Live data from Hacker News

LK-99: Team of Southeast University observed zero resistance below 110 K

twitter.com

231–240 of 361 posts

Re: LK-99: Team of Southeast University observed zero resistance below 110 K

#231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess that you can thank the DEA for this specific case…

What about European or Japanese scientists? And about Korean scientists not part of the original team? The last should also be able to get their hands on a sample provided by the original team and won't have to do reproduction attempts, right?

Who told you that they are not attempting the reproduction? Even US labs are attempting it, some of them explicitly in the open like the Argonne National Laboratory. Here you can find a non-comprehensive list of reproduction attempts: https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/claims-of-room-tempe...

Re: LK-99: Team of Southeast University observed zero resistance below 110 K

#232
post #98

Looks like it still goes superconducting at a magnetic field of 9 Tesla. Does that seem like a really high critical field?

YBCO which has a critical temperature of around 90K has a critical field in excess of 250T. So 9T is not expected to weaken superconductivity much for a sample with a critical temperature of 110K.

Re: LK-99: Team of Southeast University observed zero resistance below 110 K

#233
post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming they discovered a low cost, room temperature, room pressure, superconductor, there are many HUGE technological advancements that can be made that would impact your daily life. Possibilities include improved battery longevity in all devices(probably in an order of magnitude), low friction transport improvements (ie. cheaper high speed rail), and faster and higher bandwidth wired connections. https://en.wikipe…

No I mean why is this "huge" when each time that's happened it's been deflated within 12 hours: - initial LK-99 paper upload on Arxiv: HUGE, then it's probably nothing until replication (waiting) - DFT release: HUGE, then probably nothing (DFT has poor predictive power) - 110K SC: HUGE, then ... ? In every case it's been the laymen saying HUGE, then the experts saying it's probably insignificant. Then the laymen sett…

As someone who has worked on superconductivity I'd say that all of these are all potentially HUGE, but meaningless individually because they require experimental replication. They point to at minimum a new class of high temperature superconductors at least as good as current industrial ones. To know if it's truly transformative or not though we'll need multiple confirmations from big name labs. That's going to take time, so this trickle is exciting but won't mean much until the dust settles.

Re: LK-99: Team of Southeast University observed zero resistance below 110 K

#234
post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's like freezing water. It happens at a single temperature. It doesn't happen at once, there is a small amount of heat you must take from the material before it becomes a superconductor. Regions of it become superconductors on the process, and those grow until the entire material change. After the change, it becomes a stronger (yes, there is such a thing) superconductor the cooler it gets. (Or, at least that's what…

>After the change, it becomes a stronger (yes, there is such a thing) superconductor the cooler it gets Do you mean the tradeoff between temperature, field strength and current? Like, if you lower the temperature, the SC will be able to handle a stronger field or more current in return?

Yes.

Re: LK-99: Team of Southeast University observed zero resistance below 110 K

#235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those rules are defined in the actual bet. I think it was "three replications of room temperature superconductivity by X date" or something like that. I looked closely because I very much wanted to bet tens of thousands of dollars on "no", but I couldn't because I'm in the US. The two outcomes would be I'd make a lot of money or humanity would make the biggest breakthrough in generations.

> I think it was "three replications of room temperature superconductivity by X date" or something like that. That doesn’t sound like a sufficient market resolution condition. Surely it would need to be something like “declared by specific Party X to be a room-temperature superconductor” where Party X is sufficiently trusted by all market participants.

I was worried about that too before making the bet, but I realized I couldn't do it anyway and stopped worrying about it.

You can find the whole resolution criteria here if you want:

https://manifold.markets/QuantumObserver/will-the-lk99-room-...

Re: LK-99: Team of Southeast University observed zero resistance below 110 K

#236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those rules are defined in the actual bet. I think it was "three replications of room temperature superconductivity by X date" or something like that. I looked closely because I very much wanted to bet tens of thousands of dollars on "no", but I couldn't because I'm in the US. The two outcomes would be I'd make a lot of money or humanity would make the biggest breakthrough in generations.

> I think it was "three replications of room temperature superconductivity by X date" or something like that. That doesn’t sound like a sufficient market resolution condition. Surely it would need to be something like “declared by specific Party X to be a room-temperature superconductor” where Party X is sufficiently trusted by all market participants.

[deleted]

Re: LK-99: Team of Southeast University observed zero resistance below 110 K

#237

To me this is encouraging. 110K is really high! It's higher than YBCO which is what they make commercial "high temperature" superconducting tape out of. IMO if this is legit (I have no way of judging the source) then this is the first good third party evidence that the original researchers are not just doing some kind of fraud. A total fraud wouldn't have actually discovered a novel high-temperature, but not room tem…

They aren't reacting because this isn't really proof of anything. The test apparatus they used can't actually measure 0 resistance. Superconductivity is implied (thats the most straightforward explanation) but not actually demonstrated here. Its very hard to interpret from the limited data presented. There could be a whole host of contaminants, issue with the experimental setup etc etc. Its hard to go from look at the interesting material properties in this graph to room temperature superconductor. This is also the only confirmatory information we have from the team; their sample didn't show diamagnetism.

The reasons to be skeptical are: 1) lot of videos floating around that are just at the threshold of convincing 2) poor results from other teams 3) there is a history of superconductivity discoveries like this that never pan out 4) skepticism of the original paper

Re: LK-99: Team of Southeast University observed zero resistance below 110 K

#239

Can someone with field expertise explain the implications if this material were real / replicable / cheaply manufacturable? I see a lot of breathless excitement in these comments, as if free energy and perpetual motion machines are right around the corner, but from the few details I've delved into it's more like the electric grid might get 10% more efficient, MRIs might get a little cheaper, etc. What are the excitin…

Transmission loss is a real and important reason why you can't, say, cover the Sahara with solar panels to get unlimited free energy for mainland Europe and Africa (barring all the logistical challenges of actually pulling something like that off). This is because you lose a significant amount of energy just by moving it from one place to another.

With RTP superconductors, you get near perfect transmission from the site of energy production to the site of consumption. You could put wind turbine in remote sections of Montana and power up Chicago, something which previously would have been impossible.

Re: LK-99: Team of Southeast University observed zero resistance below 110 K

#240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think it was "three replications of room temperature superconductivity by X date" or something like that. That doesn’t sound like a sufficient market resolution condition. Surely it would need to be something like “declared by specific Party X to be a room-temperature superconductor” where Party X is sufficiently trusted by all market participants.

I was worried about that too before making the bet, but I realized I couldn't do it anyway and stopped worrying about it. You can find the whole resolution criteria here if you want: https://manifold.markets/QuantumObserver/will-the-lk99-room-...

Thanks. And wow, that's as fuzzy as I was afraid it would be:

> ...Willing to adjust this criterion after receiving more info from relevant theorists/experimentalists...

> ...I don't intend to require that replications be published in a peer-reviewed journal... However, I do intend to wait a few weeks/months to resolve so that any pre-print can be adequately investigated...

> ...Since high Tc superconductivity is not my specific field of expertise, I'm willing to defer to a consensus of subject matter experts on whether a pre-print is convincing or not, and I am willing to contact some beyond the usual twitter personalities...

In other words, if there's any kind of gray area in the results, it's going to be whatever this person decides, whenever they want to decide it. Definitely not something I would ever put money behind.

Post reply on HN