But can they replicate the experiment on a cold rainy night in Stoke?
"You're gonna need a bigger bowl of popcorn!"
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But can they replicate the experiment on a cold rainy night in Stoke?
"You're gonna need a bigger bowl of popcorn!"
this video sent by one of the original authors to the NY Times is the most significant peace of evidence to me: https://vp.nyt.com/video/2023/08/03/110377_1_03superconducto...
So basically is looking like mostly a no? The replications haven't been encouraging so far.
First, a theoretical study found that the phase that’s reported to be superconducting is likely to be metastable based on some density functional theory calculations. That implies that actually making it may be rather difficult, and raises the bar for reproductions to show exactly what they are finding is superconducting or not. https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.16892
The second study was a comparison of the properties of superconducting Pb thin films with some of the data people have been reporting on LK-99 repro attempts. The authors hypothesize that people are getting micron to several nanometer sized particles of the superconducting phase embedded in an amporphous non-superconducting phase, and that this explains the mixed results. https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.01723
So, more careful analysis is needed and I’m still optimistic. I want to see much better x-ray and microscopic characterization along with the resistance data and so on, especially because the property measurements can be tricky. (My background is materials science but not superconductivity or condensed matter physics if that matters)
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China went from agricultural an third world country to a main contributor in many domains and the manufacturer of all our tech gadgets, in the same time the west pretty much stagnated
So basically is looking like mostly a no? The replications haven't been encouraging so far.
The only thing we need is solid evidence that it's superconducting. If anyone has a stone that's superconducting at room temperature, then we know it's out there, it's possible to make it. It doesn't matter so much how it was made. If it exists, that's a great step in itself, isn't it?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hard to say. The samples that didn't achieve diamagnetism don't tell us much except that creating LK-99 is tricky, which is not a big deal. If someone can show both diamagnetism and prove that it is not a superconductor then that would be pretty discouraging.
Hm, but diamagnetism in itself doesn't mean that it's a superconductor, no? There are a few diamagnetic materials that aren't superconductors, AFAIK.
If someone can show that it is diamagnetic and not superconducting then that could be evidence that they recreated the same material, but that it doesn't show superconductivity.
I keep expecting to see coverage of this in what some would term the "mainstream" press but it's crickets. I refuse to believe that they're waiting for more results either, even the more reputable publications will carry junk science. At the very least there's an interesting story to tell in the publishing of the paper.