If this material does just what they say it does, what would it revolutionise?
Or as the article talks about, is this just a pointer at other possibilities that would be the real game changers?
Superconductor news: What’s claimed, and how strong the evidence seems to be
11–20 of 501 posts
Re: Superconductor news: What’s claimed, and how strong the evidence seems to be
#12This is an extremely useful summarization of the original paper.
> The authors believe that the modified/strained structure of their material creates a large number of “quantum wells” between particular lead atoms and the adjacent oxygens of the phosphate groups bound to them, in effect making a two-dimensional “electron gas”. They propose that electron tunneling between these quantum wells, which are between 3.7 and 6.5 Ångstroms apart, is the superconducting mechanism. I am not enough of a solid-state physicist to judge this proposal, but the authors are making a detailed mechanistic claim that is subject to experimental proof, which is very good to see, and and they adduce a good deal of data to back it up (x-ray diffraction, EPR, and more). And they demonstrate the behaviors that a superconductor should have, such as the Meissner effect (expulsion of a magnetic field), sudden resistivity changes at a critical temperature (bizarrely high though that is in this case), current-voltage (I-V) plots at different temperatures and under different magnetic field strengths, etc. If these data reproduce, the superconductivity of this material seems beyond doubt.
Re: Superconductor news: What’s claimed, and how strong the evidence seems to be
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a reasonable enough paper, and replicating should be pretty easy (an undergrad could do it). Because the implications are so massive if true, people are going to jump on it. From the linked article: > You can bet that furnaces in solid-state materials labs around the world have been cooking yesterday and today to try to reproduce its synthesis and the properties, and we should be hearing about the results of the…
Yes, that quote from the article makes it seem like everyone is dropping everything and jumping right on it. I'm wondering how likely that is we'll find out this Friday vs. in the next couple of months, as people get around to it.
Friday is more plausible than a couple months. If the radio silence ends up extending well-into next week, people are having trouble replicating and want to cross their ts before calling it out as fraud.
Re: Superconductor news: What’s claimed, and how strong the evidence seems to be
#14Lots of people are saying there should be a quick turnaround time here for trying the replication. I wonder how much it would cost to try and replicate this, in materials, labor costs, and vacuum furnace time/costs. My naive thought is that that labs in general aren't just going to drop everything to try an replicate every instance of someone declaring they've discovered room temperature superconductivity. Seems more…
It doesn't require the kind of equipment that you have to justify to accountants and run at full capacity. And while the reactants are things that I believe most labs won't have at hand, they are the kind of thing anybody can buy on the web to arrive this week.
Whether people will stop what they are doing to verify it is literally a matter of people stopping what they are doing. University labs are usually quick on that.
Re: Superconductor news: What’s claimed, and how strong the evidence seems to be
#15What do the "super forecasters" have to say about this? Was this predicted on prediction markets? Was the assumption of this tech existing already factored into prediction models?
Re: Superconductor news: What’s claimed, and how strong the evidence seems to be
#16[deleted]
Re: Superconductor news: What’s claimed, and how strong the evidence seems to be
#17This video (https://sciencecast.org/casts/suc384jly50n) showing the Meissner effect should be the easiest to replicate: just send a sample to another lab and put it over a large magnet.
As far as I know, the only explanations for this occurring is room temp superconductivity, or a strong diamagnetism (which would also be very cool to see)!
Re: Superconductor news: What’s claimed, and how strong the evidence seems to be
#18So what kinds of cool stuff could be built with a room temperature superconductor? Better levitating trains?
Re: Superconductor news: What’s claimed, and how strong the evidence seems to be
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not much, see article (~1 day), or article + thread from yesterday. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36864624 I don't think, at least generally, work is as rigid as indicated. At least at white collar jobs, and especially a research lab, and most especially a university research lab.
$10, $100, $1,000? 1 hour, 10 hours of labor?
If you have the equipment, some $100s on consumables, some 10 hours of labor, and some 60 hours of waiting.
Re: Superconductor news: What’s claimed, and how strong the evidence seems to be
#20Lots of people are saying there should be a quick turnaround time here for trying the replication. I wonder how much it would cost to try and replicate this, in materials, labor costs, and vacuum furnace time/costs. My naive thought is that that labs in general aren't just going to drop everything to try an replicate every instance of someone declaring they've discovered room temperature superconductivity. Seems more…
Just testing the samples already made in an independent laboratory would be replication enough!