Successful room temperature ambient-pressure magnetic levitation of LK-99 • Hacker News Board

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

#571

Post by lucideer » Fri, Aug 04, 2023, 9:52 AM UTC

n2d4 wrote: post #533

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?

> 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 discov…

> 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.

This is a (I feel rudimentarily obvious) fallacy of finite time implying there is N researchers working on one thing that must be useful at any given time. The individuals reproducing cold fusion / LK-99 / whichever might not have been spending their energy / time / funding on anything more "guaranteed productive" (nor even on anything at all) otherwise.

Knowledge motivates research. That motivating is not a classsically scarce resource, its multiplicative.

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

#572

Post by mnw21cam » Fri, Aug 04, 2023, 9:58 AM UTC

nindalf wrote: post #354

smsm42 wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But other than that, what the Romans have ever done for us?!

Apart from the aqueduct, sanitation, roads, irrigation, medicine, education, wine, public baths and public order - the Romans didn’t really do much at all.

And concrete.

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

#573

Post by StackOverlord » Fri, Aug 04, 2023, 9:59 AM UTC

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 happened, for those who want to catch up:

https://twitter.com/8teAPi/status/1685294623449874432

With the anti-hype hype that surrounds this discovery this was to be expected. Why would I disclose this kind of research to the public so that the whole world can benefit from it when I'm called a fraudster or a liar. Why would I risk my reputation – no matter how I spin my research – in a sacrificial circle jerk when I can work on it stealthily and hope to make some bucks ?

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

#574

Post by andrepd » Fri, Aug 04, 2023, 10:03 AM UTC

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 is definitely gamechanging, the disposable razor not so much indeed.

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

#575

Post by oneshtein » Fri, Aug 04, 2023, 10:04 AM UTC

ben_w wrote: post #368

urinotherapist wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Commercially viable fusion can be achieved with commercially viable source of muons: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muon-catalyzed_fusion https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00016-009-0006-9 https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev.ns.39.... http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2016/ph241/yoon1/ https://www.chemeurope.com/en/encyclopedia/Muon-catalyzed_fu...

Slightly harder than I remembered: > Even if muons were absolutely stable, each muon could catalyze, on average, only about 100 d-t fusions before sticking to an alpha particle, which is only about one-fifth the number of muon catalyzed d–t fusions needed for break-even, where as much thermal energy is generated as electrical energy is consumed to produce the muons in the first place, according to Jackson's rough est…

Some researchers[0] are using a lattice filled with Deuterium to increase density of Deuterium and boost rate of nuclear reactions by using Inertial Electrostatic Confinement fusion and Lattice Confinement Fusion: https://youtu.be/UtfUeip4vyA?t=400

[0]: https://www.astralneutronics.com/

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

#576

Post by XorNot » Fri, Aug 04, 2023, 10:06 AM UTC

myrmidon wrote: post #532

XorNot wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 hou…

A superconductor running at high amperage requiring more superconductor is still a superconductor. The losses you take are zero.

Any amount of cross-section of copper though is not - you take losses at (I^2)*R. You lose power as a square of the current.

There is an enormous difference between using superconductors at high currents and using any normal material.

Obviously the impact of this depends on what the critical current of a hypothetical room-temperature superconductor ends up being...but REBCO tapes achieve current densities of >40,000A/mm2 (at 77K). Depending on what you end up with, the expense and danger of maintaining the high voltage infrastructure could easily be seen as not worth it - particularly if it speeds up the ability to build out and maintain power lines.

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

#577

Post by jacquesm » Fri, Aug 04, 2023, 10:08 AM UTC

abnry wrote: post #210

marginalia_nu wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why are't more labs outside China making LK-99 and publish videos? Good rigorous science takes time to produce. It can take anywhere between several months to a year or more, and the career implications for rushing something out that is later found lacking is not great.

> the career implications for rushing something out that is later found lacking is not great. On a tangent, this idea of reputation keeps on coming up in this whole discussion and I am burdened by it in a way I don't fully understand. The way people have talked, if this LK-99 doesn't work out, then it is almost as if those who published this did something _morally_ wrong. Well, morally wrong is not quite true, but th…

It's a direct side effect of reputation and funding being closely correlated: if your reputation is that you put out stuff that doesn't work you won't get funded. This is dumb, but that's how the world works. That's why you almost always see the 'more research is needed' line in various papers, it is most helpful when seeking for funding that one paper will lead to another. But (unfortunately) negative results aren't nearly as often published, and that is because they will not get cited as much in follow on papers. It's all the result of metrics based meta analysis of papers, aka the 'impact factor' (which, no kidding is a copyrighted term), once that got established that became the thing that science partially optimized for.

During the 'golden age' of science, the time of the Royal Society the fields weren't specialized at all and the publication mechanism was scientists sending each other interesting stuff by post. At that time there was no meta analysis at all and there was so much low hanging fruit that the 'gentleman scientist' could make big breakthroughs in their home laboratories. But as that low hanging fruit decreased the educational paths required before being able to do meaningful science became longer and longer, then specialization set in and the costs of doing science went up. That's how we arrived at grants used to fund science.

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

#578

Post by Aardwolf » Fri, Aug 04, 2023, 10:08 AM UTC

lucideer wrote: post #571

n2d4 wrote: post #533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 discov…

> 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. This is a (I feel rudimentarily obvious) fallacy of finite time implying there is N researchers working on one thing that must be useful at any…

> Also, LK-99 was discovered in 1999 but wasn't known as a room-temperature superconductor then.

Was there anything in 1999 about the material that made it notable as a discovery then?

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

#579

Post by andrepd » Fri, Aug 04, 2023, 10:09 AM UTC

dataflow wrote: post #423

anovikov wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's not like we would have free roaming in the modern age if passports weren't a thing. People would still face travel restrictions, they'd just be more nonstandard and unpredictable. Consider how the days before passports also lacked air travel available to the masses. Even cars has only just started to become commonplace. I don't see how you could possibly have travel that is so cheap, quick, and accessible to suc…

If only there was a pre-WWI technology that enabled people to travel quickly and comfortably over long distances... Perhaps some sort of wagon on rails :)

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

#580

Post by DoctorOetker » Fri, Aug 04, 2023, 10:10 AM UTC

On the following suppositions:

1: Superconductivity becomes widely confirmed

2: Reproducibility remains microscopic

Imagine a game of rolling a collection of n dice (normal 6 sided), where the player wins if all N dice are 4 or higher (probability 1/2 for a single dice).

Then the probability of a lucky roll is P = (½)ⁿ

So the smaller the collection of dice the more likely a lucky roll becomes.

Consider a hypothetical continuous production method of LK-99, where the fraction of wire in superconducting arrangement is a function of its thickness, more likely if thinner.

Could one simply re-anneal (and possibly re-quench) a short non-superconducting section until we get lucky, then proceed to the next non-superconducting section?

"Lucky annealing" fortune cookies?