381–390 of 448 posts
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Is there an intuitive explanation of why shrinkage of a material is beneficial for superconductivity. Naive question, particles physicist by training.
When a material shrinks, it can create immense internal stresses equivalent to what it would experience at extreme pressures. Compare to say a Prince Rupert's drop.
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What's up with that uh? I read about the swore statements during the depositions, and all the mainstream media news, but for some reason HN had radio silence. Is there something I missed that shows it's all shenanigans?
People say a lot of things in sworn testimony to Congress. It's a data point but not a particularly strong one.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/are-5-memorable-mo...
> Asked by Rep. Jared Moskowitz, D-Fla., how such a program is funded, Grusch claimed that the effort is "above congressional oversight" and bankrolled by a "misappropriation of funds."
> "Does that mean that there is money in the budget that is set to go to a program but it doesn't and it goes to something else?," Moskowitz asked.
> "Yes. I have specific knowledge of that," Grusch said, though he did not provide more details, claiming the information remains classified.
The chances of "we have aliens" being unclassified, but the exact details being classified... is fairly slim.
The most interesting phenomenon revealed so far is that the room-temperature superconductor people and the generative-LLMs-are-God people draw on the same limited global pool of credulity, such that HN cannot be flooded with both ChatGPT worship and superconductor speculation at the same time.
The least interesting phenomenon revealed so far is that HN is split into a group who are entertained by watching and discussing emerging tech / science news, and a second group who are entertained by disparaging the first. I enjoy watching floating rocks and talking to computers.
That being said:
I want the magical floating rocks to be real.
I want the talky computer to be self aware and capable of genuine creation.
I want the explanation for UAPs to be aliens.
I want reactionless engine technology.
I definitely still feel excited by things, but time has taught me to temper it.
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Same with me, it gives me the same feeling of "Living in a science fiction world" that I once felt when cell phones or Google maps came out. Of course even tough I still use both profusely every day, the feeling of novelty wore out. I expect the same will happen with this.
In an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation a redshirt used a tricorder to check the weather and said they would have to beam up soon because a storm was approaching. At the time I thought to myself: “Bah, that’s never happening, it’s pure fantasy!” A few years later I told some friends we’d have to pack up our picnic because according to the weather radar app on my phone we had about 7 minutes until we got drenc…
I think we've almost EXCEEDED star trek in that area.
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I do not (almost everyone else too) associate "reputable scientist" with University of Maryland. So they should show a bit of humility.
Show me where on the doll they touched you.
I got my PhD studying band structure of high-tc superconductors (experimentalist, ARPES). These Cu d-d interactions right at the fermi energy give me huge hope. Feels very familiar to other superconductors (re: all the cuprates). (Note: I specifically worked in a lab that was measuring a lot of the d-wave character / gap-energies of various superconductors) All in all, I'm now much more bullish on LK-99 being real su…
I think we're being trolled. Or trawled. Not sure which, yet. But the mention of Salvatore Cezar Pais in the patent should be enough to put this to bed for serious folks. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36967333 In case you aren't familiar with the man's work, here are some highlights of his discoveries over the last decade: Conditional possibility of spacecraft propulsion at superluminal speeds High frequency g…
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> It was a weapons test, by a weapons lab Beyond a certain point, every energy system is a weapon first. Uncontrolled precedes controlled.
Interestingly, controlled nuclear fission preceded the weapons tests (Chicago Pile 1), at least chronologically.
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Jeffbee in the 1947 edition: The most interesting phenomenon revealed so far is that the solid state electronics people and the rocket fanatics people draw on the same limited global pool of credulity, such that TinkererNews cannot be flooded with both transistor worship and moon travel speculation at the same time. Seriously: if it doesn't interest you, you could simply refrain from commenting and even reading. This…
> Similar trends can be observed rectro-actively for practical solar panels, micro electronics, powered flight and so on. All had their skeptics Isn't this textbook survivorship bias? On the grand scale, I bet the skeptics have a much better record than the optimists.
Progress, and working on progress is inherently risky. But by the time actual progress seems to have arrived speculation on how true it is and what the impact will be if it is true is perfectly valid and those that would rather engage in shouting everything down are technically off topic and I personally find it annoying. Not quite as annoying as crank science but still.
On that subject: there is still a non-zero chance this is a hoax but that chance is rapidly diminishing, there is a very large chance that this whole discovery will not be immediately practical and that it will still take a ton of work and funding to unlock its true potential. The skeptic would rather not spend that money and would rather avoid the work, it's a cop-out, and a cheap and easy one at that, and it's exactly why the skeptics have the better track record: progress is hard. But not impossible so let's see what comes out but let's not give up hope that progress is still possible, especially not when it seems that progress is being made.
My initial skepticism was high (this isn't the first room temperature superconductor claim), then as I read the paper and checked some stuff my conclusion was that this could be the real thing but the numbers are such that it isn't a practical superconductor just yet. That confidence has since gone up a bit but I still would not bet that this material as discovered right now has huge industrial applications. But if it is true then I am somewhat optimistic that it opens the door to lots of new research and that research may well pay off (or not, time will tell).
The most interesting phenomenon revealed so far is that the room-temperature superconductor people and the generative-LLMs-are-God people draw on the same limited global pool of credulity, such that HN cannot be flooded with both ChatGPT worship and superconductor speculation at the same time.
Panem et circenses
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Measuring zero resistance turns out to be quite difficult because your measuring apparatus tends to have some resistance in itself. Perhaps heating it up while it levitates would be a better idea. Put the magnet in an oven together with the sample and bake?
Magnets have an annoying tendency to stop working when they are heated. And it's ridiculous that I'm saying that on the context of testing a superconductor. But well, here we are.