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LK-99 isn’t a superconductor

nature.com

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Re: LK-99 isn’t a superconductor

#421

Post by usrbinbash »

breuleux wrote: post #127
usrbinbash wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because a room-temp, amb-press superconductor, that can be made from readly available cheap materials, would be almost on par with the discovery of fire in terms of importance for our species technological capabilities. Even the simplest example of what that would mean is already amazing to our society: Imagine a power-grid that no longer loses power to electrical resistence in the wires.

> Imagine a power-grid that no longer loses power to electrical resistence in the wires. From what I can see the power loss is in the 8-15% range. It'd be awesome to save that, but it's not game changing, and you have to take into account the cost of replacing the wires.

> It'd be awesome to save that, but it's not game changing

An 8-15% increase in available electricity without any new power plants built isn't game changing?

The ability to transport power over longer distances, making eg. solar farms in remote locations suddenly feasible projects isn't game changing?

> and you have to take into account the cost of replacing the wires

No I really don't have to, as we, as a species, seem to have money in abundance. What we do not have in abundance, is biospheres. We have exactly one of those, and if it's ruined, all the money won't help.

The ability to suddenly boost the efficiency of our electrical grids by 8-15% would not solely solve the problems our species currently causes for itself, but it would help a ton.

Re: LK-99 isn’t a superconductor

#422

Post by deepspace »

floxy wrote: post #236
iraqmtpizza wrote: post #178

I don't see how 0.002 ohms per cm could be confused with superconductivity. Is that not orders of magnitude too high? Or there are no instruments which can directly measure resistance more precisely?

The units for resistivity would be ohms*cm (Ohms times a length), not Ohms per cm. Then if you divide by the cross-sectional area of a sample, you would get the resistance per length. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_resistivity_and_con...

Yes, I was typing faster than I was thinking. I should have said Resistivity instead of Resistance and ohms.m instead of ohms/m. My point is still valid, though.

Re: LK-99 isn’t a superconductor

#423

Post by plorg »

morelisp wrote: post #381
plorg wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN demonstrated its common ability to surface prolific posters who identify as autodidacts and appear to have gone on a Wikipedia binge this morning, but who nonetheless speak with a confidence that until now may only have been demonstrated by ChatGPT.

The absolute worst part is that some of these guys, especially the younger (e.g. fresh grad through ~30) ones, do this in person! I was out drinking with some colleagues a few months ago and I said something offhand in a normal human conversation about wanting to learn more about X, and one guy pulls out his phone and just starts reading me the Wikipedia article about X.

I could personally take or leave live readings of Wikipedia. I wouldn't do it, but I have also gone on my share of solo wiki binges. There's no problem with learning about things. The thing that bothers me is a room full of people with shallow knowledge of a subject who talk over anybody else. I think it's fine to care about things, but I need other people to be able to tune their volume to their level of knowledge and understanding, which you really can't do if you think you know everything.

Re: LK-99 isn’t a superconductor

#424

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: LK-99 isn’t a superconductor

#425

Post by xattt »

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 sounds a lot like the thoughts that one might have before the draw for a large lottery jackpot.

It’s a fun exercise, but it’s fantastical thinking.

Re: LK-99 isn’t a superconductor

#426

Post by spott »

feralderyl wrote: post #414

Has anyone ever worked out a "proof" that a room temperature/ambient pressure superconductor can even be made? Like is there a formula or something that can be pointed to that says, according to everything we know its even possible?

No. We don’t understand superconductivity well enough to even attempt something like that.

I think we can say that some of the current superconductor mechanisms don’t allow it at room temperature, but we don’t have enough of an overarching theory of superconductivity to say something like that more generally.

Re: LK-99 isn’t a superconductor

#427

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

penjelly wrote: post #392
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> instead of "the excitement was good for everyone" they might realize these hoaxes harm scientific integrity. Totally disagree. If anything, this whole episode (debacle?) reinforced the fact that science works and the process played out exactly how the scientific process should work: 1. First, the paper was originally posted on arxiv, meaning it was a pre-print and didn't go through any peer review. So the vast majo…

good points. I can agree to that. However, I do think something did break down and I think your assessment below is more accurate than my initial take. > One may argue that this was really a failure in media communication vs. the actual underlying science the scientific process and scientists here are innocent, media not so much in my eyes.

Yeah, I think Professor Moriarty in the video comes to a similar conclusion - he does say "in that sense is science working", and goes on to lament the problems with misinformation in the social media age. I can definitely sympathize with the frustration of scientists having to deal with so much social media bullshit, and people who so confidently believe "My ignorance is as equal as your hard work and experience."

That said, I really loved that Sixty Symbols video for a couple reasons:

1. First, Moriarty was pretty much exactly spot on in his skepticism: the reduction in resistivity is not the behavior you'd expect to see in a superconductor (turned out to be due to copper sulfide impurities), and that the floating in a magnet behavior is not that surprising and could be due to diamagnetism.

2. I wasn't previously that familiar with diamagnetism beyond a vague "I remember hearing about that", so this whole thing led me known the wikipedia rabbit hole to find out about diamagnetism which was really interesting to me.

3. Professor Moriarty explains "this is not how you do science" (bad science by over-hyped press release is at least as old as cold fusion) and gives very good advice on how you should do good science in an age of Arxiv.

Re: LK-99 isn’t a superconductor

#428

Post by trzy »

hunson_abadeer wrote: post #378
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.

This is precisely what put me off in these discussions. Not the idea that we might have found a room-temperature superconductor - that part was exciting. It's the part where people confidently talked about its applications without realizing that they probably wouldn't revolutionize CPU performance (Josephson junctions don't seem to work well as non-cryogenic temperatures for reasons unrelated to superconductivity), p…

Accelerationism has become a religion for many people working in tech. Social media is teaming with John the Baptists heralding the next messiah.

Re: LK-99 isn’t a superconductor

#429

Post by LanceH »

lamontcg wrote: post #123
_yb2s wrote: post #66

I would like to remind/point out how many people on here were bashing on American scientists for failing to replicate this in the first few days when labs around the world were confirming replication- saying they had lost their touch, and are no longer relevant.

Yeah that was one of the worst hottakes. Then getting called racist over having the opinion that the original authors sounded like amateurs. Then seeing that briefly turn on a dime and the Beijing University preprint being instantly discredited in favor of "wait for western institutions to weigh in".

I assume the apologies for calling skeptics racists will be going out shortly.

Re: LK-99 isn’t a superconductor

#430

Post by LanceH »

hospitalJail wrote: post #279

I love how quickly replication happened. This is science. Medicine/psychology/sociology and their inability to do replication is not science.

No replication in medicine? It's biology and messy, but how many do you know with polio? Lots of science going on there.
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