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LK-99 isn’t a superconductor

nature.com

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Re: LK-99 isn’t a superconductor

#391

Post by RhodesianHunter »

jokoon wrote: post #384

This type of story is fueled by techno-optimists who want to believe that humans can always "figure out" the universe and take advantage of the laws of physics to master their environment. I don't understand where this belief comes from, but to think that research + time = innovation is really ignorant of how technology works. It seems it's really rooted in prophetic or religious way to look at technology. Cornucopia…

>I don't understand where this belief comes from

Probably the last 100 or so years where we have largely done exactly that.

Re: LK-99 isn’t a superconductor

#392

Post by penjelly »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #387
penjelly wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

everyone in this thread should watch this, instead of "the excitement was good for everyone" they might realize these hoaxes harm scientific integrity. The audacity of HN to state something is good, without listening to scientists give their take on it.

> instead of "the excitement was good for everyone" they might realize these hoaxes harm scientific integrity. Totally disagree. If anything, this whole episode (debacle?) reinforced the fact that science works and the process played out exactly how the scientific process should work: 1. First, the paper was originally posted on arxiv, meaning it was a pre-print and didn't go through any peer review. So the vast majo…

good points. I can agree to that. However, I do think something did break down and I think your assessment below is more accurate than my initial take.

> One may argue that this was really a failure in media communication vs. the actual underlying science

the scientific process and scientists here are innocent, media not so much in my eyes.

Re: LK-99 isn’t a superconductor

#393

Post by jabedude »

jokoon wrote: post #384

This type of story is fueled by techno-optimists who want to believe that humans can always "figure out" the universe and take advantage of the laws of physics to master their environment. I don't understand where this belief comes from, but to think that research + time = innovation is really ignorant of how technology works. It seems it's really rooted in prophetic or religious way to look at technology. Cornucopia…

> I don't understand where this belief comes from

For me it comes from a survey of the previous 2 millennia of human history and witnessing constant technological advancements that produce higher and higher standards of living

Re: LK-99 isn’t a superconductor

#394

Post by rubidium »

penjelly wrote: post #263
sorenjan wrote: post #237

Sixty Symbols released a video about this yesterday, and in it professor Philip Moriarty is less than impressed with the whole ordeal. I haven't been paying attention, I'm too jaded and skeptical and assumed from the start that there was something wrong and much hype about nothing. Bad Science and Room Temperature Superconductors - Sixty Symbols: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zl-AgmoZ5mo

everyone in this thread should watch this, instead of "the excitement was good for everyone" they might realize these hoaxes harm scientific integrity. The audacity of HN to state something is good, without listening to scientists give their take on it.

Best as we can tell, it wasn’t a hoax. It was a poorly understood experiment (and perhaps premature arxiv preprint). It’s very similar to the “faster than speed of light” puzzle from a few years back. It doesn’t harm scientific integrity. It reveals that science is by nature an exploratory process where what we know today is subject to change in light of new data and theory.

As a PhD physics scientist with a familiarity with this area, I’m glad this got the attention it did and showed science working “as it should”.

Re: LK-99 isn’t a superconductor

#395

Post by [deleted] »

jokoon wrote: post #384

This type of story is fueled by techno-optimists who want to believe that humans can always "figure out" the universe and take advantage of the laws of physics to master their environment. I don't understand where this belief comes from, but to think that research + time = innovation is really ignorant of how technology works. It seems it's really rooted in prophetic or religious way to look at technology. Cornucopia…

[deleted]

Re: LK-99 isn’t a superconductor

#397

Post by Larrikin »

jokoon wrote: post #384

This type of story is fueled by techno-optimists who want to believe that humans can always "figure out" the universe and take advantage of the laws of physics to master their environment. I don't understand where this belief comes from, but to think that research + time = innovation is really ignorant of how technology works. It seems it's really rooted in prophetic or religious way to look at technology. Cornucopia…

Do you really think we have figured it all out and all the current research is pointless? Or did you just want to post that Wikipedia article?

Re: LK-99 isn’t a superconductor

#398

Post by bacon_waffle »

dekhn wrote: post #332

my only criticism is to the people who, without real background in the area, read the paper, thought the synthesis was "easy", raced to get the reagents only to realize that you can't easily order somet things without a prior relationship and trust with a chemical supplier, and then showed some antimagnetism in their shitty examples, without understanding that that phenomenon isn't conclusive evidence. It's sort of a…

Why criticize? People spend their time and money on pointless pursuits all the time.

Re: LK-99 isn’t a superconductor

#399

Post by KyleBerezin »

jokoon wrote: post #384

This type of story is fueled by techno-optimists who want to believe that humans can always "figure out" the universe and take advantage of the laws of physics to master their environment. I don't understand where this belief comes from, but to think that research + time = innovation is really ignorant of how technology works. It seems it's really rooted in prophetic or religious way to look at technology. Cornucopia…

History has had many groundbreaking discoveries. It seems foolish to assume that is over. There will be more ground breaking discoveries, and there will be more iterative discoveries. People are so interested in room temp superconductors and stable fusion, because they CAN exist, and likely will exist.

'High' temperature super conductors were only recently discovered, and only a couple of years ago lanthanum decahydride was shown to transition at -10F. It seems odd to me to assume that this hurdle isn't going to be overcome, and even stranger to disparage others for thinking so.

Re: LK-99 isn’t a superconductor

#400

Post by drdeca »

hunson_abadeer wrote: post #378
thinkingkong wrote: post #2

It’s disappointing news but the excitement and amount of replication on this paper was pretty fun to witness and experience. To me the most interesting part was everyone talking about potential consequences, uses, the order of magnitude improvements we’d see in certain costs or areas. Pumps, MRIs, power grids, chips, etc. Great reminder what materials science can do to some underlying economics.

This is precisely what put me off in these discussions. Not the idea that we might have found a room-temperature superconductor - that part was exciting. It's the part where people confidently talked about its applications without realizing that they probably wouldn't revolutionize CPU performance (Josephson junctions don't seem to work well as non-cryogenic temperatures for reasons unrelated to superconductivity), p…

I had heard the parts about "probably wouldn't be a big deal for CPU performance" and "probably wouldn't be great for energy storage", but I hadn't heard the point about "we use less efficient materials for power grid transmission than we could, because of costs".

I suppose I didn't expect that we necessarily had like, the "absolute most efficient that could be made" (if that is something substantially more complicated at a materials-science level than "some simple-to-make-alloy"), but I hadn't imagined that it was a substantial difference. (I think I had imagined that they were... copper wires with like, surrounding metal tubes, or something? I hadn't thought much about it.)

Could you either say, or give my a search term I should look up in order to read, a little more about the trade-off being made between materials cost and efficiency of transmission lines?

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