moment you get something meaningful, publish it on arxiv. Quantity, not quality is king. Anomalies are drowned out by large samples. Questionable methods get mass debated in public. Scientists are dependent on public funding, why squander the biggest moment in pop science for literal decad…

There is a new claim or two of room-temperature superconductors published on Arxiv every year: https://nitter.net/peternemes/status/1684483863999827973#m... and yet this is the only one that sets the Twitters afire.

The reaction I've seen from most of the scientists has been pretty negative on the papers. The originals aren't strong papers. The chemistry has issues: https://nitter.net/Robert_Palgrave/status/168545015680691814... (unbalanced equations, starting materials have pretty different element ratios to final products). As for the main claim, note that LK-99 seems to be a poorer conductor than copper wire at room temperature: https://nitter.net/bedoya_pinto/status/1686848392616423425#m... which is the kind of thing that should really cause a record scratch and make everyone go "um, I think you did something wrong there"--it's something that absolutely would be caught in peer review.

Re: Andrew McCalip demonstrates synthesis of LK99

#256

Post by stephenitis »

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…

I was impressed by this being an extra time endeavor.

It does show genuine scientific curiousity from Andrew and his team(they might just be along for the ride).

If more company bonding events could be live streamed/tweeted experimental replication attempts of novel compounds instead of happy hours.

The world would be a stranger place.

Re: Andrew McCalip demonstrates synthesis of LK99

#257

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Andrew McCalip demonstrates synthesis of LK99

#258

Post by dotnet00 »

MetaWhirledPeas wrote: post #214
generalizations wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What matters is the discovery of new things that are true, that we can do engineering with. Publication by youtube & arxiv doesn't have to be oriented at public consumption - it works just as well when it's by-researchers, for-researchers. Except without gatekeeping, people like McCalip can participate too. Who cares who's sitting on the sidelines? In post-peer-review, industry-funded academics rush a paper to a prep…

Agreed. What I don't understand is the gatekeeping. Why would the actions of outsiders have any bearing on "real" research? Are they worried that grant money will get redirected toward shallower, more glamorous groups?

I think the gatekeeping is relevant because almost every time in recent years that the general completely unvetted, often actively ignorant public has gotten an in on the scientific/R&D process, it has been a disaster for the field.

NASA can't take risks and seriously innovate anymore because even intentional explosions will be passed off as failures, we all experienced the sheer madness of the covid years, similarly anything nuclear brings complete randos out of the woodworks claiming absurd things about its dangers.

Not having some amount of gatekeeping just lowers the bar too much and introduces so much more noise.

Re: Andrew McCalip demonstrates synthesis of LK99

#259

Post by lopkeny12ko »

ssijak wrote: post #12
gabesullice wrote: post #2

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

pardon my ignorance but why are people posting nitter links every time, what is wrong with original twitter urls?

Because people on HN love to hate on Elon.

"Elon bad! Twitter bad!" It's uninspired and tiring.

Re: Andrew McCalip demonstrates synthesis of LK99

#260

Post by username332211 »

kijin wrote: post #213
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.

It's the same in Korea where the research originated. A bunch of professors belonging to a hastily formed academic committee are trying to monopolize the public debate, quibbling about errors in the arxiv paper and demanding that Lee & Kim turn over samples of LK-99 because the big-name professors are obviously too busy to make their own. It seems that their first priority is to avoid a repeat of the Hwang scandal th…

Any time the material exhibits a properties inconsistent with superconductors, the to-go explanation is that it's supposedly extremely difficult to manufacture. Not to mention, the original instructions include stuff like "The sealed tube containing the mixed powder was heated in a furnace at 925°C for 5-20 hours." which sounds a tad bit imprecise.

Don't you think in those conditions it's at least a little bit reasonable to demand samples?

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