Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why do you think so?
Why do you not think so..... what if the internet was patented? What if copper was patented?
Not comparable to copper at all.
Successful room temperature ambient-pressure magnetic levitation of LK-99
981–990 of 1001 posts
Re: Successful room temperature ambient-pressure magnetic levitation of LK-99
#982Earlier quoted context omitted.
Noob question: if whatever is happening is strong enough to raise one of the ends of the sample, why doesn't raise both? After all gravitation is many order of magnitudes weaker than electromagnetism. Did they calibrate the setup to closely match the gravitational force on the sample? Why not push a little more and make it fly up the the cap of the container?
Magnetic force scales as 1/r^3, not 1/r^2 like gravity. That's why your standard issue fridge magnet measurably attracts stuff only from a very close distance, but when it does, it easily counters the gravitational attraction of the entire planet¹. This 1/r^3 relationship can be derived easily enough by integrating, but essentially it's because magnets are dipoles and the farther away you are, the smaller the apparen…
> That's why your standard issue fridge magnet measurably attracts stuff only from a very close distance, but when it does, it easily counters the gravitational attraction of the entire planet
You can still get that effect if both forces are r^2. You can even get it with the same force—consider standing on the moon looking up at the earth. It will just be a more marked change with r^3.
Re: Successful room temperature ambient-pressure magnetic levitation of LK-99
#983Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is a reason why room temperature (ambient pressure) superconductors have been one of the holy grails of physics for such a long time: the implications are profound. I used to be a particle physicist, and some of the more complex systems were just those used to cool the superconducting magnets down to cold enough that they become superconducting. If you can do that at ambient temp, you don't have to bother with…
Completely unrelated, but how does one un-become a particle physicist?
Well, I don't do particle physics as my day-job anymore, so basically that.
Re: Successful room temperature ambient-pressure magnetic levitation of LK-99
#984Earlier quoted context omitted.
There would be some massive deprecation at the CERN and ITER sites.
You've got me wondering how much cheaper ITER actually gets if you don't need the magnets to be cryogenic.
I'm already rooting for CFS' Sparc over ITER anyway. ITER is too big & expensive, if Sparc works it's an indication that we can build fusion "on a budget", too.
Idt CFS will care because they've already sourced much of the HTS tape that they need and their schedule doesn't permit waiting for LK-99 to be proven/disproven and all the years it will take to produce LK-99 in bulk anyway.
It's so insanely cheaper, because not only do you not need the cryogenic cooling (and all the support and maintenance systems and consumables like helium or nitrogen or whatever), but LK-99 is made from relatively common elements versus rare earth elements.
I really, really hope this stuff works.
Re: Successful room temperature ambient-pressure magnetic levitation of LK-99
#985Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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. But hasn't it been 24 years since they discovered LK-99? Or am I missing something? If that's true wouldn't it be a tragic shame that i…
It was originally discovered in 1999 but was shelved for over a decade due to insufficient funding. As I understand it, they only received funding in 2018 and became more confident in their discovery after that. Here is some (speculative?) backstory: https://twitter.com/8teAPi/status/1684385895565365248 It is a tragic shame in hindsight, but no doubt there are many earth-shattering discoveries lying within reach, if…
I agree, the world still doesn't really care about science. And yet everyone's living lives that are all the more better because of science.
It's a human problem, we only care about what happens to us or our tribe and most of our focus is not very forward looking. We're better than other animals as evolution favoured us looking just a little more forward than other animals, but now we have to escape the timekeeping of our meaty flesh and think "if we dump money into science then this generation will get some cool stuff and the next will get a shit tonne of cool stuff".
Re: Successful room temperature ambient-pressure magnetic levitation of LK-99
#986Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's apparently a patent published in 2020. It surprises me that it never gained attention. edit: KR20210062550A - Mehtod of manufacturing ceramic composite with low resistance including superconductors and the composite thereof - https://patents.google.com/patent/KR20210062550A/en
people will claim all kinds of crazy, implausible shit in patents. you would go insane trying to draw conclusions from the set of applications sent to patent offices as a whole, it would be impossible to differentiate what is legitimately worth paying attention to.
I hate that the patent system went from engineers patenting a working, proven idea to business a-holes patenting an "idea" then sitting on their butts waiting for an engineer somewhere to prove the idea so that they can raise their hand and say "I have the patent on that".
The modern patent system is despicable.
Re: Successful room temperature ambient-pressure magnetic levitation of LK-99
#987I 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.
I suppose you could count elements like gold, too. Since we technically can produce extremely radioactive gold in small amounts but the cost is so prohibitive it would never make sense to.
In a thousand years people are gonna look back at us idiots filling balloons with helium and letting them disperse into the upper atmosphere and shake their heads at how stupid we were.
Re: Successful room temperature ambient-pressure magnetic levitation of LK-99
#988Earlier 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…
Coil guns seem like they'd last longer, wonder what the performance figures for coil vs rail are.
For future rail guns, they'd just have replacement rails available as they do barrels for tanks/artillery guns (that wear out after about 1000 shots afaik).
Re: Successful room temperature ambient-pressure magnetic levitation of LK-99
#989Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's an oddly defensive take.
Only because I was responding to an oddly offensive take.
Lmao, all that implied was that rushed papers don't have time for in depth analysis, only reproducing the material without further insight. Which is absolutely true; we're not super-human, it takes time to replicate the material and then time to disseminate why/how it works.
Re: Successful room temperature ambient-pressure magnetic levitation of LK-99
#990Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 exceed…
But they have also encountered IP theft and Chinese nationals assaulting local and foreign nationals in countries they are lucky and fortunate to have the right to study in, over protests: https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/australasia/article/3019888/h...
Now I hate that I have to say this (because it should be a given), but _obviously_ this does not apply across the board, but when people experience shocking behaviour like this you can see why they might hold grudges or biases, even when that's wrong to do.
That aside, China & the US (of which are are a lot of Americans on this site) seem to have held a grudge for quite a long time now, on both sides. Which is a shame, because we're all human at the end of the day and especially science should recognise that stupid tribal human concepts like nationalities and borders are meaningless to the big picture.