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

61–70 of 501 posts

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

#61

Post by perihelions »

curiousObject wrote: post #36

While we’re waiting for experimenters to reproduce this, it’s worth comparing this amazing announcement to the Cold Fusion affair of 1989[1] It’s notable that the first publications about attempts to reproduce the Cold Fusion experiment all reported positive results. It’s probably because experimenters who got negative results decided they might have done something wrong so they kept trying, and delayed, and they did…

Another example of this was Millikan's determination of the fundamental electric charge (of one electron). The first, famous experiment had a major error; and subsequently everyone who independently replicated the experiment, for two decades, came up with the same error, in the same direction. The people whose experiments got the correct value probably self-selected themselves out of publishing it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_drop_experiment?useskin=ve... ("Millikan's experiment as an example of psychological effects in scientific methodology")

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

#62

Post by m463 »

nneonneo wrote: post #24
floxy wrote: post #4

Lots of people are saying there should be a quick turnaround time here for trying the replication. I wonder how much it would cost to try and replicate this, in materials, labor costs, and vacuum furnace time/costs. My naive thought is that that labs in general aren't just going to drop everything to try an replicate every instance of someone declaring they've discovered room temperature superconductivity. Seems more…

Fleischmann and Pons' famous cold fusion result was announced on March 23 1989 and a spate of replication attempts followed in the ensuing weeks; by April 30 1989, the NYT ran an article calling cold fusion dead due to the large number of reported negative reproduction attempts. Scientists can move far quicker than you expect, and a positive or negative replication of this superconductor claim should be a very easy p…

The fact that there are other (competing?) scientists doing superconductor research suggests there will be organized attempts to verify it.

That said, I remember reading about shockley having ideas about the transistor that he only fessed up to as his other more open collaborators started understanding the phenomenon.

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

#63

Post by petsfed »

soligern wrote: post #40
eig wrote: post #17

This video ( https://sciencecast.org/casts/suc384jly50n ) showing the Meissner effect should be the easiest to replicate: just send a sample to another lab and put it over a large magnet. As far as I know, the only explanations for this occurring is room temp superconductivity, or a strong diamagnetism (which would also be very cool to see)!

I don’t know enough about this but shouldn’t the entire superconductor be floating above the magnet? Why is one part still attached (or maybe attracted) to the magnet?

Based on what I'm hearing, it sounds like they weren't able to produce a macroscopic ingot of the stuff, so it seems likely to me that the superconducting part is up at the end there. However, without further explanation, I'm disinclined to take that video (fantastic as it seems) to be conclusive evidence of anything.

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

#64

Post by m463 »

NotYourLawyer wrote: post #51
swader999 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear fusion much easier, quantum computing, lossless electricity transmission, insane batteries. Dirt cheap MRIs, Basically welcome to the Jetsons. Much easier to mitigate climate change to the point where we can just deal with it.

This would only solve one of the more minor problems with fusion. And what would it do for batteries?

I wonder if it would really mean a different sort of battery maybe like a super capacitor that doesn't discharge.

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

#65

Post by scarmig »

akjssdk wrote: post #54
mmastrac wrote: post #12

This is an extremely useful summarization of the original paper. > The authors believe that the modified/strained structure of their material creates a large number of “quantum wells” between particular lead atoms and the adjacent oxygens of the phosphate groups bound to them, in effect making a two-dimensional “electron gas”. They propose that electron tunneling between these quantum wells, which are between 3.7 and…

I don't think the actual proposed superconductivity mechanism is the relevant part of this paper. It is much easier to prove that this is superconducting than to prove why. And in a sense it is a bit less relevant. Although developing a working theory for room temperature is also probably worth a Nobel prize, so I am willing to bet some theorists are also running to their blackboards as we speak.

Yeah. BCS was proposed a half century after the first conventional superconductor was discovered, and even today we don't have a convincing mechanism for "regular" high-Tc superconductors. But if it superconducts, it superconducts, and research into the how is useful but not a blocker to using it.

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

#66

Post by soligern »

NegativeLatency wrote: post #50
soligern wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know enough about this but shouldn’t the entire superconductor be floating above the magnet? Why is one part still attached (or maybe attracted) to the magnet?

Contamination/impurities or something else in it that's not superconducting?

A strange exposition video then, I would try to remove the part that wasn’t superconducting (the part touching the magnet) before I released this. A completely floating piece of this superconductor would remove literally all doubt.

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

#67

Post by thepasswordis »

archepyx wrote: post #47

Another comment from a well informed source on the topic: https://nitter.net/condensed_the/status/1684255515944034304 Also, on the sentences in the manuscripts trying to explain the effect: I think that is wild guess at best. The measurement results done in the manuscripts probably can be taken at at face value (at least until there is a reproduction). Whether they really indicate superconductivity or something else…

It's probably better to link to the original, not this mirror: https://twitter.com/condensed_the/status/1684255515944034304

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

#68

Post by toast0 »

mataslauzadis wrote: post #25
marcosdumay wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't require the kind of equipment that you have to justify to accountants and run at full capacity. And while the reactants are things that I believe most labs won't have at hand, they are the kind of thing anybody can buy on the web to arrive this week. Whether people will stop what they are doing to verify it is literally a matter of people stopping what they are doing. University labs are usually quick on t…

One of the elements used here is phosphorus (P) which is regulated by the DEA in the United States, and can't just be purchased online

If you are at a materials science or physics lab, it can't be difficult to get.

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

#69

Post by ska »

jonplackett wrote: post #11

If this material does just what they say it does, what would it revolutionise? Or as the article talks about, is this just a pointer at other possibilities that would be the real game changers?

Lots of systems with bulky and expensive cooling (think MRI scanners, e.g.) could become vastly more accessible.

Wildly improved efficiency on some sensors, antenna, motors, etc.

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

#70

Post by hovering_nox »

jonplackett wrote: post #11

If this material does just what they say it does, what would it revolutionise? Or as the article talks about, is this just a pointer at other possibilities that would be the real game changers?

Here's a few from the top of my head:

- A global power net. No solar power during the night? Just produce it on the other side of the planet.

- A superconducting computer. Less resistance when pushing bits around = 500x less power consumption.

- A Superconducting magnetic battery. Store power indefinitely with high efficiency.

Post reply on HN