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Superconductor news: What’s claimed, and how strong the evidence seems to be

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Re: Superconductor news: What’s claimed, and how strong the evidence seems to be

#261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is clearly resting on the magnet. I don't know the mechanics off the top of my head, but that is enough mechanical constraint for a pair of permanent magnets to levitate.

It isn't. Permanent magnets would be unstable. This would have to be a diamagnetic or superconducting material.

I’m not convinced it’s levitating in the video, imagine a magnetic field strong enough to partially lift the fleck but also a patch of the fleck contacting the magnet with enough friction to keep it from sliding away.

Re: Superconductor news: What’s claimed, and how strong the evidence seems to be

#262
post #137

New scientist got a reply from the authors and a few other experts: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2384782-room-temperatur... >Kim has only co-authored one of the arXiv papers, while the other is authored by his colleagues at the Quantum Energy Research Centre in South Korea, some of whom also applied for a patent on LK-99 in August 2022. >Both papers present similar measurements, however Kim says that the seco…

Is that, "I never meant to publish this," or is that, "It was a rough draft that I hadn't edited for accuracy or tone and fuck Steve for uploading it."

I’m guessing the second. Nothing in the interview suggests that he doesn’t stand behind the data. Sounds like he’s taking a wait and see approach and it’s a very good sign that he’s offering to help other researchers try to replicate

Re: Superconductor news: What’s claimed, and how strong the evidence seems to be

#263
post #208
post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that’s the generally used explanation for superconductivity

Would it be accurate to describe it as "lattice peristalsis"?

That’s sort of the proposed mechanism for Cooper pairs forming, but I don’t think I’d call Cooper pairs themselves “lattice peristalsis”

Re: Superconductor news: What’s claimed, and how strong the evidence seems to be

#264

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?

I’m just thinking aloud here but would this enable actual perpetual motion machines? For instance, wouldn’t the pushback from the quantum locked superconductor be an infinite source of energy?

Re: Superconductor news: What’s claimed, and how strong the evidence seems to be

#265
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the actual proposed superconductivity mechanism is the relevant part of this paper. It is much easier to prove that this is superconducting than to prove why. And in a sense it is a bit less relevant. Although developing a working theory for room temperature is also probably worth a Nobel prize, so I am willing to bet some theorists are also running to their blackboards as we speak.

Ding ding ding! We still don't know how bikes work, we have a pretty good but incomplete model for lift on airplanes, and no one has the faintest why Tylenol works. We should figure that out! But we can definitely keep using all the applications until then. (Except for Tylenol, we keep learning how bad that stuff is) EDIT: It won't let me post more, so here's the answers to responses. For sure! https://www.cbc.ca/new…

We don't know how photosynthesis works but we know a ton about GROWING things. And life as we know it depends on photosynthesis.

Re: Superconductor news: What’s claimed, and how strong the evidence seems to be

#266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For real; the original paper is kinda shitty in terms of data presentation, and there's significant value to make a follow up paper to create data and try to get your name out there.

The author of the paper apparently says it wasn’t supposed to be leaked and that it needs more work, but he stands by his results and will assist anyone trying to replicate, which sounds pretty steadfast to me.

They have patents… this is the sensible approach to take with your intellectual property well defended. Between the patents and the published paper establishing his role and thus Nobel eligibility…

At this point assisting anybody who wants to help prove him correct (and I know that I’m making the assumption that he genuinely believes he has made what he claims in the paper with the mechanisms and methodology as outlined) will just help secure get rich faster and make his Nobel prize even more secure.

Polycrystaline materials are kinda finicky so more samples helps eliminate the error bars. So obviously why didn’t they do heaps of samples and have a longer paper? … Money! They got funding for quantum physics based sensor/detector research and this appears to have been a happy accident, so naturally they kept their heads down, got their patents (they have multiple patents each of which costs money) and did a little bit more work to be absolutely sure, then as soon as it was smart, they published their results and are now going to let the entire world excitedly double check their results… because the results if true, are fucking awesome…

Of course the world wants to replicate this, no one wants to be waiting for someone else to confirm a breakthrough this big… I bet there’s even some corporate labs doing a little work on replication too, so some smart managers in various industries can factor room temperature superconducting materials into their designs and future plans sooner, because otherwise their competitors might be! (Obviously there’s not going to be a lot of this since most companies don’t have internal science groups but the Lockheed-Martins of the world, the Daewoos, the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, the Ratheons … I’d be surprised if they didn’t already have someone somewhere in the world who is still currently making batches and putting them into furnaces because the material is cheap and you can get a lot more certainty from additional samples if your are prepared to pay for the work. I’d be dammed sure someone at General Dynamics is making some because it would massively help them convince the US Navy to give them more funding to continue work on railguns!

Re: Superconductor news: What’s claimed, and how strong the evidence seems to be

#267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

One of the elements used here is phosphorus (P) which is regulated by the DEA in the United States, and can't just be purchased online

Seriously… elemental phosphorus is controlled by the DEA? The ATF I could maybe understand but the DEA… that’s just whacky.

Re: Superconductor news: What’s claimed, and how strong the evidence seems to be

#268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear fusion much easier, quantum computing, lossless electricity transmission, insane batteries. Dirt cheap MRIs, Basically welcome to the Jetsons. Much easier to mitigate climate change to the point where we can just deal with it.

How would this make climate change easier to deal with? Because it would make everything that much more efficient? I'm honestly trying to understand the implications.

Long distance power transmission suffers losses from resistance. Superconductors don't suffer losses. With superconductors you could stick a giant wind farm in the ocean and cover the Sahara in solar panels. Run distribution lines from there to everywhere else and pretty much call it a day on the planet's power needs. (lots of things glossed over, not the least of which are social and geopolitical but you get the idea)

Re: Superconductor news: What’s claimed, and how strong the evidence seems to be

#269
post #197

This 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…

> sudden resistivity changes at a critical temperature (bizarrely high though that is in this case) How high? Just wondering if it might eventually be possible to use it in some power/clocking distribution layers of a semiconductor chip without bulky cooling.

That's a good idea. Honestly, I find it pretty amazing that modern CPUs don't just instantly turn into a puddle of molten metal as soon as you turn them on.

The critical temperature is 127 C, as the other commenter mentioned. That seems like it's high enough to be useful in a computer CPU.

I suppose there might also be applications for power distribution in a data center. You might use a few large, high-efficiency low voltage DC power supplies to supply the whole site instead of hundreds or thousands of individual power supplies if electrical resistance in cables was less of an issue. (I think this sort of thing is done now, but more at the rack level, since long cable runs cause losses.) You might even use 1V power instead of 5V or 12V.

(Granted, superconducting materials don't have unlimited current capacity, and bad things happen if you exceed the limit.)

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