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Electronic Structure of LK-99

arxiv.org

201–210 of 448 posts

Re: Electronic Structure of LK-99

#201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say I am in both worlds. Not too excited about a lot developments in computer tech, but mostly because there is a lot of hype on technology that tends be impressive BUT misses the mark on the bold claims. But with this LK99 stuff, there is not much room for vague wiggle room. The requirements are very clearly defined and if they do it. It is done! It isn't a case of "if in 5 years and $X billion we may be abl…

Exact opposite for me - with stuff like AI tech, I'm a lot more familiar with the subject matter than the happenings in the material sciences, so it allows me to be more confidently optimistic about computer-related advancements. Even if my education is still insufficient to grasp the full extent of new tech, I can at least try to understand it conceptually. On the other hand, the LK-99 news seem very promising, but…

> a lot of professionals in the field are still iffy

That seems like a strange perception. I'm seeing the opposite.

Re: Electronic Structure of LK-99

#202

The material containing lead is very unfortunate. I have no doubts that (if it indeed turns out to be a superconductor) humans will use it anyway in any context where it provides even a slight benefit (cf. just in the lead department: leaded gasoline, leaded solder, etc.).

It's one thing to use toxic materials in water pipes, fuel or painting your walls with it.

It's completely different thing to use them in devices that are enclosed and that you never interact with directly, like motors, batteries, electronic components or wires. And in fact we're using lead in car batteries and it's not a problem.

BTW most heavy metals are toxic, including copper. It's just less readily absorbed and accumulated in our bodies.

Re: Electronic Structure of LK-99

#203
post #174
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, a combination of fusion, superconductivity, and AGI would indeed be transformative. It's hard to anticipate what the results would look like. Good reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-scarcity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale then follow it up with a bit of 1993, https://edoras.sdsu.edu/~vinge/misc/singularity.html and https://web.pa.msu.edu/people/yang/RFeynman_plentySpace.pdf (oh, huh, I ju…

We’re nowhere near AGI dude, even with several breakthroughs. AI today is a glorified search algorithm.

That doesn't mesh with the daily insights I gain from asking GPT-4 novel questions and receiving answers that integrate a much wider knowledge corpus that I have in my head.

You can argue all language is a form of search, but that is missing completely what transformer models are bringing to the table, and not just within language.

Re: Electronic Structure of LK-99

#204
post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

24 years is nothing in the scale of the universe If it increases entropy as much as many suspect and it only took 1/3 of a couple humans' lives to open that phase space, the Universe has done what it wanted - to hasten heat-death.

Interesting angle — but if heat death were possible it would have happened by now.

Please read up on heat death before continuing to share baseless information.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_death_of_the_universe

Re: Electronic Structure of LK-99

#205

So theorically they agree with LK-99 reaching superconductivity?

They theoretically agree that the material's properties could be nice for making some kind of superconductor, but present no clear indication that it would/should be a room temperature superconductor. The critical temperature depends on stuff that can't be probed via such simulations (i.e., electron-electron interactions).

From my understanding (I am not a superconductor person, but in an adjacent field), having flat bands at the Fermi level is not that rare. Such features appear in other materials that are evidently not superconductors, room temperature or otherwise. So the conclusions are more along the lines of "maybe it wouldn't be totally crazy", rather than "omg, we predict this material has astounding properties".

Re: Electronic Structure of LK-99

#206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I correct in my understanding that being capable of self-levitation would be an unusually strong example of the diamagnetic effect?

From what I heard, it would. This kind of diamagnetism would be strong enough to be potentially interesting in other applications and research, if it turns out not to be a superconductor.

Would still be useful for maglev, I assume?

Re: Electronic Structure of LK-99

#207
post #46
post #16

The most interesting phenomenon revealed so far is that the room-temperature superconductor people and the generative-LLMs-are-God people draw on the same limited global pool of credulity, such that HN cannot be flooded with both ChatGPT worship and superconductor speculation at the same time.

Theres some crossover. Isn't this exactly what a rogue super AI would do first? - run some simulations and discover a superconductor - then write up a paper on it ( the paper has some gaps but humans take it and run with it) - human technology and computing power rapidly accelerates. - the rogue AI's powers increase exponentially

The oneshot or short session manner in which AI are typically used does not have a rogue potential.

The AI would need to have a virtually unreachable goal, and run in an endless loop, to be able to drift its goals to be at odds with humanity.

Re: Electronic Structure of LK-99

#208
post #48

2023 will go down as a miracle year not unlike 1905. Between AI, this, and… what’s next?

I'm missing a lot of historical context, so - what exactly happened in 1905? Was there a myriad of major scientific discoveries?

> Over four months, March through June 1905, Albert Einstein produced four papers that revolutionized science. One explained how to measure the size of molecules in a liquid, a second posited how to determine their movement, and a third described how light comes in packets called photons—the foundation of quantum physics and the idea that eventually won him the Nobel Prize. A fourth paper introduced special relativity, leading physicists to reconsider notions of space and time that had sufficed since the dawn of civilization. Then, a few months later, almost as an afterthought, Einstein pointed out in a fifth paper that matter and energy can be interchangeable at the atomic level specifically, that E=mc2, the scientific basis of nuclear energy and the most famous mathematical equation in history.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-year-of-al...

Re: Electronic Structure of LK-99

#209
post #16

The most interesting phenomenon revealed so far is that the room-temperature superconductor people and the generative-LLMs-are-God people draw on the same limited global pool of credulity, such that HN cannot be flooded with both ChatGPT worship and superconductor speculation at the same time.

Jeffbee in the 1947 edition: The most interesting phenomenon revealed so far is that the solid state electronics people and the rocket fanatics people draw on the same limited global pool of credulity, such that TinkererNews cannot be flooded with both transistor worship and moon travel speculation at the same time.

Seriously: if it doesn't interest you, you could simply refrain from commenting and even reading. This stuff is the bleeding edge of tech and if you consider everybody active in these fields or talking about it to be starry eyed children then you should re-calibrate your sense of what these scientific discoveries are likely to cause further downstream. The idea here is to find some balance, it's perfectly ok to discuss a new discovery and to consider the implications on the caveat that it might not pan out. But superconductors already exist, there is no reason in physics why an arbitrary temperature cut-off is going to limit them from existing at room temperature, if you look at the trend since superconductivity was first observed there is a steady increase which with ever smaller margin of error predicts a breakthrough somewhere around 2030. It arrived a bit early, but it - apparently - did arrive, and if true will lead to a revolution in power transmission. And if it isn't true then we'll just drop it and hope for the next round, but I suspect that even if it isn't true there are going to be a lot of labs wondering if they can salvage at least some knowledge gained during all the scrutiny of this particular attempt.

Similar trends can be observed rectro-actively for practical solar panels, micro electronics, powered flight and so on. All had their skeptics, sometimes unreasonable skeptics and all were proven eventually wrong an those inventions transformed our world and are still transforming our world. You see a stupid silly black fleck floating over a magnet and wonder what the big deal is. I see a glimpse of an alternative future that has a lot of potential implications for how we live.

Re: Electronic Structure of LK-99

#210

I got my PhD studying band structure of high-tc superconductors (experimentalist, ARPES). These Cu d-d interactions right at the fermi energy give me huge hope. Feels very familiar to other superconductors (re: all the cuprates). (Note: I specifically worked in a lab that was measuring a lot of the d-wave character / gap-energies of various superconductors) All in all, I'm now much more bullish on LK-99 being real su…

Beyond the raw scientific excitement, can you explain how this would affect mankind (positively and, of course, perhaps negatively)?
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