[HN Gopher] LK-99: The live online race for a room-temperature s... ___________________________________________________________________ LK-99: The live online race for a room-temperature superconductor Author : fofoz Score : 466 points Date : 2023-07-31 09:24 UTC (13 hours ago) (HTM) web link (forums.spacebattles.com) (TXT) w3m dump (forums.spacebattles.com) | DrBazza wrote: | I'm resigned to disappointment for this. It's the modern days | Pons and Fleischmann. | | Hopefully the lack of confirmation so far is due to people | checking, double checking and triple checking, along with a | healthy dose of "we don't want to be tarred with the same brush". | echelon wrote: | Reminds me of EmDrive. That was such a tease and then utter | disappointment. | | Hope LK-99 doesn't go the same way. | zarzavat wrote: | The similarities are only superficial. A reactionless drive | would violate the most fundamental physical laws. | | Whereas room temperature/pressure superconductors are not | believed to violate any physical law. If you asked "Will we | find such a material this century?", the answer would be a | solid maybe. Which end of the century, who knows. | | It's more like proofs of the Riemann Hypothesis. Most | mathematicians believe that RH is probably true, or at least | hope so, but any claimed proof is viewed with extreme | suspicion merely because of the sheer number of false ones. | jiggawatts wrote: | It's not looking good so far. This team reproduced several | variants of the formula, and none of them behaved in an | interesting way: | https://nitter.sneed.network/altryne/status/1686029047053090... | pushkine wrote: | I've only seen one picture of an alleged successful replication | yet: https://twitter.com/iris_IGB/status/1685731177523449856 | Corrado wrote: | Since Twitter is no longer allowing public access to posts, it | would be better to not link to it. Or better yet, re-post the | tweet somewhere else and link to that. | bhaak wrote: | They backpedaled on that and restricted it to single tweets. | | So if not logged in you can see a single tweet now but no | longer threads. | Q6T46nT668w6i3m wrote: | This is a very different experiment. | Accujack wrote: | The author has acknowledged that one as a fake. | generalizations wrote: | Where? I haven't seen that in her twitter feed. | carabiner wrote: | Argonne National Lab has synthesized LK-99 and is beginning | analysis: | https://twitter.com/BenShindel/status/1686115699779878912 | youknowone wrote: | I translated a survey about LK-99 papers to English | | https://hackmd.io/DMjYGOJFRheZw5XZU8kqKg | ggdG wrote: | Thank you so much for this! | babypuncher wrote: | So how long before NileRed takes a crack at it? | Havoc wrote: | This is great. Much easier to tell what's going on than going by | the chatter. Thanks | KolenCh wrote: | Off topic: any tool to have a quick summarization like this? | | --- | | The blog post is about the discovery of a purported room- | temperature-and-pressure (RTP) superconductor, labeled "LK-99". | The discovery was announced in two papers published on arxiv.org | on July 22, 2023. The first paper, which was short and seemed | hastily written, had three authors: Sukbae Lee, Ji-Hoon Kim, and | Young-Wan Kwon. The second paper was more detailed and had six | authors, with Young-Wan Kwon being removed from the author list. | | The LK-99 superconductor, originally synthesized in 1999, is | claimed to have a critical temperature of 127degC, above the | boiling point of water. The synthesis method is simple: finely | grind and mix Lanarkite (Pb2(SO4)O) and Copper Phosphide (Cu3P) | and bake it at 925degC in a vacuum chamber for a day. | | The discovery has sparked a mix of skepticism and curiosity | online. Young-Wan Kwon, the removed author from the first paper, | crashed a science conference to talk about the discovery, adding | to the intrigue. | | The blog post also discusses the implications of a room- | temperature superconductor, which could allow for things like an | infinitely long power cable without loss, or a portable MRI | scanner. It also provides a timeline of events and a list of | ongoing replication efforts by various academic and private | groups. The author emphasizes that scientific research is a | gradual process, and the validity of the LK-99 superconductor is | still being investigated. | babelfish wrote: | ChatGPT | nicopappl wrote: | The kagi universal summarizer has been pretty descent on my | end. But I've only lightly tested it on two pages. | ssijak wrote: | For such an important discovery (if it is real), that seems it | could be replicated in a few days, if I were the team that did | the discovery, I would create a video recording of the whole | process and all the measurements and share it with the textual | article. It sounds like that would provide for an easier way to | replicate plus more proofs of the discovery. | bhouston wrote: | The team that did the discovery seems disorganized and | amateurish though, and with the multiple papers all submitted | at the same time by competing factions, riff with infighting - | but they stuck with a hunch for longer than anyone else and | followed it doggedly. If it turns out to be true, it will be a | great movie with an underdog making one of the biggest | discoveries of the century. | shepardrtc wrote: | > but they stuck with a hunch for longer than anyone else and | followed it doggedly | | That's an understatement. | local_issues wrote: | >discovery seems disorganized and amateurish though, and with | the multiple papers all submitted at the same time by | competing factions, riff with infighting - but they stuck | with a hunch for longer than anyone else and followed it | doggedly. | | Pretty good description of all of human history so far, to be | fair | m3kw9 wrote: | Did you read some that said they were amturish or did you | actually think that | spaceman_2020 wrote: | Their amateurishness and the infighting somehow makes me | think this is legitimate. | baq wrote: | Was wondering why it doesn't sound surprising and then | remembered that squid game is also Korean. Puzzles | immediately fell into place. | TheAceOfHearts wrote: | Saw some people hyping up markets where people are betting on | prediction markets whether or not LK-99 will replicate. Can't | help but feel like that money would be better spent just paying | off some labs to actually try to replicate the process. | | The response I got from a predictions market enthusiast was that | having a sufficiently large market would motivate people to | attempt to have the process replicated and buy options on the | outcome once they confirm their findings in order to cash out. | Which gives me strong feelings of scamming the uninformed and | gullible. | | As for comments on LK-99 itself, I don't understand why nobody | has gotten their hands on an existing sample to verify that it's | legitimate. Shouldn't the minimum requirements be a magnet and | the material sample, to demonstrate it floating through the | meissner effect? | toth wrote: | This type of instictive negative reaction to prediction markets | is, unfortunately, common, but, I think, misguided. | | Prediction markets are one of the (or just, the?) best ways of | aggregating knowledge from multiple sources and producing the | best predictions. Having good legible predictions of impactful | events such as LK-99 replication is extremely useful for | society - it would be an invaluable input for a savvy policy | maker for instance. | | What I think is silly is that vastly bigger amounts of money | are put in betting markets for any mildly important sportsball | game. Meanwhile, markets on LK99 replication, one of the most | potentially important possibilities in the world right now have | only on the order of hundreds of thousands of dollars in them. | | And there is no scamming involved. If you are participating in | a prediction market, either you have some reason you believe | you know something the market does not or you should expect you | are simply subsidizing those with better information. The | latter is a perfectly reasonable thing to do - it's not easy | for an average person to "pay off some lab", but if they | provide liquidity to the prediction market they are giving an | explicit subsidy for anyone that can answer the question. | scotty79 wrote: | > Prediction markets are one of the (or just, the?) best ways | of aggregating knowledge from multiple sources and producing | the best predictions. | | They would be true if people with most money and appetite for | risk were also the most knowledgeable and smart. | | They are not. As you can easily tell from recent coverage of | idiocy of even the richest people who have propensity for big | bets. | | It has been researched and discovered that people with more | money do not make smarter bets than those with far less. So | at best, looking at prediction markets, gives you exactly as | much knowledge as polling random people on the streets and | asking them what would they bet on. | danparsonson wrote: | This exactly - the idea that a whole load of well informed | people are driving a prediction market is about as | realistic as saying that crypto investors are all experts | in economics. | social_quotient wrote: | I agree with you and think it parallels the equity market a | bit. | | Stock prices embody the market's collective knowledge, | expectations, and emotions about a company's current and | future value. | | And to your point if you are blindly investing or blindly | buying via instruments like ETFs you can end up subsidizing | those with more/better information. | amelius wrote: | Counterargument. Prediction markets could