371–380 of 821 posts
With all the recent “the government has alien spacecraft news” and the bizarre circumstances of this material’s creation, the (I know to be ridiculous) conspiratorial part of my mind is going “I guess climate change is finally forcing them to take stuff out of the extraterrestrial vaults.”
So they planted this with a Korean lab a few years ago?
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Gold is everywhere in computing, not a big deal.
Not computing, arms manufacturing. Lead, tungsten or uranium projectiles with superconducting jackets fired from railguns.
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Is your argument that China’s increasing technical prowess will not inevitably result in the US hegemony ending?
Japanese and South Korean increasing technical prowess didn't, why would Chinese be any different? China has serious fundamental problems and if you account for its gigantic population - it's seriously underachieving not only compared to US, but even compared to the rest of the developed world. It's fashionable to talk about China taking over, but it's far from guaranteed. China is pretty much confirmed to be falsify…
It's not so much fashionable as it is literally state propaganda used to try and shoulder its way into the South China Sea and the Pacific by claiming it is so prosperous and populous that it is entitled to increasingly large sphere of influence and direct control.
the dft results are definitely interesting, but i note that with the caveat that my background is in experimental condensed matter physics for materials like this and not theoretical, my understanding is that the dominant feature of the conclusions (the flat bands) is a necessary but not sufficient condition for superconductivity in the way the authors describe. again, in experimental condensed matter physics it's ac…
(*) it was, like, two decades ago, but I've got a first-author PRB paper so I wouldn't trust me compared to an active researcher but I'm not _entirely_ clueless
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Japanese and South Korean increasing technical prowess didn't, why would Chinese be any different? China has serious fundamental problems and if you account for its gigantic population - it's seriously underachieving not only compared to US, but even compared to the rest of the developed world. It's fashionable to talk about China taking over, but it's far from guaranteed. China is pretty much confirmed to be falsify…
>Japanese and South Korean increasing technical prowess didn't, why would Chinese be any different? Because while Japan and South Korea are the 51st and 52nd US states, China is a superpower vying to usurp the US as the preeminent world superpower.
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People said the same about Japan. The '80s and '90s was a bunch of media-fueled "the Japanese will run the world" hysteria. Japan is a technical powerhouse but that doesn't inevitably lead to ending hegemony. It requires a lot of other work too.
China has 1.2 billion people, I feel like it is basically an inevitability at this point.
> They also predict that substituting gold atoms into the Pb(1) site could lead to a material with very similar properties, which will be an extremely interesting idea to put to the test. Since the base material is lead apatite, I had a random thought that maybe medieval alchemists trying to turn lead into gold just had it backward, as doping gold into lead might be a breakthrough. :-)
I want to believe. After several millennia of killing people for gold, we can finally put all that gold to good use—using it to create superconductors that can power energy weapons we can use to kill each other. ♫ It's the circle of life ♫
Yeah, it's always possible this may not pan out but I'm really enjoying the visceral reminder that new fundamental science always has the potential to be suddenly transformative across a spectrum fields.
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Good idea! They wouldn't have been able to do any applications without a voltaic cell, and it would have been a novelty. Like gunpowder in ancient China.
The force of tradition is amazing. Imagine centuries knowing how to make something that explodes violently, and using it for entertainment instead of weapons. Just like how Mesoamerican civilizations invented the wheel, but only used it on children toys and not for transportation. There were no draft animals in the region, but they didn't even make wheelbarrows. https://www.mexicolore.co.uk/aztecs/home/the-concept-of…
It’s just that, the Chinese also had standardized crossbows capable of punching through armor, and allowed for long range sniping, centuries before gunpowder. The Manchus who founded the Qing dynasty valued archery, and were slower to adopt firearms. The mid and late Qing period saw firearm military units, with bows and arrows evolved for powerful short range attacks, ceding long range to firearms.
Even so, it looks like Chinese generals were interested in fielding firearms, and found them effective.
Wikipedia has a list of theories on why gun development stagnated, and the leading theory is that Chinese fortification were more resistant to cannon fire. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunpowder_weapons_in_the_Min...
As far as Mesoamericans and wheels, I’m not sure the hilly terrain and dense jungle would make wheeled transports that easy. They seemed to be able to create step pyramids with stone just fine.
This is exciting, but I try to maintain my composure. Good luck to all involved. I didn’t know science could be such a thrilling spectator sport.
It almost feels like we're back in the days of Lavoisier. Scientists staging elaborate public experiments, blowing things up to support or debunk a popular theory. Deadly rivalries, publicity stunts, each new development a matter of personal, institutional, and national hubris.
Just like they demonstrated all the stuff you know from school over a hundred years ago, before you needed fancy equipment to do anything.
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Even the Chinese academy of science admits it has a massive fraud and plagiarism problem.