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Room temperature, ambient pressure superconductivity – this time for real?

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Re: Room temperature, ambient pressure superconductivity – this time for real?

#141

Post by dang »

carabiner wrote: post #40
febed wrote: post #28

A source (German) attributed to the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research thinks the paper is bogus [0] [0] https://blog.fefe.de/?ts=9a3f8740

In a week there will be a lot of thinkpieces on how the internet got this so wrong. A lot of people just want to believe, full of hope, because their life situations (poverty, housing crisis, hot weather) are so dire.

As far as HN's discussion goes, I'd say the community has been getting it right. The conversation has been curious and substantive, everyone knows it's probably not true, but most are not making shallow dismissals. There's a shared sense of waiting for the replications to succeed or fail, and in the meantime, discussion of the details as well as what the impact would be if it does turn out. Also driving interest is that the claims are said to be easy to replicate if true, so the answer is expected any time now. Imminence fuels anticipation—like waiting for election results.

The shallow dismissal reaction is taking for granted that it's not real and everyone's wrong to give it a chance. The thing is, almost everything is wrong—you can rely on this almost completely, and placing your bet on "wrong wrong wrong" achieves a high batting average—you'll be right almost all the time. The trouble is that your expected value will be zero, and you will be both bored and boring (I don't mean you personally—this is a common pattern and we all do it to some extent).

It's in the low-probability/high-impact quadrant that the interesting things reside, alongside crank material and dross, and it's not easy to tell them apart. That's natural. But one thing we can be sure of is that rejecting everything in that quadrant is a sure way to fail in the long run, and probably also to keep oneself in a bad mood.

Re: Room temperature, ambient pressure superconductivity – this time for real?

#142

Post by calf »

guerrilla wrote: post #113
Tuna-Fish wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Computers would still get hot, because the main cause of heat is not resistance in wires, it's that when a transistor switches with charge in the gate, you need to dump that charge, and when you do this it turns to heat. They would get less hot, because there are plenty of transmission losses too.

People were arguing about this earlier (some claimimg the opposite) but I didn't see a conclusion. Do you have an external citation handy?

Where was the argument, may I see it?

I vaguely remember switching current and leakage current as sources of heat, but mircoelectronic circuits has been a while for me...

Re: Room temperature, ambient pressure superconductivity – this time for real?

#143

Post by CoastalCoder »

ccppurcell wrote: post #136
CoastalCoder wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks! I've casually studied German, but I'd never come across "Jo". "Jo" kind of reminds me of Dutch vs. German, where many corresponding words are just slightly different.

Jo (pronounced a bit like your without the r sound) is affirmative in lots of European languages, including Finnish and Czech (it's spelled joo in Finnish iirc)

Interesting. In colloquial (American?) English, "yo" is used to get someone's attention, or to you've heard someone asking if you're present.

E.g., "Yo! Doofenschmirtz! You're new inator has been delivered."

Or: "Is Phineas here?" "Yo!"

Re: Room temperature, ambient pressure superconductivity – this time for real?

#144

Post by bloopernova »

phoenixstrike wrote: post #129
bloopernova wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I apologize if I came across as insinuating it was an error, I was just asking you for your assessment of the chances it could be an error. I'm not well versed in the subtleties of physics experiment measurement, so I figured I'd ask. It's difficult for a layperson to determine which "side" is right when battle lines are drawn after these types of announcements.

I know, I did not think for a moment that you were making such an accusation. I was referring to the other comments on HN/reddit over the past week making those accusations. Sorry if my comment came off that way.

Oh! Sorry again for my overreaction :D Absolutely no problem, I'm glad it was cleared up.

Ah well, at least we weren't attacking each other. Thank you for the original comment that was informative, I learned something from reading it.

Re: Room temperature, ambient pressure superconductivity – this time for real?

#145

Post by naillo »

dang wrote: post #134
naillo wrote: post #14

You can tell when someone shouldn't be listened to online if they feel a need to give a "take" to this piece of news. Just wait until we get actual results if you don't have a physics phd at minimum no need for any rushed take otherwise.

You're asking people not to be people. Having reactions and opinions and shooting the shit is what we do, and part of how we learn. HN is an internet watercooler. It's natural and fine for people to talk about the latest interesting things—that's what this place is for, and there's no need to be right all the time.

You're right dang

Re: Room temperature, ambient pressure superconductivity – this time for real?

#146

Post by Out_of_Characte »

inasio wrote: post #111
RyanAdamas wrote: post #98

What if the team itself did create LK-99 that is a superconductor, but they aren't able to reproduce it and only have the sample left that works. Hence, they aren't able to make more of it to prove their success, but rather decided to release the paper and method so that others can try to reproduce it. Given the amount of interest, they could put hundreds of labs to work trying to recreate what they themselves can't,…

I think it's unlikely in this case. They seem to have gone out of their way to show a method that can achieve replication using very common materials and pretty much medieval-grade technology (except for the vacuum pump, maybe).

In theory, you could produce this in the medieval era if you had mercury.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprengel_pump

Just imagine some society discovering superconductivity on the cusp of even starting a technological revolution.

Re: Room temperature, ambient pressure superconductivity – this time for real?

#147

Post by [deleted] »

mikenew wrote: post #20
anonymouse008 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm following this fellow: https://twitter.com/andrewmccalip Seems to have the right energy [edit thanks folks] https://nitter.net/i/status/1684433849781202944 Here’s a more colorful play by play as well: https://nitter.net/8teapi/status/1684586672917565443

Is this guy posting anywhere besides Twitter (or... X)? I can't view without an account.

[deleted]

Re: Room temperature, ambient pressure superconductivity – this time for real?

#148

Post by scarmig »

calf wrote: post #142
guerrilla wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People were arguing about this earlier (some claimimg the opposite) but I didn't see a conclusion. Do you have an external citation handy?

Where was the argument, may I see it? I vaguely remember switching current and leakage current as sources of heat, but mircoelectronic circuits has been a while for me...

I believe they're referring to this comment thread I started:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36881808&p=2#36884542

Re: Room temperature, ambient pressure superconductivity – this time for real?

#149

Post by autoexec »

psychoslave wrote: post #51
bhaak wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maglev trains, fusion power plants, fanless super computers in your pocket that charge in a minute and don't get hot. Basically utopia.

While these are all cool applications, I can perfectly see them used in the most awful dystopian world imaginable.

I can't remember the last time a new technology became widely available that wasn't somehow used against us. There's always a catch. New products are often designed to work on behalf of people other than the "owner", and often are designed to prevent the "owner" from being able to do what they want with the product.

Re: Room temperature, ambient pressure superconductivity – this time for real?

#150

Post by dang »

carabiner wrote: post #30
23B1 wrote: post #7

Just for fun: Am I the only one who thinks there's connection between this and the UAP news that's coming out? RTSC would probably enable a lot of incredible energy & maneuverability capabilities... Sorry, indulging in a little off-topic conspiracy theorizing.

[flagged]

Can you please stop posting unsubstantive comments? It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
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