also be used to | hedge. | | E.g. if you invest in technology around LK-99, and then use | prediction market to prevent going bankrupt in case you were | wrong. | | THUS: it doesn't mean that prediction markets give good | predictions. | | By the way. Do you have some data on that? I.e., statistics | of prediction markets being right vs wrong? | twoodfin wrote: | The hedge is still a signal of the degree of risk you | ascribe to the possibility your technology won't work. | amelius wrote: | If I invest in technology (hoping it will work) but use | the prediction market to hedge in case the technology | won't work, how does that tell anyone watching the | prediction market that people have net positive feelings | about the technology? | twoodfin wrote: | If you were 100% confident you wouldn't hedge at all. If | you're 80% confident you'd hedge less than if you were | only 60% confident. | | This all translates into an price signal if the market is | functioning and liquid. | [deleted] | amelius wrote: | You should explain how this works then. How exactly do | you derive a prediction from the price? Also if the | people with deep knowledge of the technology use the | prediction market for hedging, and all the "outsiders" | use it for speculation, then the signal is disturbed | anyway. | throw0101a wrote: | What do these prediction markets _produce_? Some people are | saying "yes" and others are saying "no", and the answer is | either "yes" or "no", but why bother spending money on | _predicting_ when society can spend money on _replicating_ | it? Wouldn 't an actual replication attempt be more useful? | | > _The latter is a perfectly reasonable thing to do - it 's | not easy for an average person to "pay off some lab", but if | they provide liquidity to the prediction market they are | giving an explicit subsidy for anyone that can answer the | question._ | | Is any of this liquidity going to actual (replication) | research, because if it is not, again: what are these markets | tangibly _producing_? Moving a bunch of numbers around a | ledger does not seem very useful. | killerstorm wrote: | What do stock markets produce? | | The way resources are allocated is very important, but | getting it optimal is very hard. Stock market is one of | structures which helps to create long-term incentives to | optimize resource allocation. | | You can directly see how it works if you compare market- | based economies to e.g. a planned economy Soviet Union: a | lot of goods produced by Soviet industry were not in | demand, especially consumer goods. When Soviet Union was no | more a lot of factories were closed because they were | producing some utterly irrelevant shit. | | > Is any of this liquidity going to actual (replication) | research, because if it is not, again: what are these | markets tangibly producing? | | Many economic concepts work in practice only at scale. E.g. | if there's a one-off $1000 incentive, it might not attract | people capable of doing that. But if there's an opportunity | to make $1000 every second, people might put an effort into | taking that opportunity. | | Prediction markets create incentives to do particular | stuff, as all markets do. | | If there was enough money at stake, it could definitely | incentivize replication research. | | There are two scenarios. | | Scenario 1: Suppose you have a lab with all necessary | equipment and materials. Normally you would use it for your | own research (i.e. research new materials). But if there's | e.g. $100M prediction market on replication of a particular | result, you might consider redirecting it to replicating | that research instead. | | If you do it before others, you can sell your replication | proof to a hedge fund which will then get a position on | prediction market before revealing the proof. | | Scenario 2: If there's enough money in replication markets, | hedge funds might specifically fund laboratories which | replicate stuff. | fallingknife wrote: | In what way would the people in the prediction markets fund | a replication? That's not something that normal people just | do. And if I wanted to do that, I don't even know how. | | And society doesn't spend money. People do. | banannaise wrote: | > What do these prediction markets _produce_? | | Vigorish. | naasking wrote: | > What do these prediction markets produce? Some people are | saying "yes" and others are saying "no", and the answer is | either "yes" or "no", but why bother spending money on | predicting when society can spend money on replicating it? | Wouldn't an actual replication attempt be more useful? | | They are producing predictions of future value. It's not | clear when you're only considering a single case, but what | if you only have enough money to fund two projects and you | have 15 applicants? You could pay a panel of experts to | evaluate them and now you can only fund one project, or you | can exploit the prediction market and fund the projects | that seem to have the best chance of success according to | the crowd. So in effect, the crowd _is_ funding projects by | freeing up funds that would otherwise go towards | bureaucracy. | | The wisdom of the crowds works given a large and diverse | sample of independent predictors. People who don't know | anything will vote randomly so their votes effectively | cancel each other out, but people who know more about a | particular topic will be biased towards correct answers. | tinco wrote: | They're producing the wisdom of the crowd, which is a real | and highly accurate piece of information. It's quite | difficult and expensive to produce information as fast and | reliable by other means. And they don't cost much, it's | mostly money being moved around. | | edit: I interpreted it as asking wether prediction markets | _in general_ produce value. In this specific case I 'm 100% | with you, they're absolutely useless in predicting wether | this finding is going to replicate or not. | | BTW probably 100% useless is going to be _better_ than | trusting a single reply in a HN thread. Even averaging out | a group of replies on HN is going to be pretty bad, | probably worse than averaging out a group of replies on | Reddit. | | The idea of wisdom of the crowd is based on the idea that | knowledge about a topic (both false and true) is roughly | normally distributed (as many things are in nature), so the | averaged result of a large group of answers is likely to be | close to the real answer, as long as there are no external | factors pushing the whole distribution left or right. | | Also, the final result is not going to be the answer if | it's gonna replicate, but more the odds of it replicating | (i.e. the odds of a paper like this being legit). The odds | could be 1 in a million, and it still wouldn't affect the | reality of LK-99 being super conductive or not. | hutzlibu wrote: | "They're producing the wisdom of the crowd, which is a | real and highly accurate piece of information." | | I have strong doubts, that the wisdom of the crowd here | is competent in judging whether a revolutionary new | superconductor is real, or not. | jonmumm wrote: | what's an alternative that is better? | throw0101b wrote: | > _They 're producing the wisdom of the crowd, which is a | real and highly accurate piece of information._ | | Unless the group of people is not a crowd but rather a | mob. | Ar-Curunir wrote: | The opinion of a crowd is generally useless in highly | technical matters. The people betting on this stuff | generally do not have the background to evaluate any | claims appropriately, and just react to what other people | (who they _believe_ to be more informed) are saying. | nonethewiser wrote: | So practically speaking, what can you do with the fact | that X% of fans (because people betting are enthusiasts) | think LK-99 will reproduce and Y% think it wont? | tinco wrote: | You assume _all_ the people betting are enthusiasts. The | theory of prediction markets is that rational actors in | the market will recognise that a portion of the betters | is overhyped and adjust their bets to make use of their | irrational behaviour. | | If the rational actors are actually effective at making | such adjustments I don't know, I bet there's statistics | out there on how well prediction markets correlate with | reality. | | In any case, even if the market was perfect, it wouldn't | tell us if LK-99 would reproduce, which I guess is the | meat of your question. It would just tell us how likely | it is that an experimental result made under those | specific circumstances would reproduce. And what you | could do with that information depends on what your | answer to the question: "How would I be affected if LK-99 | would reproduce?" would be. | | If you're a big energy business leader, and you want to | filter what topics to spend your valuable time on maybe | you could set a rule that you only want spend time | reading scientific papers that have >10% odds of being | legit. | | More realistically though, I think things like prediction | markets are mostly useful to traders who are trying to | arbitrage things like resource markets. What's the price | of copper going to do when this turns out to be true? You | could adjust your futures based on that. | gilleain wrote: | Have you heard the one about the Emperor of China's nose? | | https://imaginatorium.org/stuff/nose.htm | | Basically, making an average of a large number of | estimates of an unknown value will (of course) fail if | most/none of the estimators have any idea of the actual | value being estimated. | ethbr0 wrote: | > _most /none of the estimators have any idea of the | actual value being estimated._ | | A subtle distinction is _who_ is allowed to participate | in a prediction market. | | "Everyone with $1" is a terrible answer, and produces the | bad results people are pointing to. | | Financial markets avoid this because of their scale, | where there's enough smart money to (usually) punish | stupid money. | | Absent that scale, it's just stupid money muddling the | decisions of smart money. | | Prediction markets with a knowledge barrier to entry | would produce better results. | gilleain wrote: | How would you construct such a knowledge barrier? Another | prediction market? | | Also, suggesting that there is such a thing as 'smart' | money - presumably due to having more of it? - is | amusing. As pointed out elsewhere in this discussion, | there has been a lot of smart money acting particularly | dumb over the last few years. | ethbr0 wrote: | A "Do you understand what superconductivity is?" or "Do | you have a physics or engineering degree?" barrier? | | And the relevant question isn't whether 'smart' money | does dumb things: it's whether 'smart' money does dumb | things _less frequently_ than a random sample of money. | | No one is an oracle, and there are absolutely outlier | events that specifically confound experts, but I can't | believe that increased expertise is uncorrelated with | increased accuracy. | kritiko wrote: | Tetlock's Superforecasters performed better than experts, | though: >In the Good Judgment Project, "the top | forecasters... performed about 30 percent better than the | average for intelligence community analysts who could | read intercepts and other secret data" | tinco wrote: | I don't think I've seen that before. But the article you | linked doesn't make the conclusion you suggest at all, | instead they pose a corrected value. If indeed no one | estimating had no information at all, the average length | of Chinese person's nose would be close to that corrected | value. | | It's the same with this topic. You won't get an answer to | the question "Is this particular paper true or not?" but | you'll get an answer to the question "Are papers | submitted under these circumstances making claims like | this likely to be true?". The crowd will only answer the | question they can answer. I think that's from "Thinking | fast and slow". | gilleain wrote: | It's not well explained in the version I linked | (apologies, I should have looked for a clearer version). | | The point of the story when I originally heard it is that | no one has SEEN the Emperor's nose. So any statistical | function (like averaging) of estimates is totally useless | as they are all guesses. | | No one has seen 'papers submitted under these | circumstances' so no amount of 'crowd wisdom' will make | any difference. | | Also, as an aside the idea that 'the crowd will only | answer the question they can answer' is ... bizarre. | People will answer anything you ask them, and you have no | way to know if they are just making it up. | civilitty wrote: | There is literally zero wisdom in the crowd about a brand | new just discovered material that's only ever been | produced by one small group _by definition._ | | This market fetishism is out of control. | naasking wrote: | That's not correct. Condensed matter physicists will have | a good handle on how plausible this is (but not certain). | Other people will vote randomly so their votes cancel | out, effectively leaving the final result as biased by | the expert opinions. That's how the wisdom of the crowd | works. | discreteevent wrote: | The opinion of a crowd is "real and highly accurate"? The | opinion of crowds is frequently completely disconnected | from reality. Crowds are often an amplifier of individual | delusion. As for accuracy, the only thing the opinion of | a crowd is accurate about is the opinion of that | particular crowd (not even "the crowd" - look at election | polling) | naasking wrote: | The wisdom of the crowds works given a large and diverse | sample of independent predictors. People who don't know | anything about a topic will vote randomly so their votes | effectively cancel each other out, but people who know | more about a particular topic will be biased towards | correct answers. | MLH6ft1 wrote: | "They're producing the wisdom of the crowd" | | Yeah we saw how wise was the crowd's wisdom with crypto. | Regnore wrote: | This is correct - the overwhelming majority of people did | not get involved with crypto. Even for people and | companies who did most put a fraction of their money into | it. | andrepd wrote: | >Prediction markets are one of the (or just, the?) best ways | of aggregating knowledge from multiple sources and producing | the best predictions. | | That's an extraordinary claim with zero evidence behind it. | Do you have any evidence that "prediction markets" provide | more accurate predictions than e.g. specialist surveys or | other mechanisms? I don't see any empirical evidence nor any | logical reason for that to be the case. | Retric wrote: | The issue is there's zero utility in aggregating knowledge on | LK-99 as apposed to simply running these experiments. It's | going to take weeks not decades for someone to replicate it. | | Markets are useful when people act more efficiently based on | the information, but there's no efficiency to be gained here. | crispyambulance wrote: | > Having good legible predictions of impactful events such as | LK-99 replication is extremely useful for society - it would | be an invaluable input for a savvy policy maker for instance. | | How? | | Would it not be better for the "savvy" policy maker to JUST | WAIT until this discovery is confirmed, definitively, by | multiple legit research institutions? And even better, wait | until it shows some promise of practical application? Policy, | as we know it, almost never reacts within hours to anything, | let alone a scientific discovery. What exactly can a policy | maker even do with faster than hot-off-the-press knowledge | about this stuff? | | Prediction markets are really just for people that hustle in | markets or who are looking for a news scoop. There's nothing | intrinsically wrong with that, though some might argue it | contributes to needless volatility. | zone411 wrote: | For example, if I'm deciding right now whether to fund a | mine for one of the materials needed to create this | supposed superconductor, knowing how likely it is to be | real helps me make a better decision or hedge my | investment. | tinco wrote: | Not to take away from your point, but there is a better way | than prediction markets, and that's careful objective | research by non-experts (https://goodjudgment.com/). | | It's been shown that teams of such researchers consistently | beat prediction markets on these sorts of topics. Anecdotal | evidence suggests it might be that the presence of experts | and cultural preconceptions corrupt prediction markets enough | to diverge the result from the "wisdom of the crowd" effect. | seppel wrote: | > It's been shown that teams of such researchers | consistently beat prediction markets on these sorts of | topics. | | This sounds like free money. | tinco wrote: | Running prediction markets is probably more free money | than that. Building and maintaining research teams like | that is not easy or cheap, if it would be then Good | Judgment Inc. would be rolling in cash. | | Edit for context: Good Judgement Inc. is a sort of | consultancy firm formed based on the results of an | experiment called "The good judgment project" where | psychologists challenged a community to predict | (geopolitical) events. By structuring it as a team based | tournament they figured out a list of qualities/rules | that would make an individual or theme very good at | accurately predicting events. The teams that followed | these rules outperformed prediction markets. Following | the rules is basically a full time commitment. | | The list is here, go get your free money: | https://goodjudgment.com/philip-tetlocks-10-commandments- | of-... | sgregnt wrote: | > it has been shown ... | | Can you please share your sources? | Turskarama wrote: | LK-99 is a brand new material that almost nobody knows | anything about. The market is not a knowledge aggregate, it | is vibes based. | japoco wrote: | You are severely underestimating how good vibes from a lot | of people are at giving good estimates. | evgen wrote: | They are actually only good if the members of that crowd | have some sort of empirical experience with the problem | they are being asked to solve. Guess the number of coins | in a jar? People know coins and have experience packing | things in a limited volume to the crowd has a hope of | being wise. Guess an obscure materials science and | physics result? Not a chance, the crowd is worthless. | polygamous_bat wrote: | > You are severely underestimating how good vibes from a | lot of people are at giving good estimates | | Anyone else remembers how people were selling and buying | doge coin at 70 cents based on good vibes? No? Ok. | Turskarama wrote: | There has to be _some_ level of knowledge to base it off | though, this is just hope. | dist-epoch wrote: | How about this scenario: | | I am the PI of a laboratory. I buy up the market and | (falsely) announce that I succeeded in replication. Sell and | make profit. Then a couple of days later I announce that I | made a terrible mistake. | | How do you prevent this scenario? I did nothing illegal, I | just "not noticed the mistake I made". | adastra22 wrote: | This is illegal btw. | aqme28 wrote: | Or the opposite. I successfully replicate in my lab, but | the price on Yes is high, so I make a post about how there | definitely isn't superconductivity, buy up all the Yes, and | then say "Woops I made a mistake. It really does | superconduct." | | OP is downplaying the shenanigans that can go on here. | | The only way to prevent it is some sort of SEC insider | trading or market manipulation laws. | sgregnt wrote: | The market already takes this possibility into account | codethief wrote: | I believe that falls under insider trading. | dist-epoch wrote: | Conceptually, but not legally. | | Insider trading has a very specific definition, which | does not apply here. In fact there are huge financial | markets, like forex, where insider trading mostly doesn't | apply. | alchemist1e9 wrote: | A version of that probably happened last night with Lk-99, | the "Iris" replication claim. | | Why do think it's such a problem? Those are the risks of | speculating and the market adjusted back downwards in very | short order. If Iris was a manipulator the gains were | minimal and fleeting. | | The anti-markets comments all over this are so unfortunate | and misguided. | | By your own logic don't you just prove that a real lab is | now potentially motivated to investigate and even | replicate? If I'm working in a lab and it looks like it is | working, why not let me place money on yes and speculate? I | have excellent information. | TehCorwiz wrote: | But a fraud was perpetrated and the scammer got away. The | markets are supposed to ignore that? Money was taken out | of the market by a bad actor. If anything this encourages | quick fraud over slow honesty. | alchemist1e9 wrote: | Markets don't ignore it, they learn from it. They don't | need you or any authority to protect them. | | Edit: Understand that the scammer has to buy, then | release the false information, and then sell. They only | "scam" the buyers that don't critically assess this new | information, such as it's provenance and quality. This | means that over time only the best analysts survive and | thrive. Smart speculators likely sold the spike, limiting | the number of buyers the manipulator could find. This | scenario is actually an argument FOR prediction markets. | marcosdumay wrote: | > they learn from it | | And the lesson is that betting markets are a scam. | | But then you get people criticizing the ones telling you | that lesson. Is it because newborn fools must be | preserved until people can take their money? | alchemist1e9 wrote: | How are betting markets a scam? They are remarkably | useful, you can watch the LK-99 market now and you will | know immediately as new information arrives. | weard_beard wrote: | The "replication" does not use the same methodology and | the "scientist" is asking for bitcoin to post a video of | the quantum locking effect. | | The existence of the market is encouraging literal scams. | alchemist1e9 wrote: | So what it's also encouraging real information. | marcosdumay wrote: | Well, that's your claim. | | Somehow you expect people to act differently if that | market wasn't there. Personally, I doubt a large number | of those interested even know the market exists. | | Yet, scammers are deeply aware of betting markets. they | seem to always be there, and even create new ones just so | they can play. | morelisp wrote: | > They only "scam" the buyers that don't critically | assess this new information | | Yes correct that is a scam, no scare quotes. A scam | doesn't become less of scam because it worked or didn't | work. | alchemist1e9 wrote: | So you feel governments should babysit prediction market | speculators who can't evaluate information for | themselves? Or wait that's too hard, so let's just ban | them, well because ... fairness obviously. | | The issues are not problems as people make them out to | be, you don't have an intrinsic right to not be scammed, | or to take vacations, as nice as it sounds, those are | just fantasy that leads to worse situations when | attempting to make reality. | dist-epoch wrote: | The base prior (the market price) is that this will not | replicate. This scenario is a way to make a quick buck | claiming the opposite without doing any actual hard work. | | In regular markets you can't just say "we increased our | sales 1000%" and a week later "oops, sorry, misplaced | decimal dot". You can do that in prediction markets. | alchemist1e9 wrote: | If you are participating in a prediction market and | blindly believe random claims, yes, you will lose your | money. As you should. | | I don't understand what you think is different with other | markets. Information must be assessed for it's accuracy | and acted on by participants. | | In this case I'd even argue the prediction market helped | focus attention and resulted in rapid counter analysis | that questioned the claims. | | Perhaps without the LK-99 markets effects the false | information would have had wider and longer reach? The | losses of the unskilled participants are a perfectly | acceptable cost and in fact beneficial in the long term. | dist-epoch wrote: | The reason regulation is introduced in every trading | market is because scammers are killing the market. How | long do you think an honest operator can survive in a | market where 90% of participants are scammers? You talk | about skilled participants. The way to have 100% skill is | to manufacture an event. | | The history of financial markets is rich in examples. | | Or more recently, the endless supply of scamming in | sports betting where athletes collude to fix games. | alchemist1e9 wrote: | I understand that is the common perception and an | understandable one based on how the information on this | topic is presented to the public. However it's likely not | true, unregulated markets have boomed and provide many | valuable services and information. I've personally heard | an argument promoting even removal of insider trading | laws and that markets would actually be fairer and more | efficient without them. | swader999 wrote: | You would risk someone else of stature announcing against | your position. There are also liquidity risks. | alchemist1e9 wrote: | Absolutely and people might be interested that in this case | the prediction market for LK-99 is reacting in real time to | new tweets from people trying to replicate. The "yes" spike | to 32c yesterday was in response to a twitter account posting | an image of a levitating grain in a tube. The credibility of | that replication attempt was then evaluated by many and the | market backed off afterwards. | | There is always a subtle anti-markets theme on many HN | debates, likely from highly educated ans literate posters. I | believe we still in this age simply don't provide proper | education on the massive benefits that markets bring to so | mang problems. They are literally the nervous system of our | incredible global organic economy. | | In this case, why in world would you have something against | prediction markets? | | Is it fascinating the risk of a nuclear weapon detonation by | December 31st of 2023 is accessed to be around 9%? | | If anything we need to liberalize laws around prediction | markets. Currently they are relagated to off shore and | various backwaters. The CME should be listing tbese types of | markets ideally and institutional money hiring top analytical | talent would then participate. | croes wrote: | Because markets aren't nearly as clever as is always | claimed. | | Lehmann Brothers anyone? | alchemist1e9 wrote: | More like governments aren't as clever as claimed. The | markets would have put all the bad actors out of business | permanently and redistributed the resources (like shinny | new buildings and engineers) to areas where they would | better be utilized. | | Instead it was turned into an opportunity to launder | money at planetary scale. | | This likely hints to why the truth about the benefits of | brutally efficient free markets is distorted in | education, it would require the teaching of the | remarkable incompetence of collectivism and governments! | which we know who won't like that. | kibwen wrote: | "Real capitalism has never been tried." | eropple wrote: | And, of course, cannot fail--only be failed. | rcxdude wrote: | Markets are perfectly capable of rewarding bad actors for | a very long time. even if they eventually converge | towards reality it's not something that you should assume | about a market in any given situation (for one thing, a | market is _only_ reflecting the opinions of others about | a thing, not the reality of the thing. Even if you think | the opinions are on average wrong you don 't make money | by finding the reality, but by predicting when and how | the opinions will change). | | I think markets are an extremely useful decision tool in | a lot of circumstances but they do still have many | failure modes which aren't related to not being 'free | enough' (especially w.r.t. regulation it can in fact make | markets more efficient as opposed to less, depending on | the regulation and the market). | fallingknife wrote: | What system isn't capable of rewarding bad actors for a | long time? | ethbr0 wrote: | Random allocation. | alchemist1e9 wrote: | Which then erases all information. | sgt101 wrote: | A perfect market would do this, but it would also suffer | from other well documented problems.. the markets we have | are very far from disinterested allocation optimization | systems. | croes wrote: | Don't act like markets and government are independent | entities. The markets influenced the government in their | favor long before Lehmann brothers and they did the same | afterwards. | | The markets you think of are as possible as working | communism. | cmilton wrote: | At what cost though? Surely the wealthy will continue on | like nothing ever happened while the rest of us are here | holding the bag. | | Markets seem to benefit some much more than others. Not | everyone wants to play this game. | alchemist1e9 wrote: | I was there and know all the details what happened and | you nailed the key point, they used fear to have you | believe what you wrote. | | I remember Paulson talking about how ATMs would fail. AIG | won't pay it's policies. The US equities would crash even | further. I hate to tell you but ALL lies, blatant | "misinformation" as the new term is. | | They needed you to be terrified to save their own skins. | Blackrock became the largest landlord in the country | afterwards. The very companies that facilitated and | promoted and literally caused the bubble and crash were | rewarded. | | The waitress and mechanic couple with a baby who had | carefully saved up $30K never got the opportunity to buy | that house down the street from their parents for $90K at | foreclosure from the bankrupt banks. Nope, Blackrock | exchanged their bad paper, worth, 20c for $1 to your very | government for new fresh cash, bought it instead at | $120K, down from $150K. | | Go crony capitalism! Which isn't what markets are about. | mcphage wrote: | That's a pretty clever trick you got there. First you | take all of the problems inherent to markets. And then | you say "actually it's the government's job to fix that, | and they're doing a terrible job"--which you then turn | around and use as a justification for more markets and | less government! | aionaiodfgnio wrote: | [dead] | [deleted] | tomjen3 wrote: | Prediction markets got Donald Trump wrong on the election | night and Brexit too[0]. | | Given such a huge failure why should we care what they say? | | [0]: https://archive.li/7m8s6 | bitshiftfaced wrote: | Weren't they still much better than what many media | experts were forecasting? Iirc, CNN put Clinton at 97%. | brookst wrote: | Are you saying they are no better than chance? Or just | that they are not 100% perfect? | | Because we should deeply care about any source of | information that beats chance, _even if_ it is imperfect. | tomjen3 wrote: | I mean that is two fucking big ones to get wrong, no? | | Would maybe be interesting to see some data to look back | and see how correct they are in general, but to be | practically useful it would have to be quite a lot better | than chance. | andrepd wrote: | >Is it fascinating the risk of a nuclear weapon detonation | by December 31st of 2023 is accessed to be around 9%? | | That tells you all you need to know, but probably not in | the way you think. | guru4consulting wrote: | Agreed. Stock markets are very similar to prediction | markets. They are priced based on future projections, | technical feasibility and probability of achieving certain | milestone, ability to reach market first, internal and | external factors, etc. I don't see much difference between | a prediction market and a stock market. Theoretically, we | could allow both of them and treat them similar. But one | major risk I see is that big players can influence it with | big money and distort the reality. It becomes a casino, | just like the current wall street. Right now, most of the | participants in prediction markets are likely knowledgeable | in the subject area, or even subject matter experts and | it's probably better to leave it that way. | KingOfCoders wrote: | "attempt to have the process replicated and buy options | on the outcome once they confirm their findings in" | | This is called insider trading in stock markets and | illegal. So your analogy breaks. | peyton wrote: | If some company claims to have discovered a way to make | widget X and I make widget X at home and trade on that | information, that's completely legal. | alchemist1e9 wrote: | fwiw there are very coherent economic arguments as to why | insider trading should not be illegal and might be more | "fair" with it permitted. | gomox wrote: | Re: nuclear weapon detonation, the implied probability of | 9% (I take it source is: https://polymarket.com/event/will- | a-nuclear-weapon-detonate-...) might be factoring in the | premium for the insurance that participants that predict a | detonation are interested in acquiring. | | Let's say that the real odds of detonation are 1% and that | everyone participating in the market knows and agrees to | this. You would expect the implied probability that the | market produces to be 1%. | | But in practice, a nuclear detonation would be a highly | disruptive event where the impact is hard to assess. This | creates an asymmetry of interests. If you want to protect | yourself financially from such an event, you would pay a | premium for it (which in a prediction market implies | placing a higher bet on "detonation will happen" than a | perfect gambler). If you want to protect yourself from the | event _not_ happening, you would also do the same, but no | one really does that other than speculators. | | Similarly, you can sell tornado insurance to a lot of | people, but very few people are interested in insuring that | a tornado _will_ happen (maybe concrete bunker architect | studios?). So the underlying prediction market would skew | towards overestimating the likelihood of tornados. | epivosism wrote: | "Will a nuclear weapon be detonated (including tests and | accidents) in 2023?" is at 18% | | https://manifold.markets/ACXBot/8-will-a-nuclear-weapon- | be-d... | | There are some caveats in the description, and this is | play money, but people on the site do take their profits | seriously. | gomox wrote: | It seems to be too thinly traded to read much into it? | From what I can see a $100 bet would make the implied | probability of detonation 93%. | epivosism wrote: | yes, but then players would use their cash to bring it | back to a reasonable number. That's why there are | temporary blips on the site but markets which have at | least 40-50 traders tend to stay where the whale | consensus still is. | | I admit it's a weakness, but even play money markets | generally do tend to track real-money ones where they | exist. People on the site mostly take their profits | seriously. | sterlind wrote: | _> Is it fascinating the risk of a nuclear weapon | detonation by December 31st of 2023 is accessed to be | around 9%?_ | | If a nuke goes off, full-scale nuclear war becomes much | more likely. In the event of nuclear apocalypse, your money | will become worthless. So shouldn't that risk be | undervalued? | morelisp wrote: | Looking past your "rah rah financialization" partisanship, | one question: | | Why is a prediction market for replication per se more | interesting than the existing market of all the public | companies who would be enriched / wiped out based on the | result? | | (Note that "well, the effect would be too small" flips just | as easily around to, the smaller markets are obviously way | too noisy given what people are actually getting away | with...) | zone411 wrote: | > Why is a prediction market for replication per se more | interesting than the existing market of all the public | companies who would be enriched / wiped out based on the | result? | | If you knew precisely which companies would gain or lose, | how much relative to their stock price, and all these | companies were liquid and public, then maybe you could | make this comparison. Even then, there'd be plenty of | noise from unrelated factors. So, it's pretty clear why a | prediction market is superior. | alchemist1e9 wrote: | What are people getting away with exactly? Prediction | markets more rapidly expose fraud and misinformation than | without them. | | Generally the decision to list a market or contract is | based on providing specific utility and information. They | provide a better signal to noise and therefore provide | risk management as well. | | The fact you believe markets are a "partisan" topic | illustrates exactly the problem. They are objectively and | scientifically an important and critical part of | humanity, which isn't taught. | | As I've said elsewhere there reason is obvious as in | teaching such facts and information will require | simultaneously teach about how horrific and harmful | governments have been, and we know who won't like that. | morelisp wrote: | Exposing fraud you created the environment for is not | particularly interesting. | jamilton wrote: | I don't understand, how do prediction markets create the | environment for fraud? | alchemist1e9 wrote: | Oh so fraudulent SC claims would have no better avenues | without prediction markets? I'd argue they would have | more and with more capacity not less! | concordDance wrote: | More directly about the actual issues policy makers care | about, so you lose less info to confounders. | morelisp wrote: | Markets are perfect except when they don't capture | "actual issues" and then you need different markets with | different participants? How does this support market | primacy? | mellosouls wrote: | _There is always a subtle anti-markets theme on many HN | debates, likely from highly educated ans literate posters. | I believe we still in this age simply don't provide proper | education on the massive benefits that markets bring to so | mang problems_ | | I think we are all too aware of markets and their benefits | _and_ disbenefits. | | It's not clear why you think the "education" is missing | only in one direction. | alchemist1e9 wrote: | You don't observe a frequent knee jerk like anti-markets | reaction from comments across HN? | | What are good examples of their "disbenefits"? | Bluestrike2 wrote: | Any number of the many, many, negative externalities[0], | where market transactions are unable or unwilling to | capture the often serious negative effects of an