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

Successful room temperature ambient-pressure magnetic levitation of LK-99

arxiv.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

491–500 of 1001 posts

Re: Successful room temperature ambient-pressure magnetic levitation of LK-99

#491

Post by bobsmooth »

danbruc wrote: post #435
concordDance wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this pushes my odds above 50% for the first time. Time for you to make some money then? :D https://polymarket.com/event/is-the-room-temp-superconductor...

Can one know how many people are in that market? When prediction markets where mentioned early during the LK-99 story, I looked a bit around out of interest, which platforms exist, which topics they cover, how many people participate in that markets. Where I could find the number of predictors, it seemed pretty underwhelming - one, ten, fifty, a hundred, I think the highest I ever saw was a bit over a thousand, but e…

Website says $1 083 678 has been bet so far. You can scroll down to see all the shares and their prices.

Re: Successful room temperature ambient-pressure magnetic levitation of LK-99

#492

Post by highwaylights »

jjallen wrote: post #432

One somewhat ironic fact of this story is that the rogue former employee perhaps deserves some credit for bringing this thing out into the world. They had been working on this for quite a long time themselves, rightfully so. But now the whole world is working on it and exploring other methods and combinations of materials I would assume (to improve upon the original design and avoid any patents). How long would they…

> that this thing needs to see the light of day so it can start to benefit humanity.

.. by way of Back to the Future hoverboards.

Re: Successful room temperature ambient-pressure magnetic levitation of LK-99

#493

Post by nindalf »

anovikov wrote: post #385
nindalf wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Auctions, sanitary towels, retirement, banking, disposable razor, sewing machine, canned food, interchangeable parts, antibiotics, solar cells, postage stamp, light bulb, pencil, air conditioning, insurance, dwarf wheat, spreadsheet, cold chain, double entry book-keeping, S-bend, infant formula, clocks, public key cryptography, passports, batteries, printing press, video games, GPS, contraceptive pill, shipping conta…

Passports are not a good invention. They are a dystopian evil we grew to take for granted and even see as something that exists for our own benefit. Before WWI there were no passports and no need for them. Those were Good Old Days that are not coming back. It's weird to see some people seeing some kind of benefit in them.

I got the list from 50 things that made the modern economy. Maybe you’d learn something by listening to the episode on passports - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p052spyb

> Before WWI there were no passports and no need for them.

This combination of ignorance and confidence isn’t a good look.

Re: Successful room temperature ambient-pressure magnetic levitation of LK-99

#494

Post by krisoft »

m463 wrote: post #484
jjallen wrote: post #432

One somewhat ironic fact of this story is that the rogue former employee perhaps deserves some credit for bringing this thing out into the world. They had been working on this for quite a long time themselves, rightfully so. But now the whole world is working on it and exploring other methods and combinations of materials I would assume (to improve upon the original design and avoid any patents). How long would they…

Wait, how did co-discoverer a few days ago become rogue former employee today?

It is not a contradiction. One can be both.

The alegation is that the person in question worked with them on the research, and they published it on arxiv without the permission of the others. Thus they can be a co-discoverer and also rogue former employee.

Re: Successful room temperature ambient-pressure magnetic levitation of LK-99

#495

Post by [deleted] »

jjallen wrote: post #488
m463 wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, how did co-discoverer a few days ago become rogue former employee today?

Supposedly he worked there until four months ago. I am just repeating stuff I read on the Internet and I don't know that we know all of the facts just yet FYI.

[deleted]

Re: Successful room temperature ambient-pressure magnetic levitation of LK-99

#496

Post by yetihehe »

amrocha wrote: post #163
scarmig wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm generally anti-patent, but if there were any valid case for patents, this is it. Long, hard labor to discover something entirely new that has massive uses for society. I'd rest my hopes on them not being dicks about it, not on them not getting benefit from it.

Long, hard labor should be rewarded. And it is. They're receiving a salary, and now fame. That's more than enough.

> Long, hard labor should be rewarded. And it is.

Why do people ask for raises though? It is somewhat rewarded, but some people don't work long and hard and still have more money. Those working long and hard, having a big useable result want to be rewarded a little more.

Re: Successful room temperature ambient-pressure magnetic levitation of LK-99

#498

Post by kome »

jjallen wrote: post #432

One somewhat ironic fact of this story is that the rogue former employee perhaps deserves some credit for bringing this thing out into the world. They had been working on this for quite a long time themselves, rightfully so. But now the whole world is working on it and exploring other methods and combinations of materials I would assume (to improve upon the original design and avoid any patents). How long would they…

Young-Wan Kwon's legacy will undoubtedly be that of the hero of LK99. There is a lingering thought that had this discovery been made in the US, it might have been hidden indefinitely by the military-industrial complex, never to see the light of day.

Re: Successful room temperature ambient-pressure magnetic levitation of LK-99

#499

Post by EvgeniyZh »

qnleigh wrote: post #263
Daneel_ wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s difficult to rule out external factors - a badly attached probe could also result in zero resistance for example. Showing diamagnetism is one of the least error-prone ways to demonstrate the superconductor effect. That’s my understanding anyway.

That's right. The standard way to measure resistance without being sensitive to contact resistance is called the four-terminal method, see ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four-terminal_sensing ). You drive a current using two outer wires, but then detect the voltage across the sample using a different pair of wires. You'll measure zero voltage if it's superconducting, since V=IR. Or if one of the probe wires became…

One case in which you can see something similar to SC transition is percolation, where the sample is mix of regular metal and insulator, and you (accidentally) connect current contacts to metal but voltage probes to insulator [1]

[1] https://arxiv.org/abs/1808.05871

Re: Successful room temperature ambient-pressure magnetic levitation of LK-99

#500

Post by ben_w »

rvnx wrote: post #257
TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear weapons. There hasn’t been a full scale war between major powers since.

350K+ reported casualties just in a year sounds already much https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraine-war-already-wit...

Ukraine isn't a major power, and the fact that they've been able to hold back Russia so effectively, with so few resources, is mainly an indicator of how weak Russia is these days.
Post reply on HN