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Room-Temperature Ambient-Pressure Superconductor LK-99 preprint revision 2

arxiv.org

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Re: Room-Temperature Ambient-Pressure Superconductor LK-99 preprint revision 2

#311

Post by fastball »

fragmede wrote: post #276
fastball wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet you'd think Elon Musk would've been quick the jump on this particular bandwagon – in past years I would've expected Musk to have setup competing teams at Tesla and SpaceX, first to replicate wins. Alas recently it seems that he does not have the singular focus he once had.

I am sure materials nerds (said affectionately, I am a computer nerd) at materials labs at top corporations, like SpaceX are working on this. Picture this. You're a material's person. You have a collection of each of the elements in the table of elements. You've got a successful career in your field. You've got your dream job working in a materials lab as a scientist or engineer. Along comes this paper, describing a…

Absolutely Musk doesn't need to, but in the past his MO absolutely would be to do so and to tell the whole world about it. Remember the whole Thai Diver thing with the submarine? Or when he said they'd build loads of ventilators early on in the pandemic? Musk loves bandwagoning hype cycles.

Re: Room-Temperature Ambient-Pressure Superconductor LK-99 preprint revision 2

#312

Post by tdehnel »

sdenton4 wrote: post #289
tdehnel wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To consider an observation “weird” you need a theory about what a normal observation looks like. Additionally, all observations require baked in theories about the observation being accurate. Btw, I didn’t appreciate your insulting first sentence. Edit: here's a decent writeup to show what I mean https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory-ladenness

If we are sufficiently expansive in our definition of what theory is, then sure, there is no experiment without theory, and experimentalists only discover things by being secretly theorists who occasionally stop thinking long enough to get their hands dirty. But I don't think this is typically what is meant by 'theory.' CRISPR is again a good example - the initial 'weirdness' was an observation of lots of long-ish pa…

i see what you mean, i suppose my concept of “explanation” could be closer to what you mean by theory

Re: Room-Temperature Ambient-Pressure Superconductor LK-99 preprint revision 2

#313

Post by tdehnel »

mrguyorama wrote: post #287
tdehnel wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't even observe something without theories. For example: - I need to observe here and not anywhere else - I can reliably interpret my senses/the instrumentation is working correctly - Objects of this type normally behave in X way, because of Y - etc Think of it a different way. You can come up with a theory without any observation whatsoever. Black holes, for example, were conjectured well before they were obs…

Consider the story of an artificial sweetener being discovered by a chemist who didn't wash their hands properly and the bread they ate that night was sweet. Are you suggesting this was only possible because they had a "theory" that bread is not sweet?

yes, that is one good example

Re: Room-Temperature Ambient-Pressure Superconductor LK-99 preprint revision 2

#314

Post by fragmede »

fastball wrote: post #311
fragmede wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am sure materials nerds (said affectionately, I am a computer nerd) at materials labs at top corporations, like SpaceX are working on this. Picture this. You're a material's person. You have a collection of each of the elements in the table of elements. You've got a successful career in your field. You've got your dream job working in a materials lab as a scientist or engineer. Along comes this paper, describing a…

Absolutely Musk doesn't need to, but in the past his MO absolutely would be to do so and to tell the whole world about it. Remember the whole Thai Diver thing with the submarine? Or when he said they'd build loads of ventilators early on in the pandemic? Musk loves bandwagoning hype cycles.

Fair. Outside of HN, I've not seen the same level of attention being paid to the paper elsewhere.

Re: Room-Temperature Ambient-Pressure Superconductor LK-99 preprint revision 2

#315

Post by jack_riminton »

tdehnel wrote: post #206
jack_riminton wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not “Eureka!” (I found it!) but “That’s funny …” — Isaac Asimov

“That’s funny…” implies you had a pre existing theory about how it was supposed to work.

Not really. I don’t have my own theories on how most things work but I can recognise patterns that fall out of the norm

Re: Room-Temperature Ambient-Pressure Superconductor LK-99 preprint revision 2

#316

Post by tdehnel »

jack_riminton wrote: post #315
tdehnel wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“That’s funny…” implies you had a pre existing theory about how it was supposed to work.

Not really. I don’t have my own theories on how most things work but I can recognise patterns that fall out of the norm

so your theory is “things have predictable patterns” or “the future will be like the past”
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