2023 will go down as a miracle year not unlike 1905. Between AI, this, and… what’s next?
Next is that UFOs are real
Electronic Structure of LK-99
51–60 of 448 posts
Re: Electronic Structure of LK-99
#52My understanding is that the "99" in LK-99 is the year it they first synthesized the material, i.e. 1999. Assuming this is all true, why is it just now coming to light? Did they just not know what they had? (I have not been following this closely, maybe this has already been explained)
I’m very much a layman, but my understanding is that LK-99 itself is not necessarily a superconductor. It’s polycrystalline which means it’s a very uneven material - not all LK-99 is the same. They both didn’t know it was what it was and also couldn’t nail down the procedure for consistently making it so that it has the superconductor properties. It took a long time to get the resources required to investigate this far - the scientists had their own lives and careers and didn’t get back to this particular investigation until recently.
Re: Electronic Structure of LK-99
#53My understanding is that the "99" in LK-99 is the year it they first synthesized the material, i.e. 1999. Assuming this is all true, why is it just now coming to light? Did they just not know what they had? (I have not been following this closely, maybe this has already been explained)
Uniformed opinion.
It takes a week to bake/whatever a test sample. Which is why this is playing out so "slowly".
So, they had an idea and have been baking/testing/refining samples for decades. Science and funding takes a while.
What idea they started with and why they kept at it for 20 years is beyond me, that's a long time to chase an idea of you didn't have results or a hint that your idea would work. Maybe they had a weird sample that came from some other process in 1999 and have spent the intermediate time convincing funding people and doing the repetitive lab work required to get it to this point.
Re: Electronic Structure of LK-99
#54The 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.
Lol thank you. That’s hilarious.
Also, I think it kind of sucks that all that UFO reverse engineering didn’t yield a high temperature superconductor before this… but I guess what can you expect when you sequester away all your materials, silo your research and in effect keep your neural network of nodes (as scientists) really small.
This open shit, as flawed and maybe annoying as it is to some people, I think it’s a much better model of science. It’d be great to see some UFO/UFO tech breakthroughs happen like this too.
Re: Electronic Structure of LK-99
#552023 will go down as a miracle year not unlike 1905. Between AI, this, and… what’s next?
Next is that UFOs are real
Unidentified Flying Objects are absolutely real, though the newer cool kid term is UAP.
(From the internet: UAP stands for "unidentified anomalous phenomena.")
It's flying saucers carrying aliens from another planet that's controversial and up for debate.
Re: Electronic Structure of LK-99
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
the singularity isn't going to implement itself, you know.
The next breakthrough we need is with fusion technology. With unlimited fusion energy, room temperature superconductivity, and (soon) artificial general intelligence, the singularity won't be long off.
Fusion would be massively boosted by having room-temperature superconductivity anyways.
Re: Electronic Structure of LK-99
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think she's working in a UC Berkeley Lab
No, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, which is Up the Hill from Berkeley. They're run by the same underlying organization but are distinct (yet overlapping in many ways). LBL evolved out of the UC Berkeley Rad Lab, run by Earnest O. Lawrence (same name as the current lab). They do non-classified research. There is also Lawrence Livermore National Lab, which is nearby, but in Livermore. They do classified research in ad…
> I suppose it's one of the two places they simulate nuclear weapons... errr, run large scale multi-physics combustion codes for stockpile stewardship.
Back in the '90s my friend (jokingly) lamented that they wouldn't let him try to play Everquest on their computer.
Re: Electronic Structure of LK-99
#582023 will go down as a miracle year not unlike 1905. Between AI, this, and… what’s next?
There's technically still time for Starship to have a go at another test flight, so there's still time to add "Cheap reusable access to space" to "proto-AGI" and "RT Superconductors".
Re: Electronic Structure of LK-99
#59The 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.
And together, these two phenomena have just sucked all the energy out of the crypto excitation mode.
Re: Electronic Structure of LK-99
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
the singularity isn't going to implement itself, you know.
The next breakthrough we need is with fusion technology. With unlimited fusion energy, room temperature superconductivity, and (soon) artificial general intelligence, the singularity won't be long off.
Well, if there is a breakthrough that puts us closer to fusion, it's room-temperature superconductors.