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LK-99 isn’t a superconductor

nature.com

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Re: LK-99 isn’t a superconductor

#71

Post by kergonath »

reportingsjr wrote: post #48
Moomoomoo309 wrote: post #25

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,…

The current generation of mass manufactured high temperature superconducting tape is based on YBCO, which is a crystalline material (presumably what is meant here when saying ceramic). So the argument that superconductors need to be metallic/malleable to be useful doesn't really make a lot of sense.

> presumably what is meant here when saying ceramic

Probably not. Being crystalline and being a ceramic are completely unrelated. Standard superconductors like niobium-tin and niobium-titanium are crystalline metals (intermetallic alloys). The vast majority of metals are crystalline, to the point that when a company tried to make a metallic glass a couple of years ago (under the name Liquid Metal), it made quite a bit of noise.

Re: LK-99 isn’t a superconductor

#72

Post by Permit »

chubot wrote: post #5

Well I'm kinda glad I missed this whole news cycle IMO this phenomenon seems to be kind of an artifact of modern media -- I feel like in the old days, peers would have settled it among themselves, and we would have never heard about it The same thing happens in tech -- there is a lot of stuff that people talk about, that ends up being worth ignoring ... I always bring up that whole news cycle in 2017 about a potentia…

> Well I'm kinda glad I missed this whole news cycle

What negative effects would you have suffered if you had not missed this news cycle?

Re: LK-99 isn’t a superconductor

#73

Post by dmboyd »

1-6 wrote: post #7

Once again, South Korea's academia overwhelms/overpromises but under-delivers. This is surely going to be a 'boy who cried wolf' moment for Korean schools.

On root-cause, I wonder if it’s some variation or combination of “publish or perish” linked to failure averse political and cultural structures? I don’t think the circumstances are unique to SK as you see similar effect globally where success is measured purely quantitatively (I.e X number of published papers for promotion, X% score on a test to avoid military service). One thing I can’t get my head around is how the surrounding narrative was so bizarre. Particularly the “death bed dying wish”. Is this a result of 20+ years of lead poisoning combined with aforementioned political issues?

Re: LK-99 isn’t a superconductor

#74

Post by kergonath »

darth_avocado wrote: post #51
vecter wrote: post #14

In their preprint, the Korean authors note one particular temperature at which LK-99’s showed a tenfold drop in resistivity, from about 0.02 ohms per centimetre to 0.002 ohms per cm. “They were very precise about it. 104.8ºC,” says Prashant Jain, a chemist at the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign. “I was like, wait a minute, I know this temperature.” The reaction that synthesizes LK-99 uses an unbalanced recipe…

> Jain, a copper-sulfide expert I would have never known that people are actual experts in one material. This is impressive.

You have to (though in general we’re expert on a couple of classes of compounds rather than just one). The literature is just too vast to follow otherwise. Particularly in fashionable fields with loads of funding like high-temperature superconductors, battery materials, PV materials, fuel cells, things like that.

Re: LK-99 isn’t a superconductor

#75

Post by MichaelZuo »

Waterluvian wrote: post #50
archepyx wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I find it perilous to treat an entire community as it if has one voice. Ie. "the HN discussion" as a singular entity with a singular binary state on its skepticism. Someone else could equally claim that the HN community was super pessimistic and skeptical about it, because I certainly saw a lot of that too! While a convenient abstraction, it plays into our biases to notice and remember only some of the discourse. Plu…

> 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.

An optimistic outlook without a semi-plausible basis that you can convincingly elaborate on, or link a vaguely credible source doing so, IS an error, at least going by HN norms.

Re: LK-99 isn’t a superconductor

#76

Post by lolinder »

Waterluvian wrote: post #11
thinkingkong wrote: post #2

It’s disappointing news but the excitement and amount of replication on this paper was pretty fun to witness and experience. To me the most interesting part was everyone talking about potential consequences, uses, the order of magnitude improvements we’d see in certain costs or areas. Pumps, MRIs, power grids, chips, etc. Great reminder what materials science can do to some underlying economics.

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…

In this case, I think the excitement and hopefulness was not dangerous or wrong, but I do see a risk to this kind of preprint hype in other contexts.

During COVID there were multiple cases like this where a study got a lot of hype and discussion from non-experts and turned into "the science says X", when in fact the science was as of yet extremely unsettled. Sure enough, as the experts came to a consensus it rarely matched the public's initial perception, which led to a lot of confusion, conspiracy theories, and fingerpointing.

Science-as-spectator-sport is fun, but I worry about the impact it will have on society as a whole and on the execution of science in particular. How many research decisions will be influenced by the possibility of going viral? How many bad decisions will be made as a result of pressure from millions of non-experts who briefly become armchair X-ologists?

Re: LK-99 isn’t a superconductor

#77

Post by kergonath »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #69
darth_avocado wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Jain, a copper-sulfide expert I would have never known that people are actual experts in one material. This is impressive.

I work with people who have basically researched amorphous silicon for decades.

Yeah. Not surprising. My Master’s supervisor did, though he branched out after a while. I know people who’ve spent almost their entire career on iron.

Re: LK-99 isn’t a superconductor

#78

Post by chpatrick »

zephyrthenoble wrote: post #42
postalrat wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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?

Are you implying that people on Hacker News saying LK-99 is a superconductor helped the scientific community in some way?

Did it "obfuscate the truth"?

The truth was only discovered because the hype made a lot of scientists investigate the material.

Re: LK-99 isn’t a superconductor

#79

Post by m3kw9 »

Thats the first news that really torpedo this sc claim.(a Cooper sulphide expert recognizing the main claim of 104c of a resistance drop was in fact a know property of a non superconductor). It’s too much of a coincidence plus the guy wouldn’t lie.

Re: LK-99 isn’t a superconductor

#80

Post by baron816 »

thinkingkong wrote: post #2

It’s disappointing news but the excitement and amount of replication on this paper was pretty fun to witness and experience. To me the most interesting part was everyone talking about potential consequences, uses, the order of magnitude improvements we’d see in certain costs or areas. Pumps, MRIs, power grids, chips, etc. Great reminder what materials science can do to some underlying economics.

It was kind of like thinking about winning the lottery—the fun is in the fantasy of it.
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