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Successful room temperature ambient-pressure magnetic levitation of LK-99

arxiv.org

321–330 of 1001 posts

Re: Successful room temperature ambient-pressure magnetic levitation of LK-99

#321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A good one would be "productive AI." People forget, but a short while ago, AI was treated as something where being actually useful was perpetually 20 years away, and the real-world status of it was exemplified by a chatbot like Eliza.

When AI was 20 years away, people seemed more optimistic about it than now when its inevitable transformative societal impact is seemingly right around the corner, are you sure this is the kind of example they were going for?

I think your point only demonstrates that useful AI was not something we could arrive at quickly like we thought we could, but rather over decades in a much more gradual process which slowly got people accustomed to its capabilities.

Even then, when ChatGPT came out it was a pretty big deal, due to the surprisingly sudden jump in capabilities, at least from the point of view of someone who didn't work in AI and didn't closely watch its progress.

According to Wikipedia, it was "the fastest-growing consumer software application in history, gaining over 100 million users" (in ~2 months).

Re: Successful room temperature ambient-pressure magnetic levitation of LK-99

#322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have heard people much more knowledgeable than me say that measuring true zero resistance is actually quite difficult and takes some degree of specialized equipment, especially with such small samples. That may be part of it.

so none of the previous more esoteric superconductors were ever measure for zero resistance?

They were. E.g. see here for a major, good paper announcing a novel class of superconductors:

https://sci-hub.ru/https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007...

The difference now is that we're seeing a premature preprint being replicated in real time.

Even in that paper, the authors note: "The way the samples have been prepared seems to be of crucial importance: Michel et al. [21] obtained a single-phase perovskite by mixing the oxides of La and Cu and BaCOa in an appropriate ratio and subsequent annealing at 1,000 ~ in air. We also applied this annealing condition to one of our samples, obtained by the decomposition of the corresponding oxalates, and found no superconductivity." And you can see that in their resistivity/temperature graph of samples prepared using different protocols.

Re: Successful room temperature ambient-pressure magnetic levitation of LK-99

#323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, and millions of people die of preventable diseases in the global south every year because pharmaceutical companies deem it profitable to let them die, and because the global north enforces their patents. You don't know how it's gonna go. The scientists are going to be fine, they have their careers guaranteed and will receive many prizes for their work. They don't need a monopoly on a world changing material too…

Why would patent be the root cause, they should have access to 2003 level of medicine. If patent was the only thing holding them back, you'd see them having 2000s level of healthcare, which wasn't bad by any stretch.

Never said it was the only thing

Re: Successful room temperature ambient-pressure magnetic levitation of LK-99

#324
post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So far this material (and pretty much all liquid nitrogen ones) can't be used to create MRI sort of fields. There's a reason they all stick with liquid helium.

Why can’t liquid nitrogen SC used for creating MRI?

Superconductors also have points where they stop superconducting because of the strength of the magnetic field or amount of current. YBCO and similar have these points below the useful level for MRIs.

There's research around finding ways to use them but nothing that is currently viable.

Re: Successful room temperature ambient-pressure magnetic levitation of LK-99

#325
post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Cure for aging 2. AGI exists and ends up being somehow, unexpectedly easy to control 3. Russia / China / North Korea eventually become democratic Some of the “good” black swans at the top of my mind…

Democracy is a diversion technique honestly. “Rulers” are always a few people/corps and the fate of the people depends on them.

i prefere rulers that care about general wellbeing of theyr populations. i know i might sound like a cattle or a sheep, but i prefere beying sheep that is treated well. this is provided that we really dont have a choice or say in things that happening around us. but this still needs to be shown. so far i feel like j can influence the path of my life quite a lot.

Re: Successful room temperature ambient-pressure magnetic levitation of LK-99

#326

Noob question. Does this breakthrough also translate to advancements in quantum computing? Can we expect quantum computers with far more qbits?

It won't have a direct impact on quantum computing. People make qubits out of superconducting materials that become superconducting at 4K or higher, but you have to cool them to around 0.03 K for them to really work well as qubits. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_quantum_comp....

But there could very well be indirect applications! This would be very very interesting for the physics community, and surely lead to other new things.

Re: Successful room temperature ambient-pressure magnetic levitation of LK-99

#327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would have been more convincing if you had given real past examples rather than speculative future ones :) Although I'm pretty sure there are plenty that many people can think of, so it doesn't really detract much from your point.

Auctions, sanitary towels, retirement, banking, disposable razor, sewing machine, canned food, interchangeable parts, antibiotics, solar cells, postage stamp, light bulb, pencil, air conditioning, insurance, dwarf wheat, spreadsheet, cold chain, double entry book-keeping, S-bend, infant formula, clocks, public key cryptography, passports, batteries, printing press, video games, GPS, contraceptive pill, shipping conta…

Bicycle

Re: Successful room temperature ambient-pressure magnetic levitation of LK-99

#328
post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Cure for aging 2. AGI exists and ends up being somehow, unexpectedly easy to control 3. Russia / China / North Korea eventually become democratic Some of the “good” black swans at the top of my mind…

I'm unsure if we want people living forever. While disease, illness, and senility are terrible things, as soon as people can live forever we will have eternal dictatorships (or people trying for it) as well as other questions of perpetual inequality. "Death renders all equal".

> we will have eternal dictatorships

I can't agree. We can have eternal dictatorship now. Nothing prevents it except other people, therefore people will prevent eternal dictatorship just as now (with various results).

Anyway, Im ready to accept this risk.

Re: Successful room temperature ambient-pressure magnetic levitation of LK-99

#329

For those experiencing this type of "black swan, but good" event for the first time, it is helpful to recognize that the human tendency to believe that all future "big events" will be dystopian downers, is statistically unsound. For a while I've kept a list of the things that could be "good" swan events, but to be fair I didn't have "room temperature superconductor on that list" :-) Other things that could happen: 1)…

Michael Levin [1] does brillant work on this "cellular language" space and the key point is that genetics is more like biological IaC, it only encodes proteins. Most of the actual control, anatomic and physiological homestasis happens at the higher level of bioelectricity - which works as a computational medium.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FGM33sz25k

Re: Successful room temperature ambient-pressure magnetic levitation of LK-99

#330
post #84

On a completely different front, let's say the paper completely checks out and they have discovered this miracle. How strong are the patent protections on materials science? For example, if someone could replicate the effect with lead + gold, would that be considered a novel material which would not be subject to licensing? Is it the material itself or the method of production?

I hope they're as weak as possible. The worst possible outcome of a room temp superconductor being discovered is stifling innovation to make money off it

It would be the opposite. Nobody with develop technology to utilize it because there are no protections.

No MRI, No Fusion, ect.

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