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

971–980 of 1001 posts

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

#971

Post by hgrbrm »

leptons wrote: post #230
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?

It means we won't lose MRIs when the earth finally runs out of helium as they require liquid helium to run the superconductors that generate the magnetic field. We're running out of helium with no way to replenish it. Helium is the only element on the periodic table which is a non-renewable resource on Earth. So MRIs will get much cheaper, and they could end up being as cheap as taking an x-ray today.

If the earth runs out of helium we will just use low field MRIs that don't require superconductors (see eg https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-25441-6 ). Their resolution is lower than that of high field MRIs, but they still seem to be a useful diagnostic tool.

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

#972

Post by meeho »

DoctorOetker wrote: post #580

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…

That assumes melting doesn't destroy the superconductivity.

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

#973

Post by meeho »

blinding-streak wrote: post #238
est wrote: post #92

So far lab replication efforts are: Two from HUST: https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV14p4y1V7kS/ https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV13k4y1G7i1/ One by USTC https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1Ex4y1X7ix/ this tiny sample can stand on its pointy side. One by Qufu Normal University https://www.zhihu.com/zvideo/1669820225079070720 One with THU background but claims a personal project https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV14z4y1s7V…

The vast majority of science does not take place on Twitter.

Yes, it happens on tiktok

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

#974

Post by fooker »

mort96 wrote: post #407
someplaceguy wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> superconductivity is (by convention) less than 10^-11, Ah, so you're saying that superconductivity is not actual zero resistance, but something close to it, and in fact only a factor of 1000x less resistive than the best conductor? If that is so, this is something that I had previously thought would make a lot more sense to me. But in that case it's not intuitive to me how SMES is possible with a 0% discharge rate.…

No, I believe it's literally zero but we don't have a measurement apparatus with infinite precision so we need some cut-off.

It's only literal zero for superconductors close to 0K temperature.

For high temperature superconductors (50-70+K), it's not literal zero for superconducting mechanisms discovered so far.

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

#975

Post by anticensor »

ETH_start wrote: post #334
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)…

Excellent insight and perspective. > 2) Commercially viable fusion energy. Will change a lot of things. How would that be any better than commercially viable fission breeder reactors (which seem far closer to reality than commercially viable fusion energy)?

Contolled fusion may give way to real alchemy (think synthesising water and steel just from hydrogen atoms).

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

#976

Post by rvba »

podiki wrote: post #883
jacquesm wrote: post #780

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are no prizes for being second in science.

There's a long standing joke (but also true) that many things are named after the last person to find them. See, for instance, Stigler's Law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stigler%27s_law_of_eponymy (for the concept an example itself)

The list is interesting too:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_examples_of_Stigler%27...

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

#977

Post by rvba »

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.

Intelectual theft fuelled by spy agencies is nothing new.

Same for people looking at patents from other countries.

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

#978

Post by [deleted] »

mcpackieh wrote: post #706
themagician wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Railguns. Everywhere.

I'm thinking coil guns instead. Room temperature superconductors don't solve the rail erosion issue with railguns, but I think should greatly increase the performance of coil guns. My thinking is that zero resistance through the projectile itself and through the rails would help, but you still need to make an electrical connection between the projectile and the rails. Either this is done with a plasma arc or physical…

[deleted]

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

#979

Post by Out_of_Characte »

xwdv wrote: post #748

Is a perpetual motion machine now possible with a room temp superconductor like this?

AFAIK superconductors are ideal conductors, therefore the electrons will remain in motion unless acted on by a force. So yes.

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

#980

Post by nocoder »

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?

Thanks everyone for the responses. Really appreciate the community for explaining!
Post reply on HN