activity | in its price, that have been documented and researched by | economists over the years? Air pollution and greenhouse | gases are just two of the biggest examples, with | absolutely _massive_ external costs that are not captured | in the price. There are even _positive externalities_ | with various activities where societal benefits can 't be | captured in the price. | | Regulatory capture[1] and rent-seeking are also examples | where markets can fail. There are plenty of others. | | Markets are just tools for the exchange of economic | activity. Nothing more, nothing less. But as a society, | we tend to ascribe all sorts of greater meaning to them | that make it harder to recognize where they come up short | and actually do something about it. If knee-jerk anti- | market reactions are bad, then might I propose that knee- | jerk _pro_ -market reactions are just as bad, insofar as | they gloss over or outright ignore the negative aspects | of markets as we've implemented them? | | Imagine a screwdriver. It does one job: turn a screw. If | you have the right one, matched with the corresponding | screw drive--let's just assume a Philips screw--at the | right size, it does its job _perfectly_. But it 'll get | less effective as the tip and screw sizes diverge. What | about other screw drives? There are a bunch of types | where a Philips will sort of fit, and you'll probably be | able to turn the screw, albeit with more effort and a | greater likelihood of camming out and damaging the screw | or your screwdriver. A flat-head screwdriver gets used | and abused in all _sorts_ of fun and interesting ways. | You can use a flat-head screwdriver to pry open a can of | paint, but an actual paint can opener is still less | likely to distort or damage the lid or slip and injure | you. At some point, you open the tool box and grab | another tool. Maybe it 's another screwdriver, because | you're turning another screw. Or maybe it's a different | tool altogether, one designed for the specific task at | hand. | | Markets aren't so different, if not quite as narrowly- | defined as a screwdriver. They work well in some areas, | less well in others, and in some, they simply can't | function. All to varying degrees. Recognizing their | failures and limitations allows us try and develop | policies that address their worst parts while maintaining | their more desirable parts. | | 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality | | 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture | alchemist1e9 wrote: | For the record I believe I agree with you. However I view | it as governments are the failure point in the issues you | list, not markets. They have outright failed to address | the negative externalities as they have been captured by | private interests. In my opinion the entire financial | system is captured and the regulations they tend to | introduce are simply to allow the corrupt private | entities further control. | | One neat part of anonymous online prediction markets | using unregulated digital currencies is how they exist | outside this crony capitalist system. | | It's not markets to blame. It's bad government! | IX-103 wrote: | Yes, the police are to blame for the rash of murders and | arson is clearly the fire department's fault. | | It takes two to perform regulatory capture -- unless one | of them can buy votes from lawmakers. And guess what the | "market" found was most efficient? | alchemist1e9 wrote: | And the politicians also buy votes from the people using | redistribution policies. Seems we agree the government is | the problem! | mellosouls wrote: | _You don't observe a frequent knee jerk like anti-markets | reaction from comments across HN?_ | | I find HN one of the most balanced online forums on most | subjects. | | _What are good examples of their "disbenefits"?_ | | The race to the bottom is all around us. | concordDance wrote: | > The race to the bottom is all around us. | | Isn't this more a side effect of corporations, | advertising and corruption rather than markets | themselves? | polygamous_bat wrote: | To some, they're the same thing. | alchemist1e9 wrote: | > The race to the bottom is all around us. | | You live in SF by chance? | | Because globally and historically that's absolutely not | what the data says about markets. | RedCondor wrote: | Marketers take a lot of credit for achievements that | don't belong to them. | | Take, for example, Hayek's rather more honest commentary | on vacations and human rights generally: | | > _[The 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights] is | admittedly an attempt to fuse the rights of the Western | liberal tradition with the altogether different concept | deriving from the Marxist Russian Revolution. It adds to | the list of the classical civil rights enumerated in its | first twenty-one articles seven further guarantees | intended to express the new 'social and economic rights'. | (...) The conception of a 'universal right' which assures | to the peasant, to the Eskimo, and presumably to the | Abominable Snowman, 'periodic holidays with pay' shows | the absurdity of the whole thing. (...) What are the | consequences of the requirement that every one should | have the right 'freely to participate in the cultural | life of the community and to share in the scientific | advances and its benefits'. (...) It is evident that all | these 'rights' are based on the interpretation of society | as a deliberately made organization by which everybody is | employed. They could not be made universal within a | system of rules of just conduct based on the conception | of individual responsibility, and so require that the | whole of society be converted into a single organization, | that is, made totalitarian in the fullest sense of the | word._ | | https://redsails.org/concessions/ | | The decay we witness today is simply the rollback of | concessions copied from socialist states and artificially | bolted onto capitalism to reduce socialist ferment. The | consequences are predictable. | alchemist1e9 wrote: | I see. So this is about "the right" to take a vacation? | What are you talking about and what am I? we seem to live | in different realities. I can't even imagine somehow I | would have a government "right" to take a vacation. Who | is paying for it? I don't get it. | RedCondor wrote: | All so-called "capital returns" are in reality produced | by working people, and therefore people get to | democratically decide what they do with them, through | whatever decision-making forms they politically choose | and consent to organize themselves under. | | Insofar as there are disagreements, because capitalist | "geniuses" don't think their riches should be subject to | democracy, we have a struggle between socialism and | capitalism. | alchemist1e9 wrote: | Except history shows us that in 100% of the cases that | working people seize the production and allocate the | gains they do a unbelievable bad job. Socialism is the | single most failed idea in human history, yet we refuse | to properly teach that in our education system. I suspect | in the future it will be view a bit like refusing to | teach other scientific subjects, like evolution. | | In reality a mob of people end up producing nothing | without capitalists and markets. There is a joke that the | IQ of a mob is roughly the highest IQ in the mob divided | by the size of the mob. | IX-103 wrote: | Do you mean Communism instead of socialism above? | Socialism has nothing to do with "seizing the means of | production". For socialism it is sufficient to regulate | private industries to achieve social good. | | And flavors of socialism are very successful so far. Most | first-world countries (particularly in Western Europe) | have adopted aspects of it and significantly improved | individual quality of life compared to those countries | who haven't. | | Nice strawman. | alchemist1e9 wrote: | Western europe is being left behind and it's politicians | are getting nervous. Claims of higher quality of life are | false information. | RedCondor wrote: | Cool joke. | | I encourage anyone on the fence between this libertarian | and I to read the "Concessions" essay I linked up above. | jacquesm wrote: | > Socialism is the single most failed idea in human | history, yet we refuse to properly teach that in our | education system. | | Well... let's see until we have the capitalist end game | before we draw that conclusion, there is a fair chance | that it will make the failures of socialism look like a | picnic. | | > I suspect in the future it will be view a bit like | refusing to teach other scientific subjects, like | evolution. | | Economic systems aren't science, they are just means of | organizing large numbers of people in ways that are | hopefully sensible. A system that maximizes for growth | can work, for a while, but isn't long term sustainable. | So depending on your horizon you may think it is a great | idea or a terrible one. Markets aren't bad per-se, but | they have the potential to lead to catastrophe and if you | don't acknowledge that potential and deal with the risk | then the chances of it happening increase. | alchemist1e9 wrote: | Refusing to view economic systems scientifically and | quantifying objectively is a seriously big problem. Gotta | stop the fairy tales. | jacquesm wrote: | The problem is that every economic system ever proposes | is predicated on a bunch of assumptions that do not | necessarily hold true over time. So you end up with a | model that _may_ work for a while but that 's not how | science works. Science extracts facts from observations | using the scientific method. Social constructs - and | social