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Andrew McCalip demonstrates synthesis of LK99

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Re: Andrew McCalip demonstrates synthesis of LK99

#281

Post by lamontcg »

anonylizard wrote: post #112
DoingIsLearning wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first pre-print came out on 22 July (if I am not mistaken). Not enough time has passed pure and simple. If I was an academic working on this, I would be following the Sagan Standard and triple checking my results before claiming anything. I think we are all suffering from 24 hour news cycles. The work in China and now Varda is very exciting but they are warp speed developments.

This is simply what post-peer-review looks like. Instead of a few anonymous peer reviews, you get the entire planet to replicate. Moment you get something meaningful, publish it on arxiv. Quantity, not quality is king. Anomalies are drowned out by large samples. Questionable methods get mass debated in public. Scientists are dependent on public funding, why squander the biggest moment in pop science for literal decad…

> top tier research will probably get published on youtube and arxiv in the future...

"Top tier science" is already published on arXiv.

The future happened back in 1995 or something like that.

> Quantity, not quality is king.

No, quality is still king. We don't need videos of flakes standing on their end we need someone who has been working with superconductors all their lives who is competent enough to measure zero resistance across the sample. If one of the wild theories is right we need someone who actually knows how to prove it and not just sound like they're intelligent by talking about 1-d superconductors.

Re: Andrew McCalip demonstrates synthesis of LK99

#282

Post by ivalm »

codedokode wrote: post #240
svara wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Questionable methods get mass debated in public. By people who don't know what they're talking about. You're seriously underestimating the level of expertise that it takes to professionally assess most research. It wouldn't be unusual for there to be a small handful of people with that ability in the world.

> You're seriously underestimating the level of expertise that it takes to professionally assess most research. It wouldn't be unusual for there to be a small handful of people with that ability in the world. Does it mean that grant money are distributed by people who are unable to "assess most research"?

Depends on the level. At the level of congressional appropriation then certainly. At the program manager level then hopefully the pm knows.

Re: Andrew McCalip demonstrates synthesis of LK99

#283

Post by [deleted] »

MetaWhirledPeas wrote: post #275
dotnet00 wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't discouraging participation, it's requiring that you meet some minimum level of proficiency to be considered credible. Kind of like how you need to have some experience in programming to have any credibility when talking about how a programming language should be designed.

> it's requiring that you meet some minimum level of proficiency to be considered credible That's not really the case though is it? Doubting someone's credibility would simply mean ignoring their results. But withholding information is something else entirely.

[deleted]

Re: Andrew McCalip demonstrates synthesis of LK99

#284

Post by OJFord »

thepasswordis wrote: post #269
SanderNL wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you would be hard pressed to find any Euro seriously and non-ironically proclaiming their country the best in the world. Then again, it's not unheard of. It just sounds stupid here, because even when all of us combine we only ever so slightly pass the "regional power" mark. And we know it.

Have you met any Europeans? Italians are convinced that Italy is the center of the world, with the best food, home of Rome, etc. French are convinced that France is the center of the world, with the best food, home of Democracy, etc. The British are convinced that Britain is the center of the world...although maybe not so convinced of the food :-P. Germans, same thing. Portugese same thing, but it's the "secret" vers…

It's just done differently, I don't know, it's hard to explain, but:

    A: [orders some chemicals]
    B: God damn I love America
    A: Hell of a thing, America
    C: greatest country in the world
just reads so weirdly to me. Maybe it's partly that I can't imagine finding (or any other British/western European person finding) this a source of national pride to begin with, but even when it's something we do.. I just can't see non-Americans talking like that.

It's not really a problem, just surprised me.

Re: Andrew McCalip demonstrates synthesis of LK99

#285

Post by jayd16 »

baq wrote: post #152
varjag wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are rather common. Often used in metalworking for steel hardening.

yeah but OP said 'high school lab'... which granted may be true in the US but certainly not what I'd call 'common' or even 'rare' where I live. a good description would be 'completely unheard of'.

