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I hope they don't experience undue blowback because of this.
Watching this unfold on HN has been eerily similar to watching r/UFOs whenever someone comes forward with "proof" of UFOs/coverups/whatever. I never want to rain on anyone's parade, as proof of ETs or room temperature superconductors would be great, but the hype only serves to obfuscate the truth. At this point, I'm prepped to disbelieve because of the obvious over-hyping. People want these things to be true so bad t…
"but the hype only serves to obfuscate the truth" Is that true? Do you think the Koreans or anyone would have made more progress finding the truth without the hype?
I don't understand how did LK-99 create such wuss in the first place.
Nothing can just be itself anymore, it's all gotta be grist.
What about L and K, the original scientists? Lots of speculation that LK-99 would be a career ending paper if it turned out that it wasn't a room temperature superconductor.
Watching this unfold on HN has been eerily similar to watching r/UFOs whenever someone comes forward with "proof" of UFOs/coverups/whatever. I never want to rain on anyone's parade, as proof of ETs or room temperature superconductors would be great, but the hype only serves to obfuscate the truth. At this point, I'm prepped to disbelieve because of the obvious over-hyping. People want these things to be true so bad t…
At least superconductors are a real thing.
I should keep that in perspective and be a little less harsh.
Which is more likely in our lifetime: aliens, or an ambient superconductor?
[1]: I actually agree that it's very likely that alien life either has existed, does exist, or will exist somewhere in the universe. My skepticism is towards the possibility of that life visiting Earth. And mostly for the exact same reason: because the universe is so damn big.
I found Thunderf00t's video on LK-99 to be funny because he pointed out something no one else did: In almost all applications of superconductors, they don't use high-temperature ones for one simple reason: Material properties. Most high-temp superconductors (including LK-99, he was assuming it was one, since he's not qualified to say one way or the other) are a ceramic. The ones that see use in the LHC, for instance,…
What are the practical implications of this?
We know why it fooled everybody, but AFAIK the material doesn't have any outstanding properties. With certain impurities and under certain conditions, it: - has a striking drop in resistivity during a temperature change — a property published in 1951 as a property of copper sulfide - has some ferromagnetic properties — enough to be tipped up in a magnetic field but not to levitate
I'm still interested int hat, as it seems like it could be quite useful and the LK-99 material is not especially hard to produce.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed! There's this bizarre reaction I see from many where they see the excitement and curiosity and hopefulness as a form of error and source of embarrassment. When mixed with an open mind and reasonable skepticism, it's a powerful opportunity to get people engaged in imagining a different world. I had all kinds of exciting conversations about what a validated, commercially viable LK-99 could produce. Why would I e…
HN discussion did not particlarly have "reasonable skepticism". This is probably because people (i) were not aware that there had been many other hypes about RTSC before but less publicly visible all proved to be false, (ii) not being able to accurately judge the technical quality of the initial evidence, (iii) uncritically believing that the data in the initial preprints was proof for superconductivity because their…
While a convenient abstraction, it plays into our biases to notice and remember only some of the discourse.
Plus I don't think it's really relevant to what I'm saying given I'm not making a claim about how any specific individual or group reacted, but that it's odd when there's people who treat an optimistic outlook as an error.