sciences of which economy is a branch - | effectively model people and people are emphatically not | as predictable as lab equipment and substances. | | So you will always end up with fiction dressed up in a | scientific coat. It looks and talks like science but it | really isn't. There are no testable hypothesis, there is | a ton of politics and there will never be consensus. | bazzargh wrote: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annual_leave#Leave "Most | countries have labour laws that mandate employers give a | certain number of paid time-off days per year to | workers." (it goes on to point out that the USA - with | the exception of Maine and Nevada - is the outlier in | western industrial nations in not having this) | | The "right" is also in the Universal Declaration of Human | Rights and International Covenant on Economic, Social and | Cultural Rights; see | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_rest_and_leisure | | Ironically, a lot of this dates back to the Haymarket | Riot in Chicago in May 1886 (over the eight-hour-day | movement), which led to May Day being a worker's holiday | in much of the world...but US politics meant they got an | alternative holiday in September. | | As RedCondor points out, "who pays for it" has it | backwards, companies gain value from the work of their | employees, so effectively it is just giving back some of | what they "pay" the company in labour. | brookst wrote: | Do you think you have a right to take breaks at work? To | go to the bathroom? To a safe work environment? | | People aren't machines. We have a complicated social | contract that says companies may employ labor so long as | they meet certain requirements for safety, health, and | treatment. | | It's not unreasonable to see time off as part of the | deal. Who's paying for your bathroom breaks? Same answer. | jjoonathan wrote: | Any system that is in control and doesn't actually manage | to stop progress can make this claim, monarchies and | socialist systems included. Capitalism is very good at | maximizing the amount of money available for investment, | so it probably is uniquely qualified to make a claim to | be the best system for encouraging progress, but just as | clearly it aggressively funnels technology down paths | that are tuned for maximum value extraction and that's | _not_ something I believe is good for society as a whole, | or even progress on a long enough timescale. | alchemist1e9 wrote: | For what it's worth, not much, but me personal believe | that you believe that without evidence and primary due to | the propaganda governments have fed you to scapegoat the | evil "capitalists" and markets as a way to deflect blame | for serious problems away from themselves. | | Governments need to regulate to prevent harm, we all | agree. Yet they claim it's the markets doing it! No, | markets do what is most efficient and optimal given the | rules they can operate within. Governments are the | failure point for basically all the serious problems. | Instead of making neutral evidence based rules as | regulations, politicians tend to reach for redistribution | to buy votes, which when combined with scapegoating | markets, is a winning combination to remain in power. | Unfortunately history shows, unambiguously, it's a losing | combination for the society. | jjoonathan wrote: | Funny, I think that you believe what you do without | evidence primarily due to the propaganda spread by the | wealthy elite that own and control the system and want to | deflect blame for serious problems away from themselves | by blaming the government. | | The private sector is bigger than the public sector, both | in terms of dollar expenditure and in terms of political | power. Politicians have to be vetted by rich people (the | campaign finance process) before they are even _options_ | for election. If you 're wealthy enough to monetize | policy changes, it's easy to lobby with positive net | expected value, if not, it isn't. The whims of the | wealthy are in the driver's seat, the will of the people | is not. | | Quick exercise. Many people are confused about the social | class they inhabit. Tax policy is the easiest way to | demonstrate the actual reality, because whoever is in | charge always decides that someone else should pay the | taxes. Take out last year's 1040. I want you to look at 3 | lines: Line 1, what you earn from working, Line 7, what | you earn from owning assets, and Line 9+3/4, your | unrealized capital gains. Line 1 has high tax, Line 7 has | low tax, and Line 9+3/4 has no tax. Who do you think | decided these tax levels? Populists? Do you _feel_ in | charge here? | | > markets do what is most efficient and optimal given the | rules | | Markets don't maximize value in the colloquial sense, the | value that they optimize is wealth-weighted. Feed a | starving orphan? Zero market value because the orphan has | no wealth to pay you. Merge up all the banks so they can | load up on risk and arrange for bailouts when they go | bust? Enormous market value because it makes rich | investors richer, the single most weighted value in all | the world. The market will ejaculate capital and | connections all over this brilliant value-creating | enterprise. Oh, and part of it will involve bribing | public officials so you can even blame the government for | allowing you to rob the plebs. Lol. | | Ok, so the markets don't do what people want, they do | what wealth-weighted people want. What rich people want. | Is that so bad? You and I still get enough weight in the | process to live a decent life. Besides, Warren Buffet | seems pretty humble and someone has to be diligent about | the high level investment decisions, right? Well, here's | the problem: financial assets are a moral hazard. | Cynically, capitalism entitles rich people to get paid | for being rich. Passive income is the ultimate luxury, | the most valuable commodity, and rich people indulge | exorbitantly. Even Warren Buffet. _Especially_ Warren | Buffet. When his passive income streams are threatened, | the happy investment grandpa turns into a nasty selfish | asshole out to bust the balls of the people doing the | real work at the companies he owns (seriously, look into | the terms of the BNSF negotiations) because on the | opposite side of a passive stream is (arguably) a stream | of unreciprocated labor. The counterargument is that | Labor Theory of Value is clearly bunk because there 's | more to value than labor, but just as clearly there is | moral hazard in letting someone who doesn't produce the | surplus value decide what to do with the surplus value. | Wouldn't they just stuff it in their pockets? Yes. That's | literally what the stock market is. The entire private | sector is organized explicitly for the purpose of | stuffing pockets and everything else is merely an | emergent consequence of that. | | Maybe that's ok. After all, every contract is | individually agreed to, right? Problem: one side gets | much more control over the rules of the game than the | other, so consent is dubious. On the first day of | business school they teach the prisoner's dilemma, where | freedom to control the rules of a game trumps freedom to | choose inside of a game. In theory, competition keeps | businesses is check, but in practice businesses do | everything they can to avoid competition, some | successfully, so does it really? | | In any case, every system needs investment and investment | is all about reducing consumption today (which rich | people are in a unique position to do) in order to spend | the money instead on a factory or a risky venture or | something that is expected to make the world better | tomorrow, returning a cut to the investor, rewarding | success and punishing failure. This is good for everyone, | right? Well, yes... when it plays out that way. But | markets are amoral. They don't really know if you | _created_ value or _extracted_ value and they don 't | care. The money in your pocket doesn't care if you are a | highway robber or robber baron or someone who worked hard | for that money. As far as markets are concerned, "create | problem, sell solution" is just as legitimate an | enterprise as solving an actual preexisting problem. | Better, even, because fundamental value creation is hard | and you have to compete, while monopolization is all | about not competing. What do the best performing market | sectors over the last few decades have in common (health | care, housing, and education)? Monopolized scarcity. Is | this really best for society? You notice how business | school tends to focus less on building a better product | and more on building a better moat? They know what they | are doing, and while it's the best strategy for them, is | this really the best way to run society? By maximizing | free money for the rich and observing that a somewhat | functional society springs up as a side effect? | | Capitalism is great at growth and terrible at | stewardship. It wins a land grab but it leaves behind a | nasty class structure. Is it worth it? I have no idea. I | just try to win. I'm a lot less certain than I used to | be, though. | jacquesm wrote: | > Capitalism is great at growth and terrible at | stewardship. It wins a land grab but it leaves behind a | nasty class structure. Is it worth it? I have no idea. I | just try to win. I'm a lot less certain than I used to | be, though. | | I think we're roughly on the same page. The interesting | part about capitalism is that it scales fantastically, | for a while and as long as the bills aren't due you can | improve your standard of living and those around you | considerably. But some day those bills will