I guess you'd head to the art department and use the ceramic kiln, instead.

Re: Andrew McCalip demonstrates synthesis of LK99

#286

Post by MetaWhirledPeas »

dotnet00 wrote: post #277
MetaWhirledPeas wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's requiring that you meet some minimum level of proficiency to be considered credible That's not really the case though is it? Doubting someone's credibility would simply mean ignoring their results. But withholding information is something else entirely.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding, where did withholding information come into this?

> Maybe I'm misunderstanding, where did withholding information come into this?

When I mentioned gatekeeping I was specifically referring to how there's this formula that was kept secret since 1999. At some point the potential significance surely became apparent, and one of the only speculations I can come up with to justify that would be gatekeeping; keeping the information out of the hands of the filthy commoners for reasons.

Maybe it wasn't gatekeeping. If not I'd sure as heck like to know what it was.

Re: Andrew McCalip demonstrates synthesis of LK99

#287

Post by blamazon »

fosterfriends wrote: post #262
yoavm wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an open-source privacy oriented and no bullshit interface to Twitter.

Out of curiosity, how do they sync through Twitter's now-very-closed API?

Off the top of my head I think it's basically using the same publicly undocumented API that the Twitter-hosted front ends use - Twitter did successfully block nitter et al recently with the "must be logged in to view tweets" change but rolled that back (partly?) after Threads launched.

I surmise that to block such access by Nitter completely while keeping Twitter's own front ends open to the public, Twitter would need to be extensively re-factored on both the front and back ends, a goal that the organization may not be capable of successfully completing at this time, but is presumably working towards.

Re: Andrew McCalip demonstrates synthesis of LK99

#288

Post by zamalek »

sashank_1509 wrote: post #40

This makes me extremely bullish about Varda Space, they have engineers of high quality and expertise that they could do a decent replication very quickly (if they got access to raw materials earlier, they might have been first to do so, comparable with the Chinese Groups) while working on their off time (from what I’ve seen of their twitter) and not a single big academic lab has managed to complete any sort of replic…

There is a large degree of luck involved. The original team, who have been working on this for significant time, have only attained a 1/10 success rate (one of the better samples came from a test tube being dropped on the floor part-way through annealing). So it's part talent, part luck.

Re: Andrew McCalip demonstrates synthesis of LK99

#289

Post by mschuster91 »

ncann wrote: post #210
mschuster91 wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If LK-99 works out, expect some congressmen to use this as a bludgeoning tool against the state of US public science. I hope for the same here in Germany. It's way past time we actually deal with the sorry state of science funding and academia in general across the Western world.

Yeah and it's not just the US but also France/UK/Germany/Canada, all the western countries usually held in high regards for science, the lack of enthusiasm (for lack of a better word) is rather disappointing. I don't think I've seen a single university lab in these countries announced "hey we're trying to replicate this as well".

They don't have the funds to do so any more. Everything is just project based grants, which often enough aren't even enough to run a project to completion. And professors have to chase grants and do other bullshit paperwork in an awful lot of their time.

Re: Andrew McCalip demonstrates synthesis of LK99

#290

Post by jcranmer »

notfish wrote: post #265
jcranmer wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a new claim or two of room-temperature superconductors published on Arxiv every year: https://nitter.net/peternemes/status/1684483863999827973#m ... and yet this is the only one that sets the Twitters afire. The reaction I've seen from most of the scientists has been pretty negative on the papers. The originals aren't strong papers. The chemistry has issues: https://nitter.net/Robert_Palgrave/status/16854501…

I’m not sure I understand your point. Are you trying to say that people shouldn’t be paying attention to this? I would personally be horrified if I found out that the paper on the synthesis of a room temperature superconductor went through the normal peer review process instead of letting the world know they discovered something huge.

My point is why should this unreviewed claim of ambient condition superconductor be exalted as the holy grail and all of the other unreviewed claims of ambient condition superconductor languish in obscurity when they come out? It's definitely not for the strength of evidence!
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