Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Superconductor news: What’s claimed, and how strong the evidence seems to be

science.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

431–440 of 501 posts

Re: Superconductor news: What’s claimed, and how strong the evidence seems to be

#431

Post by valine »

mromanuk wrote: post #423
MVissers wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most likely explanation based on the authors in the two articles is infighting, where one researcher decides to publish an uncomplete manuscript with his name as the third author. He’s omitted from the second author. I do believe they believe they have something nobel-prize worthy. They offered to help with replication in other labs, which is a good sign. Could still be measurement error, we just need to wait unt…

How long does it take to get a replication? I would love to follow up this kind of news, directly from a the researchers doing the work. Is there anyone to follow on twitter to keep posted on this?

I believe it needs a minimum of 48 hours in the furnace. If labs started right away after the paper hit Arxiv we should be hearing about results soon.

Re: Superconductor news: What’s claimed, and how strong the evidence seems to be

#433

Post by foven »

stu255 wrote: post #421
zarzavat wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you just made a groundbreaking discovery like this, wouldn't you care? Hell no! If I had made a discovery of similar magnitude I would have done exactly what they’ve done: push out a rough preprint ASAP to reserve my Nobel prize, then take a deep breath, relax and take my time dotting ‘i’s and crossing ‘t’s for the real paper in Nature. That doesn’t mean they’re correct, but there’s nothing inherently suspicious…

Exactly, they have made a very big claim and made it very easy to replicate / falsify. It takes a few days to produce this stuff. Their paper is weak on data / results. This is exactly what you would do if your team genuinely believed you had discovered something monumental. In poker terms they are "all in" and they want to get called. That's why it is so interesting. If they had posted lots of extreme results but it…

As I mentioned in my above post, they have really dodgy data. Ideally, with something like this, you would have collaborators to verify alongside you as joint co-authors. I think something people underestimate if how easy to replicate samples are - crystal growth is difficult, and impurities are important. It is unlikely anyone will produce exactly the same sample only something close based on the process they've given.

In realistic terms it seems they're grabbing for the prestige without the foundation of crossing their ts. Bad science like this shouldn't be encouraged. It's likely there's not very many groups growing the same material system so they have the time to spare. A paper like this wouldn't be on the arxiv at all if they were 100% sure because they would go straight for the nature publication and take the time to do more follow-up papers while they can.

Edit: to be clear as well, a lot of people are underestimating the time it takes to reproduce a growth even with a manuscript telling you how to do it. People always leave out steps and oversimplify. There is a lot of extra characterization that takes time to double check you have the right material that lines up with what they have here. Only the direct competitors actually already growing this material can do it in a few days.

Re: Superconductor news: What’s claimed, and how strong the evidence seems to be

#434

Post by MayeulC »

wcerfgba wrote: post #432

If this is real, what are the consequences/impacts/implications/applications? I don't know anything about superconductors!

Well, There are countless comments addressing this, but possibly more on the earlier thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36864624

Re: Superconductor news: What’s claimed, and how strong the evidence seems to be

#435

Post by stu255 »

nemo44x wrote: post #414
fh973 wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's from a guy of the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research.

He sounds rather bitter and arrogant. He basically just called them idiots. As if none of the researchers would have noticed the measurement error. Perhaps he’s right - we’ll know in a few days I assume. I do hope they are right though not only because it would be a huge leap but also because I’d love to see this guys reaction.

Lee and Kim have been working on this stuff for a long time. They published prematurely after major falling out within their institute.

This isn't 1 experiment as the Germans seem to think. There are multiple papers, patents, etc.

The main focus of these papers has been to make huge claims and make replication very easy. They are "all in" and they want others to call.

If they were bluffing they would be heavy on results and light/secretive on how to make the stuff (trade secret, etc).

That's why there are 2x papers published within 3 hours, both with different authors, and you have one author telling New Scientist he did not approve of a paper naming him as an author.

