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

531–540 of 1001 posts

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

#531

Post by perlgeek »

nocoder wrote: post #139

I get the idea of superconductivity at room temperature in theory. But I don't have enough knowledge to understand in real terms, how will the world change if this is true?

I don't think anybody can really say for now, but if the price of it comes down enough, there are two rough categories of things that can happen:

* devices that currently use superconductors don't have to use cooling anymore, and so become much cheaper to build and operate (MRI machines, certain sensors, high-power magnets for things like fusion research, big generators, big motors). This is a pretty solid bet.

* devices where superconductors would be an improvement, but currently don't make economic or practical sense. These are almost certain to crop up, but which ones will pan out is IMHO very speculative.

In the latter category, things like computing chips, more sensors, certain art works (sculptures with permanently levitating parts, how awesome!), smaller motors and generators seem plausible.

But there is likely whole categories of things we haven't thought of that could benefit from either zero resistance or rejecting magnetic fields.

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

#532

Post by myrmidon »

XorNot wrote: post #408
hwillis wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't get CT scans very often, because they hit you with large doses of ionizing radiation. Ultrasounds are low-resolution spotlights; you shine them at a particular spot to diagnose something specific. With this you could get an MRI at your annual checkup. You could diagnose all number of diseases like that, not to mention 95% of cancers. Each year your scan is automatically compared to the previous year, and an…

> We might eventually transition away from AC power entirely. This is actually a really good point I hadn't fully considered, but it's right: the primary reason we use high voltage anywhere is because it minimizes resistive losses (and the reason we use AC is because it's easy to transform between voltages). But most of the stuff in my home doesn't need high voltage - it's all running at 5V or 12V. Or it's a motor wh…

This is drawing completely wrong conclusions from erroneous oversimplifications:

We're using high transmission voltages to keep current down. Superconductors would not change this AT ALL; superconductivity generally breaks down not only with temperature increases but also magnetic field strength (i.e. current).

Switching large currents is also a hassle; especially with non-resistive loads.

And completely changing household electricity architecture is simply not gonna happen just to marginally improve safety, cost/benefit ratio is WAY too high.

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

#533

Post by n2d4 »

wcerfgba wrote: post #455
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…

Exactly, the 99 stands for 1999, so potentially this material has existed for over 20 years and we could have started testing and replication on a much wider scale a decade ago. What benefit have we gained by disseminating this research so slowly?

> What benefit have we gained by disseminating this research so slowly?

It's less visible, but at this scale there's a high cost in everyone pausing their research to replicate LK-99. If it turns out to be real that's worth, but if not it could've gone to better use. Think of what we could've done with the time we spent reproducing cold fusion.

It's survivorship bias; yes, you would love to see the significant discoveries happen sooner, but if they were rushed you'd also see a lot of trash that currently never leaves the draft stage. Just look at how many people complained that the LK-99 papers were incomplete and unprofessional!

Also, LK-99 was discovered in 1999 but wasn't known as a room-temperature superconductor then. There are too many things to research and not enough researchers, so it was put on hold for two decades.

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

#534

Post by gorbachev »

ben_w wrote: post #374
Smoosh wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm unsure if we want people living forever. While disease, illness, and senility are terrible things, as soon as people can live forever we will have eternal dictatorships (or people trying for it) as well as other questions of perpetual inequality. "Death renders all equal".

Eternal youth != immortality; given accidental and deliberate injuries and deaths, the "half life" (feels wrong in this context) is about 1000 years. As for dictators: it's not like guillotines stop working. What will keep dictators (if eternally young, or their offspring if not) in power forever is competent and obedient AI manning the police and army.

The people going after "eternal" life right now are people with access to practically unlimited funding.

They are immune to guillotines operated by peasants.

The only thing they don't have protection against is Government forces. With their armies of lobbyists, and other bought influence they have, they are also, largely, protected against those as well.

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

#535

Post by imdsm »

Iulioh wrote: post #512
wcerfgba wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, the 99 stands for 1999, so potentially this material has existed for over 20 years and we could have started testing and replication on a much wider scale a decade ago. What benefit have we gained by disseminating this research so slowly?

This reminds me of an Asimov novel (don't remember the name) In this universe there are long life humans that don't really collaborate with other humans (like a single person, not a group of quasi immortal humans) in the scientific field to have all the credit because who cares if you take 200 years for a discovery if the glory is all yours

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._Daneel_Olivaw

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

#536

Post by imdsm »

pcrh wrote: post #461
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…

There's apparently a patent published in 2020. It surprises me that it never gained attention. edit: KR20210062550A - Mehtod of manufacturing ceramic composite with low resistance including superconductors and the composite thereof - https://patents.google.com/patent/KR20210062550A/en

Imagine if human progress had taken a wrong turn in 2020 all becomes of a typo

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

#537

Post by ruszki »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #372
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…

That's just a list of good inventions. GPS, disposable razor, many of these are not impactful enough to be "black swan but good". And things like clocks and batteries were slowly refined over many, many years, so they don't fit either.

GPS changed my mind, how I think, and how I see the world. That’s not a small achievement.

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

#538

Post by gorbachev »

highwaylights wrote: post #300
Smoosh wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm unsure if we want people living forever. While disease, illness, and senility are terrible things, as soon as people can live forever we will have eternal dictatorships (or people trying for it) as well as other questions of perpetual inequality. "Death renders all equal".

Also there’s a massive philosophical quandary in there too. If people could live for much longer then they’re likely disincentivised to procreate due to worries of overpopulation and then, in one way of thinking, you’re hypothetically depriving a line of offspring of lifetimes they’d otherwise have if you’d had what we consider a normal lifespan now. Yes I realise there are probably an infinite number of takes on thi…

I think a majority of the people who want to live "forever" are the types of megalomaniacs who want to populate the earth with their own kind of uber mench, and will actually have more children than an average person.

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

#539

Post by ericswpark »

baxtr wrote: post #519

Here is a good thread on what could be realized if we had room temperature superconducting materials at our hands: https://twitter.com/alexkaplan0/status/1684044616528453633

Twitter (or X or Y or whatever the heck they're calling it nowadays) doesn't show replies if you're not signed in, which breaks all tweet threads. Amazing hostile UX right there.

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

#540

Post by fear91 »

pcrh wrote: post #461
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…

There's apparently a patent published in 2020. It surprises me that it never gained attention. edit: KR20210062550A - Mehtod of manufacturing ceramic composite with low resistance including superconductors and the composite thereof - https://patents.google.com/patent/KR20210062550A/en

Off-topic but I'd have expected someone to spell-check a patent title. Mehtod seems like a misspelling?
Post reply on HN