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Observation of zero resistance above 100 K in Pb₁₀₋ₓCuₓ(PO₄)₆O

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Re: Observation of zero resistance above 100 K in Pb₁₀₋ₓCuₓ(PO₄)₆O

#371

Post by whimsicalism »

eric_cc wrote: post #288
whimsicalism wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if you work in this field, but you are putting way too much faith in what has been reported so far People are way, way overconfident. Most people in the field would not be willing to put it at >50% odds at this point.

> Most people in the field would not be willing to put it at >50% odds at this point. Do you have a source for this claim? It sounds like you just made it up.

Of course not, there hasn’t been some survey of materials scientists on LK-99. This is my impression given my familiarity with the field

Re: Observation of zero resistance above 100 K in Pb₁₀₋ₓCuₓ(PO₄)₆O

#372

Post by wahern »

drexlspivey wrote: post #242
wahern wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, we live in the age of TikTok. Videos on their own bring no more credibility than written text; they no longer evince a substantively greater investment of resources. I'm more inclined toward the cheerleading section of the LK-99 audience, but watching the videos I realized now is a perfect opportunity to apply recalibrated B.S. detectors.

This doesnt pass the smell test. Why would multiple independent labs fake their videos? What’s the conspiracy here? There is no upside, we will know in a couple of weeks if it’s real or not.

I didn't mean to insinuate that anybody faked anything. Just that video evidence on its own isn't per se any more credible than if they unambiguously made the same claim in writing. The technology for making fake or misleading videos is easy to come by, so why mentally lean on the fact that they were videos at all? Our answers wrt likelihood of truthfulness simply lie in provenance and other indicia of credibility that would be shared with claims in any other trivially falsified medium, like writing. Why, indeed, would multiple seemingly non-cooperating supposed researchers make the set of claims that have been made?

I don't think anything was faked, nor did I think anything was faked before videos began appearing. But that's precisely why this is an opportune time to exercise recalibrated judgment in not allowing the videographic character to inflate my cautious enthusiasm.

Re: Observation of zero resistance above 100 K in Pb₁₀₋ₓCuₓ(PO₄)₆O

#373

Post by lucubratory »

zackees wrote: post #365
_jal wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to underline this, after years of plague, war and uncertainty, I think this is a great, positive thing, whatever happens. I'm annoyed with someone I was talking to about this, who either can't or won't stop ranting about past high-profile failures. Yes, we all know. Old folks like me remember the cold fusion scam first hand. Your knowing cynicism displays deep scientific wisdom. Happy? Great, now let's watch the…

Cold fusion was replicated by a few labs but that wasn’t good enough for the media and they killed it. For background see 60 minutes episode “Cold Fusion is Hot again” where they interview and admit Pons Fleischmann was right. The difference now is that China is a super power and doesn’t have to kiss the ring of the US hegemon. As an example of replication see https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S036031…

Journal seems legitimate, but author has a H-index of 7 and is making a revolutionary claim that the vast majority of working scientists in the field reject. Why aren't people accepting his work, then? Who is perpetrating this "hoax" you are referencing?

Re: Observation of zero resistance above 100 K in Pb₁₀₋ₓCuₓ(PO₄)₆O

#374

Post by milani »

lucubratory wrote: post #373
zackees wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cold fusion was replicated by a few labs but that wasn’t good enough for the media and they killed it. For background see 60 minutes episode “Cold Fusion is Hot again” where they interview and admit Pons Fleischmann was right. The difference now is that China is a super power and doesn’t have to kiss the ring of the US hegemon. As an example of replication see https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S036031…

Journal seems legitimate, but author has a H-index of 7 and is making a revolutionary claim that the vast majority of working scientists in the field reject. Why aren't people accepting his work, then? Who is perpetrating this "hoax" you are referencing?

Not comparing here, but I just remembered that the first paper on graphene was rejected (twice) and one of the reviewers said something like 'this paper does not represent a scientific advance.'

Re: Observation of zero resistance above 100 K in Pb₁₀₋ₓCuₓ(PO₄)₆O

#375

Post by coderenegade »

dgoldstein0 wrote: post #226
coderenegade wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think energy storage, motors / accelerators and weapons would come first. A superconducting linear motor would probably also make for a great cannon.

Yeah, you're probably right - fusion has a lot of hard problems to solve. But for it, cheaper superconductors could be the game changer we need. For these other things... We already have energy storage, motors, weapons etc. It's certainly reasonable to think we could build better ones but I'm more excited for fusion, as it has the ability to solve climate change and provide cheap electricity to the billions who don't…

I think that's reasonable, though I'm skeptical that fusion would solve climate change even if we perfected it tomorrow. It still has the issue of radioactive waste at end-of-plant-life since all of the critical parts are irradiated. It also doesn't solve the issue of chemical processes that release a good chunk of total CO2 emissions, and are largely independent of energy production.

I think the thing solves our environmental issues is actually industrial electrolysis, because then it doesn't really matter what your power source is, you have a means of decarbonizing chemical processes, and an incentive to commoditize carbon. Essentially, waste would have value, because it's a cheap source of carbon that can be used with hydrogen to create methanol, dme, etc. Not to mention, hydrogen salt cavern storage is proven at scale for 4 decades now to the tune of 350GWhs or so, and it lets us decarbonize agriculture and cement production.

I guess fusion might help make energy cheaper for these processes, but I don't really see that it matters if they're powered by fission or wind and solar. But if we can't get electrolysis cheap enough, then I don't see these processes being decarbonized until we're almost out of fossil fuels.