Re: Superconductor news: What’s claimed, and how strong the evidence seems to be

#436

Post by nemo44x »

Apparently the 2 main guys, Kim and Lee have been working on this since 1999 and hence the name "LK-99". They worked on other things in industry over the years with this on the back burner and a few years ago received some funding to pursue this. Kwon was brought in to babysit essentially.

At this point they were able to isolate the material but it took a few years to figure out how to produce it reliable. They bring in HyunTak who has Western ties and has a respectable reputation being a well known physical chemist.

They file patents in 2022 and 2023 and some in the group are nervous that because the process is so simple they'll get scooped. Spies, etc.

HyunTak wants to do more work before publishing but Kwon just goes ahead and published the paper with him, Lee, and Kim as the authors. HyunTak gets word of this and publishes his paper with him, Lee, and Kim and some others later that day.

I think because of this, it is real. Infighting over credits and the fact that HyunTak is extremely respectable.

Re: Superconductor news: What’s claimed, and how strong the evidence seems to be

#437

Post by stu255 »

lolc wrote: post #403
mrguyorama wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also probably a hundred labs skipping over replication completely to try and beat someone else out on a random permutation of these materials and methods and hoping to get lucky.

I can't see why they'd skip replication given the uncertain status of the original process. They'd try to replicate as closely as possible, confirm they have a superconducting material, then they'd branch out from their established process. Starting from a variation means they don't know whether it doesn't work because of the variation or because it doesn't work at all.

I hear some very clever labs can do more than one thing at a time.

Re: Superconductor news: What’s claimed, and how strong the evidence seems to be

#438

Post by keenmaster »

Evidlo wrote: post #299
honkycat wrote: post #193

I've been saying for years we are one "future technology" away from savings our asses from our world collapsing. Here is hoping this is that breakthrough.

Maybe post-scarcity countries will have more time to focus on fighting for land and less need for maintaining good relations with others.

With tons of cheap energy, you can make better use of the land you have. The entirety of humanity can technically fit in Southern California. I’m imagining a swarm of construction robots running on dirt cheap power, excavating land and building beautiful AI-designed mid-rise apartments in all directions. Scarcity, what’s that? And once we have bonkers amounts of power, like from fusion, we can trivially extend cities out into the sea by adding to the landmass (though this won’t account for a majority of the scarcity reducing effect).

Re: Superconductor news: What’s claimed, and how strong the evidence seems to be

#439

Post by hinkley »

wiredfool wrote: post #380
denimnerd42 wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what do you mean it's not tension at the top? did you misspeak? bicycle spokes are solely under tensile forces. they can't support compressive forces at all. i'm a hobbyist wheel builder and a once upon a time professional bicycle mechanic during hs & college. if you want to test this take nearly all the pretension out of your spokes and sit on your bike. feel which ones are taught and which ones are completely loose…

This dialogue is reminiscent of rec.bycycles.tech arguments with Jobst, ca 1993. A bike wheel is a linear elastic system, that can be thought of as a superposition of a uniformly set of tensioned spokes as one state, and a set of spokes in compression in the loaded zone (bottom of the wheel) as the other state. So long as the superposition of the two states obeys the limiting conditions (i.e. spokes in tension) they…

And thread. Thereby proving my point: Almost nobody knows how bicycle wheels actually work.

Re: Superconductor news: What’s claimed, and how strong the evidence seems to be

#440

Post by [deleted] »

denimnerd42 wrote: post #347
hinkley wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think one of us needs to reread that book, because he emphatically denies that tension at the top of the wheel increases. It’s tension at the bottom that decreases. > of course in a properly built wheel usually all the spoke are under tension... No, a properly built wheel all of the spokes are always under enough tension you can bounce a penny off them. Always.

no. you're assuming the rim has no deflection which is untrue. if you build a rim out of schedule 80 steel pipe then yea. but 300-400-500g rims on high performance bikes do not act like that. the spokes are constantly loading and unloading tension as they bash through rocks and over jumps. the point is that the pretension on the wheel needs to be high enough the spokes do not loosen too much under these forces. if th…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN