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

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

#811

Post by marcosdumay » Fri, Aug 04, 2023, 3:23 PM UTC

rvcdbn wrote: post #333

ChuckMcM wrote: post #129

For those experiencing this type of "black swan, but good" event for the first time, it is helpful to recognize that the human tendency to believe that all future "big events" will be dystopian downers, is statistically unsound. For a while I've kept a list of the things that could be "good" swan events, but to be fair I didn't have "room temperature superconductor on that list" :-) Other things that could happen: 1)…

There is an anthropic line of reasoning over Everettian branch universes where you can actually expect these types of highly unlikely events to happen more often than chance alone would predict if they promote futures with more Born-rule weighted observer-moments.

Just to add on the "nonsense" line. Using the antropic principle to talk about the future is completely absurd.

There is a huge amount of what I think in unawarded debate about applying it to the past (IMO, it's very clear where it should be used), but applying it to the future is completely against any kind of logic.

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

#812

Post by cthalupa » Fri, Aug 04, 2023, 3:23 PM UTC

elfbargpt wrote: post #742

EDIT: This is probably fake. The account was just created and can't find any info online. Also the pellet returns to its starting position for some reason. Just saw another unconfirmed replication here: https://twitter.com/instsondaw/status/1687433935012139008?s=... Found their process really fascinating, apparently they create L-99 powder, sort it by meissner effect, then press the "high meissner effect" powder toge…

The covering over the magnet is almost certainly to hide the array of electromagnets underneath. You can find a variety of electromagnet toys that will do this exact thing.

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

#813

Post by dinvlad » Fri, Aug 04, 2023, 3:25 PM UTC

charlieyu1 wrote: post #759

It is getting crazier every second it passed. Multiple labs trying to replicate and everyone get a different result. The only thing we know is that LK-99 is something that nobody understands

I just hope it’s not the new graphene

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

#814

Post by mitthrowaway2 » Fri, Aug 04, 2023, 3:28 PM UTC

kevstev wrote: post #760

mrtksn wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Things also tend to be invented at about the same time at different places. I wonder if there are other people who were this close to invent it but just couldn't get it right.

Last year I read The Double Helix and The Code Breaker within a few months of each other, and what really stood out to me is that while we celebrate the first person who discovers something, in reality there were several teams all racing to the finish line, and were sometimes days or only even hours behind in presenting their findings. Yet only one team gets the accolades and their names in textbooks, the others are…

Two independent research groups, one from Japan and one from the US, simultaneously published their discovery of the NdFeB magnet in the same issue of the same journal.

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

#815

Post by ljosifov » Fri, Aug 04, 2023, 3:28 PM UTC

mrtksn wrote: post #470

pjungwir wrote: post #207

The last week reminds me of the story of Bardeen & Brattain's invention of the transistor (e.g. in The Idea Factory ). It barely worked and heaven forbid you bump the table. There was even a third slighted figure who wanted credit. Part of me wants to be skeptical but OTOH if it's hard to reproduce that seems totally normal. How exciting that some other people have got it working now.

Things also tend to be invented at about the same time at different places. I wonder if there are other people who were this close to invent it but just couldn't get it right.

Yeah, looks like it works that way mostly - based on the examples written up in "How Innovation Works: Serendipity, Energy and the Saving of Time" by M Ridley (https://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Innovation-Works-Matt-Ridley/dp...). Having done some R&D myself I tend to think of re-search as "repeated search for something that works" these days. Luck (or lack of) plays a big role too, the circumstances and the personalities of the actors involved likewise. Another book on a similar theme (but for medicine specifically) that I really enjoyed reading is "Happy Accidents: Serendipity in Major Medical Breakthroughs in the Twentieth Century" by MA Mayers (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Happy-Accidents-Serendipity-Breakth...).

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

#816

Post by dinvlad » Fri, Aug 04, 2023, 3:30 PM UTC

mycologos wrote: post #635

Mizoguchi wrote: post #621

It's likely we will be able to grow full working organs, tissues and limbs in a lab before we can reanimate frozen bodies. So wouldn't be more efficient to cryopreserve only the brain?

Are you in the wrong thread?

Probably not, given the amount of wild speculations here

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

#817

Post by senttoschool » Fri, Aug 04, 2023, 3:31 PM UTC

lucubratory wrote: post #691

shusaku wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the comments you are receiving are missing the simplest explanation: Chinese labs are better at synthesis, and there’s a lot of them.

A lot of commenters here are from the West, and the atmosphere between the PRC and the West (particularly the US) at the moment is quite a bit more acrimonious and competitive than it has been historically. It makes sense that people would leap first to essentially "They aren't as smart as us"/"They're less honest than us"/"They're less trustworthy than us" etc. The simplest and most likely correct explanation is tha…

I, too, found it fascinating how every initial reply dodged giving the Chinese credit. Instead, all of them tried every way to paint their publications in a negative light.

Surely, most tech workers have encountered working with highly competent technical coworkers from China? Or that Chinese students in America tend to perform well above average academically?

Why should anyone be surprised that China performs exceedingly well in sciences?

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

#818

Post by foota » Fri, Aug 04, 2023, 3:32 PM UTC

0x01DEED wrote: post #757

Assuming this is indeed the holy grail of superconductivity... can someone with knowledge on manufacturability of these materials, suggest a prediction of when the specific LK-99 material would be ready for mass production? Is it ~3 years from now or more like ~15 years from now?

I'm not what you're asking for, but almost certainly closer to 3 than 15. If it's the real deal, I imagine we have industrial capacity to make a superconducting material within 5 years. The required supplies are readily available, and while production of this particular material seems difficult, there's like a whole new field of materials to find, with very strong incentives. China would love to lead the world in a new branch of material science.

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

#819

Post by marcosdumay » Fri, Aug 04, 2023, 3:33 PM UTC

lioeters wrote: post #658

lottin wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 6. World recognition to manage resources globally Do you mean communism?

Yes, because any form of social organization and collaboration, other than capitalism, must be communism. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

To be fair, any form of human organization that is not commerce-based is heavy on the Faccism scale. It matters very little if it's communist or something else.

But then, there are many ways to organize a society while keeping it commerce-based... Or maybe we manage to finally crack that nut some day and make a post-scarcity society. But on the short term "manage resources globally" heavily implies an anti-humane dictatorship.

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

#820

Post by senttoschool » Fri, Aug 04, 2023, 3:40 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #802

senttoschool wrote: post #631

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To add to your list of possible reasons: - There are way more STEM graduates in China by a wide margin - 18/20 of top universities in the world for chemistry research is in China according to Nature, including one of the attempts by USTC (#2 ranking): https://www.nature.com/nature-index/institution-outputs/gene... - Supply chain is faster in China for chemicals and materials - China has more money/equipment for this…

Yes, good points though the money angle is debatable. The USA and Europe are 'on average' also more pro-science than the rest of the world, but I think the East has the edge in education and comes across as more focused on progress. Probably this is underpinned in part because they have a ton of very hard problems that need solving and in the 'rich West' people are much less driven because their lives and the lives o…

One difference I’ve found living in the West and China is that being academically successful often gets you made fun of in the US but adored in China.

There’s quite a lot of anti-intellectualism in the US. Therefore, there’s an equal amount of anti-science.

Meanwhile, every Chinese I’ve ever met is pro-education and thinks highly of science.