My 2c, anyway.

Re: Observation of zero resistance above 100 K in Pb₁₀₋ₓCuₓ(PO₄)₆O

#376

Post by greenthrow »

junon wrote: post #364
greenthrow wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's one thing to engage suspension of disbelief when watching a movie. It's another to engage it when discussing actual scientific papers.

No, it's not. Most people engaging in scientific papers are not themselves scientists in the field. Further, their enthusiasm doesn't change reality. LK-99 is or is not a superconductor. People getting overly excited doesn't change that. Lighten up.

Just because you are not a scientist in the field does not mean you cannot engage and improve your critical thinking skills. I do not need to lighten up, you need to learn some intellectual rigor.

Re: Observation of zero resistance above 100 K in Pb₁₀₋ₓCuₓ(PO₄)₆O

#377

Post by sparrowInHand »

gus_massa wrote: post #354
sparrowInHand wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, the accurate term for scientific debate on HN is a cold-flamewar?

Sometimes the mods remove the automatic "flamewar" penalty. Sometimes the add manual penalties. My guess is that they are triying to keep in the front page only the last 1 or 2 articles that has an important update and enought discusion. You can send them an email asking for clarification. (I don't expect they have hard rules about this, only some general principles and hopefuly good judgement calls.)

Wouldnt a emotional keyword filter make for better statistical flamewar detection? Also, i guess length of comment might be a strong indicator of thread degeneration.

Finally you could create fields of expertease for every account (upvoted comments keywords) and ban threads with non-experts majority commenting.

Re: Observation of zero resistance above 100 K in Pb₁₀₋ₓCuₓ(PO₄)₆O

#378

Post by dgoldstein0 »

ssijak wrote: post #180
coderenegade wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think energy storage, motors / accelerators and weapons would come first. A superconducting linear motor would probably also make for a great cannon.

shooting satellites to orbit with cannons

Can this even work? Seems like air resistance would make applying all the force at ground level problematic - you'll have higher max Q and higher energy losses to air than if a conventional ticket delivered the same push over a longer period

Re: Observation of zero resistance above 100 K in Pb₁₀₋ₓCuₓ(PO₄)₆O

#379

Post by jacquesm »

stcredzero wrote: post #321
obrix wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MR imaging is possible with permanent magnets and resistive (copper wire wound) magnets at low field strengths, below 0.35T or so. Above that the heating of the magnet windings becomes excessive and it would be very difficult to maintain a stable enough field strength. Superconducting magnets are very nice as long as there is no quenching. The material used for conductors must be mechanically stable and perform consi…

The material used for conductors must be mechanically stable and perform consistently from one production batch to another. One reason why current high tc superconductors are not popular I was going to ask: Why don't we use the current high temperature superconductors, and start building grid interconnects? I guess part of the answer lies in the cost that would be incurred because of the mechanical properties of the…

Because it is easier to keep a localized thing cool than something that is 100's of km long. That's why iceboxes are boxes and not ice ribbons and why most applications of superconductors right now are using them as coils for magnetic field and volume economy. For instance there is one grid component that uses superconducting coils as inertia free stabilizers, they can be used to source and sink current very rapidly to absorb transients in the load. This allows older and less stable grids to be used to transfer wind power because the power over time is a bit lower. Allowing those peaks unfiltered onto the grid would cause parts of it to go down.

Re: Observation of zero resistance above 100 K in Pb₁₀₋ₓCuₓ(PO₄)₆O

#380

Post by gus_massa »

sparrowInHand wrote: post #377
gus_massa wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes the mods remove the automatic "flamewar" penalty. Sometimes the add manual penalties. My guess is that they are triying to keep in the front page only the last 1 or 2 articles that has an important update and enought discusion. You can send them an email asking for clarification. (I don't expect they have hard rules about this, only some general principles and hopefuly good judgement calls.)

Wouldnt a emotional keyword filter make for better statistical flamewar detection? Also, i guess length of comment might be a strong indicator of thread degeneration. Finally you could create fields of expertease for every account (upvoted comments keywords) and ban threads with non-experts majority commenting.

> Wouldn't a emotional keyword filter make for better statistical flamewar detection?

Something like http://www.paulgraham.com/spam.html but fine tuned to flamewars? Perhaps. The mods have some easy automatic criteria, the flags, vouches and upvotes from users, and then apply manual moderation on top of that.

It may be hard to distinguish a good discussion about a war from a bad discussion about icecream. Or replace war and icecream with your favorite topics.

> Also, i guess length of comment might be a strong indicator of thread degeneration.

I like that. Very short comments are usually bad, but huge wall of text too. Perhaps they have something more advanced and never told us. It may be part of the secret sauce. (Or it may be good that they pretend they have advanced stuff, so people behave better.)

> Finally you could create fields of expertise for every account (upvoted comments keywords) and ban threads with non-experts majority commenting.

It's an interesting idea, but my guess is that it's too hard. I'm not sure which tags apply to me. In some topics I'm mathematician, but I comment a lot in physics stuff because I have an unfinished degree in physics. But it depend on the area. In some areas I know a lot and in others I can just skim the article and look at the graphics. [1]

My guess is that non-experts are always the majority. For me the important part is that the comments by experts float near the top. There are also some interesting comments from non-experts, sometimes with a good reply from an expert. Upvoting good comments is very important to make the discusion better.

[1] Protip: Reading medicine studies, remember to Ctr+F "exclusion", because sometimes after the study started they excluded some of the subjects, like the guy that had 100% success after excluding the 1 dead and 5 other weird cases.

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