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LK-99 isn’t a superconductor

nature.com

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Re: LK-99 isn’t a superconductor

#151

Post by at_a_remove »

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.

One of my professors was an expert in the Helium-3 isotope. Spent a lot of time on the second excited state.

Re: LK-99 isn’t a superconductor

#152

Post by chefandy »

lamontcg wrote: post #115
chefandy wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jeez— it's almost like few people around here are physicists, consider physicists credible on their specialty, saw physicists excited by the potential, and get excited by exciting things. What a shamefully foolish intellectual failure!

> saw physicists excited by the potential, Mostly I saw actual physicists who had experience in the field being very skeptical, throwing a lot of cold water on the fire, and pointing out that the original authors looked like amateurs. And then I saw a lot of people with zero experience in the field running around yelling about how they were out of touch, how this was a revolutionary new way that science would progres…

So... who cares? Why should laypeople be expected to engage in that much analysis solely to avoid excitement? These aren't policy makers. No lives were lost. Only keystrokes were wasted... and, calling them wasted is probably too harsh. Lots of people learned what a cool thing this would be if it happened, are disappointed that this isn't it, and might even be a little more interested in physics going forward. Why are you so emotionally invested in saying "told ya so"?

Re: LK-99 isn’t a superconductor

#153

Post by willis936 »

kergonath wrote: post #71
reportingsjr wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 bi…

That's fine but YBCO is a crystalline ceramic.

Re: LK-99 isn’t a superconductor

#154

Post by graypegg »

You know what? I needed that saga. That was fun. I don’t think I’ve been this interested in any research project since being a kid skimming thru popular science or something :)

It’s been so cool to see all of the replication studies, people talking about the latest news and all of that. Kind of a peek behind the scientific curtain to see all of the work that goes into confirming claims.

Re: LK-99 isn’t a superconductor

#155

Post by willis936 »

fluoridation wrote: post #136
rowanG077 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There is nothing remotely close to the category of "stp superconductor". This is quite obvious when looking at a plot of critical limits of known superconductors.

Re: LK-99 isn’t a superconductor

#156

Post by agrippanux »

My wife will be very happy.

When I explained to her the potential if it truly was the breakthrough being reported, her first reaction was:

"I hope we establish a government agency to regulate everything floating around because I don't want to get bumped into by random stuff".

Re: LK-99 isn’t a superconductor

#158

Post by EvgeniyZh »

tareqak wrote: post #8
wayvey wrote: post #3

What are the practical implications of this?

Perhaps scientists will create a checklist for performing experiments on potential superconductive materials with caveats and gotchas. A team going down the checklist would either demonstrate one of 1. They performed the step in the checklist and provide the corresponding sufficient/exhaustive evidence of having done so. 2. An explanation as to why that step is not applicable allowing them to skip said step. An after…

1. Check that it actually superconducts

Re: LK-99 isn’t a superconductor

#159

Post by kergonath »

willis936 wrote: post #153
kergonath wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 bi…

That's fine but YBCO is a crystalline ceramic.

Indeed. With a perovskite-related structure.

Re: LK-99 isn’t a superconductor

#160

Post by IG_Semmelweiss »

ugh123 wrote: post #70
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…

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

it took 1 weekend of developers and support staff, tucked away in a conference room, for overstock.com to accept crypto payments on their site.

I think we can do better!

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