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LK-99 isn’t a superconductor

nature.com

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Re: LK-99 isn’t a superconductor

#131

Post by tuatoru »

empath-nirvana wrote: post #83
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…

Room temperature superconductivity, like quantum computing, fusion power, and em drives, and other similar "magic" technologies, have one thing in common, which is that the potential consequences of their existence are positive, substantial, and relatively easy to explain and to comprehend, while the difficulties preventing those technologies from seeing the light of day are complex, difficult, and a "bummer" to hear…

I'm struggling with the claimed consequences.

The electricity grid has losses of about 30 percent, so a fully superconducting grid could increase delivered power by about 43 percent, not an order of magnitude more.

More compact MRI machines would be nice to have, certainly, but wouldn't materially change mortality.

What else is there?

Re: LK-99 isn’t a superconductor

#132

Post by djtango »

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…

So they saw a large change in resistivity at 104C but what's not clear from this excerpt is why the Cu2S was a confounding factor, or isnt interesting.

Is it that LK99 had impurities of Cu2S and the properties of Cu2S dominated but we already know things about Cu2S?

Re: LK-99 isn’t a superconductor

#133

Post by putnambr »

kergonath wrote: post #63
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,…

> 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, aren't. Aren’t the LHC magnets niobium-titanium? Those aren’t high temperature superconductors. Though it is indeed a metal under any definition. The rule of thumb is that high-temperature superconductors can be cooled by li…

Did you skip over "In almost all applications of superconductors, they don't use high-temperature ones for one simple reason: Material properties."

They're saying that LHC does not use a ceramic, and therefore high-temperature, superconductor; instead they use metallic (cooled) superconductors because they can be molded.

Re: LK-99 isn’t a superconductor

#134

Post by slashdev »

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.

I think it’s fair to say that even as a failure, it’s likely to stimulate much more attention, funding, and research in the area of high temperature superconductors going forward.

That’s great.

Re: LK-99 isn’t a superconductor

#135

Post by xwdv »

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.

I disagree. I get pissed off when revolutionary scientific news is brought to me only to turn out to be some bogus crap. I don’t care about the replication and peer review process, it’s not fun, it’s banal. I would much rather have preferred to learn about LK-99 once it was confirmed to be a room temp superconductor, and if it wasn’t then I’d rather never hear about it.

Now I have to walk back explanations I gave to various people and explain LK-99 actually isn’t special at all. I will look like a god damn idiot.

The whole time LK-99 was in the news, we were wringing our hands about potential uses and the impact it would have on our world. For once it seemed maybe there was hope that we’d see exciting times again with exponential advances in technology. That dream has now been thoroughly eradicated.

By the time a true room temp superconductor comes out, it probably won’t be in our lifetimes.

Re: LK-99 isn’t a superconductor

#136

Post by fluoridation »

rowanG077 wrote: post #95
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 problem, which is often the case with Thunderf00t, is that he is missing the forest for the trees. No one who knows anything was thinking of using LK-99 for serious applications. The specs of LK-99 where just too shit. What it would have been is a start shot for understanding the effect and creating more useful materials based on the same underlying physical process.

Thunderf00t's point, though, is that LK-99 is not novel in its material category. High temperature superconductors that are hard and brittle already existed. What would be interesting would be a malleable high temperature semiconductor, because then you can make it into cables.

Re: LK-99 isn’t a superconductor

#137

Post by kergonath »

archepyx wrote: post #31
Waterluvian wrote: post #11

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…

> HN discussion did not particlarly have "reasonable skepticism"

There was a dose of Dunning-Kruger, and some software engineers telling us how to science, but there was also a lot of engagement and interesting discussions with genuine experts. Overall I found it quite interesting to follow.

> uncritically believing that the data in the initial preprints was proof for superconductivity because their authors said so.

It had undertones of small team (in a private institution, no less) taking on the stodgy establishment, which is quite popular among some people here. The concepts are also not very difficult to grasp on surface, so a lot of people can form an opinion, however well founded.

People complain about peer review and scientific publisher as well. It is not difficult to see how this could push them to champion something that comes from arxiv.

Re: LK-99 isn’t a superconductor

#138

Post by malux85 »

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?

Strawman argument - You are reducing the comment to "Hacker News" when thats not at all what they said, they said "The hype".

For sure the hype caused a lot more focus on reproducability attempts than it would have got otherwise.

Re: LK-99 isn’t a superconductor

#139

Post by mgfist »

dralley wrote: post #41

Honestly, I feel bad for the original authors, who were correctly holding out for stronger evidence but were forced into publishing early by the actions of a third party going behind their backs. I hope they don't experience undue blowback because of this.

Yet we're all the better for it happening. Even for the original researchers - maybe it would've taken them another 10 years to get to a similar conclusion. Now, they can take the next step and not waste more time.

Re: LK-99 isn’t a superconductor

#140

Post by ugh123 »

makeitdouble wrote: post #103
ugh123 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine if we could get all the materials science experts tucked away in a lab for a year working together with a large budget...

Their family would be miserable, their kids would swear to never become a material science expert, and they'd all be missing on the cross discussions with other fields and inspirations coming from outside the material science world ? Not really trying to be flippant, but that pretty much feels like a James Bond villain fantasy, and only a few select people would probably enjoy the setting. We kinda have a real world…

Maybe someone with a billion dollars could re-locate them and their families onto some posh island all expenses paid. If Elon had instead invested 40B into this and other tactical science projects rather than dump it into Twitter, imagine the possibilities lol.
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