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…
I think there are multiple big reasons they didn't publish sooner. It is pretty clear that they were convinced, but had insufficient evidence to convince others. Additionally there had recently been a sensational fraud in their field so journals would have been extremely sceptical. It seems to me they were just in the process of constructing a convincing paper, which included convincing tests and could have been acom…
It's been considered to be within the same bermuda triangle of scientific vaporware that demarked by quantum computers performing useful tasks, fusion power generation, that sort of thing. Always just around the corner and dude trust me it totally works in my lab. It's basically a meme in physics.
Room temperature superconductivity is not demonstrably impossible like a perpetual motion machine, but mainstream press picking up on yet another set of amazing claims in this field tends to (deservedly) lead to a lot of eye rolling.
The consequence is that if you've made actual progress in the field, you'd better be very sure you are right and able to back it up.