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LK-99: The live online race for a room-temperature superconductor

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Re: LK-99: The live online race for a room-temperature superconductor

#11

Post by VierScar »

aqme28 wrote: post #6

Been following this very closely. Seems like the one takeaway is that whatever material this is, it's interesting. It's also difficult to synthesize in bulk, which is a shame because superconductivity is not easy to observe in non-bulk materials (think: powder). Note: I have a physics degree and a little bit of condensed matter experience, but nothing like anyone actually working in the field. Just some graduate cour…

Why is it hard to make in bulk? I thought the chemicals were easy and cheap to obtain, and then you bake it at a high temp?

What makes it difficult?

Re: LK-99: The live online race for a room-temperature superconductor

#13

Post by jansan »

aqme28 wrote: post #6

Been following this very closely. Seems like the one takeaway is that whatever material this is, it's interesting. It's also difficult to synthesize in bulk, which is a shame because superconductivity is not easy to observe in non-bulk materials (think: powder). Note: I have a physics degree and a little bit of condensed matter experience, but nothing like anyone actually working in the field. Just some graduate cour…

> It's also difficult to synthesize in bulk

Is there any hard limitation that prevents synthesizing in bulk? If not, I would not worry about this at the moment and if it proves to be a material with desirable properties just leave it up to the engineers who will hopefully find a suitable production process.

Re: LK-99: The live online race for a room-temperature superconductor

#15

Post by aqme28 »

VierScar wrote: post #11
aqme28 wrote: post #6

Been following this very closely. Seems like the one takeaway is that whatever material this is, it's interesting. It's also difficult to synthesize in bulk, which is a shame because superconductivity is not easy to observe in non-bulk materials (think: powder). Note: I have a physics degree and a little bit of condensed matter experience, but nothing like anyone actually working in the field. Just some graduate cour…

Why is it hard to make in bulk? I thought the chemicals were easy and cheap to obtain, and then you bake it at a high temp? What makes it difficult?

I don’t have really any expertise here but it looks like it bakes into a powder pretty much every time. Sure you get LK-99, but you can’t measure superconductivity in a powder since it’s a bulk property.

Re: LK-99: The live online race for a room-temperature superconductor

#17

Post by aqme28 »

jansan wrote: post #13
aqme28 wrote: post #6

Been following this very closely. Seems like the one takeaway is that whatever material this is, it's interesting. It's also difficult to synthesize in bulk, which is a shame because superconductivity is not easy to observe in non-bulk materials (think: powder). Note: I have a physics degree and a little bit of condensed matter experience, but nothing like anyone actually working in the field. Just some graduate cour…

> It's also difficult to synthesize in bulk Is there any hard limitation that prevents synthesizing in bulk? If not, I would not worry about this at the moment and if it proves to be a material with desirable properties just leave it up to the engineers who will hopefully find a suitable production process.

There’s not really such a thing as superconductivity for a fine powder, so people are having trouble determining if this material even superconducts.

edit to clarify: Bulk here refers to having a single chunk of the material, and does not refer to the total quantity. Some physical properties only exist or only surface in chunks of material, not in the powder form.

Re: LK-99: The live online race for a room-temperature superconductor

#18

Post by danbruc »

jboggan wrote: post #4

This live crowdsourced approach is a far better way to test and refine hypotheses than peer review and the current state of science journals.

Only as long as the experiments are reasonably simple. There are probably still some things requiring only simple experiments to be discovered, but most of the low hanging fruit has probably already been consumed by a couple of centuries of experimentation and scientific progress.

Re: LK-99: The live online race for a room-temperature superconductor

#20

Post by TheAceOfHearts »

Saw some people hyping up markets where people are betting on prediction markets whether or not LK-99 will replicate. Can't help but feel like that money would be better spent just paying off some labs to actually try to replicate the process.

The response I got from a predictions market enthusiast was that having a sufficiently large market would motivate people to attempt to have the process replicated and buy options on the outcome once they confirm their findings in order to cash out. Which gives me strong feelings of scamming the uninformed and gullible.

As for comments on LK-99 itself, I don't understand why nobody has gotten their hands on an existing sample to verify that it's legitimate. Shouldn't the minimum requirements be a magnet and the material sample, to demonstrate it floating through the meissner effect?

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