be presented, | it can be during your generation, your kids or two or | three down the line. And that's when you find out about | the stewardship component. But by then it is too late. | It's a study in how local optimization can cause global | catastrophe. | hgomersall wrote: | I really like this discussion because it's a rare example | of things being discussed in real terms, where the | financial considerations are secondary; actual power over | real resources being wielded by the wealthy. | jacquesm wrote: | If you think about it in terms of resource consumption | per capita over a lifetime then it gets a lot more | difficult because now you have to divide all those | resources across all of the humans that have lived and | that will every live taking into account any kind of | improvement on recycling. This is a really hard problem, | the estimate is that right now about 7% of all that | people that have every lived are alive, and that the | total number of people have have ever lived is 117 | billion people. But because historically people would | consume less than we do today there is a 'surplus' that | we started to eat into at the beginnings of the | industrial revolution. Now we're in debt to the future | and those 'wealthy' people in your comment are over | represented in terms of resource consumption but we're | not that far behind when compared to say the people from | 400 years ago. | | Extrapolating into the future then is probably going to | show an even larger percentage of consumption per capita | compared to the budget, and that at some point in time | will result in a shortage. The people that will live | through that will look back at us as the incredibly | wasteful denizens of the 20th and 21st century that | wasted resources on a scale that at that point in time | probably will be criminal. | | Sustainability is more than just a nice slogan, it is | sooner or later going to be our end-game and the earlier | we start doing this for real the longer the species will | exist and the more comfortable the members of the species | will be. | someplaceguy wrote: | > it aggressively funnels technology down paths that are | tuned for maximum value extraction | | In this context, if you start using the words "creation", | "production" or even "availability" rather than | "extraction", I think your perspective will change | drastically. | macintux wrote: | The "bottom" is also subjective. I see small-town grocery | stores everywhere in Indiana dying due to cheap Dollar | General stores popping up next to them. | | So much for fresh fruit & vegetables, so much for the | Amish bakeries that would distribute baked goods through | the local groceries. | | But hey, cheaply-made goods from China are more widely | available. | someplaceguy wrote: | Not every apparently negative aspect of changes caused by | a market-driven process is actually an indication that | those changes are negative as a whole. | | You should contemplate why the market caused resources to | be allocated this way, instead of your preferred way, as | usually the market allocates resources more efficiently | than any single person could ever hope to achieve. | | It may turn out that the negative changes you perceived | are more than balanced by other positive changes that you | weren't able to perceive. In your example, the lives ot | Chinese people who benefitted from those changes may have | improved a lot more than whatever setbacks you may have | experienced. Or maybe people around you can now buy | things they couldn't afford before. | | That said, this is not always true, as markets don't take | into account externalities. | | But still, we don't know of any system of global resource | allocation better than letting markets do their job while | governments try to control their externalities. | kakwa_ wrote: | Vast topic. | | Markets definitely have their issues. | | Here are a few: | | * The most obvious one is the fact it's an overhead, it | doesn't produce goods or services by itself. That's not a | major issue, but for example in the US ~5% (~7M of ~150M) | of the workforce is dedicated to this overhead. | | * It's prone to internal instabilities. Too often, the | markets disconnect from the underlying economic reality, | sometimes with only mild effects (for example, that time | petroleum prices went negative), sometimes with more | serious ones (2008). | | * It can lead to overly quantitative views, ignoring the | qualitative. It's the "metrics becoming the objective and | thus compromising the value of the metric" (example: tech | stock prices). | | * It over-emphasizes individual interests over the | collective one (think for example: environmental issues & | global warming). | | Markets definitely have their issues. But so far, the | other systems we experimented with (planned economy) were | even less able to cope with the incredibly difficult task | of balancing an economy. | | Lastly, it is to be noted that we are not operating in a | pure market economy. | | We are in an hybrid system where States (hopefully | representing their people) definitely have a lot of say | in economic matters and that's probably for the better. | kevinmchugh wrote: | > Too often, the markets disconnect from the underlying | economic reality, sometimes with only mild effects (for | example, that time petroleum prices went negative) | | I may have misunderstood the situation at the time or am | now misremembering it but I thought: | | Some crude futures were about to become deliverable, | meaning people who had been speculating on the price and | have no fundamental use for unrefined petroleum were | going to receive it. Normally they sell the soon- | delivering futures for some later-delivering futures and | lose or make relatively small amounts of money in the | difference. | | But there was no one to sell to, because COVID had | reduced processing capacity and demand for gasoline. So | all these traders who had no use for crude were about to | be stuck with it. It's a noxious, volatile, dangerous | chemical that requires special handling. | | As the date approached it became important to find | somewhere to _put _ the stuff, so much so that traders | were paying people to take it off their hands. Which | seems like a very elegant mechanism? | | Like, I don't want crude oil at my house. I'm not gonna | worry much about the price to get it taken away, | probably. | | And at that moment the market was paying for someone to | take the crude, meaning anyone who could bring additional | storage or processing capacity online very quickly was | delivering something valuable. | kakwa_ wrote: | Yes, that's what's happened. | | I was using this example to illustrate the disconnect | between the market (which was trading oil like some | immaterial stuff) and reality (oil is definitely a | product you need to store properly, plus oil storage is | not infinite). | | In fairness, because it occurred during COVID, i.e. a | really abnormal situation, this is a bit of a weak | example. | mschuster91 wrote: | > Markets definitely have their issues. But so far, the | other systems we experimented with (planned economy) were | even less able to cope with the incredibly difficult task | of balancing an economy. | | The worst issue that the Soviets and other attempts at | central planning failed to account for was flexibility | and buffer. Say a natural disaster hits and you need an | extra amount of concrete for reconstruction, but all the | concrete production was already allocated for something | else and the plan is considered sacrosanct. Or some | innovation (e.g. refrigerators, cars, washing machines) | proves to be way more popular than expected, but there is | no way to adapt the plan, and so you had to wait years | for a Trabant car. | | Ironically, Western-style "free markets" eventually | converged towards the same issue with the unholy | invention of "just in time" manufacturing. Both | capitalism and communism sought to eradicate | "inefficiencies" and destabilized their entire foundation | doing so. | kakwa_ wrote: | To extend, interesting read on the subject of the soviet | economy: | | https://chris-said.io/2016/05/11/optimizing-things-in- | the-us... | | HN discussions: | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14515225 | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25084479 | kybernetikos wrote: | I would describe myself as cautiously pro market, but I | think it's hard to deny that they are effective | externality seeking machines. If there is any way of | providing a benefit while finding a way to impose the | cost diffusely, you can bet that the market will find it. | Market based systems guarantee that costs will be hidden | and imposed on those who don't receive the benefit to the | maximum extent possible given physics and law. | | On top of that, it's interesting that we only use the | market concept at the meta level. Vanishingly few of the | businesses that compete in the marketplace are | _internally_ arranged on market principles. Instead they | follow bureaucratic and oligarchic principles internally. | And when the survival of the state is on the line because | of war, we don 't trust markets to allocate resources to | get important things built quickly - rather the state | takes power to directly cause some things to be built and | other things not to be. | | Although the market gets praised for being good at | allocation of capital, I would say it's good in the way | evolution is good at finding things that can survive. It | might find great solutions that a planned process | wouldn't, but it'll take a long time and a lot of things | will die in the process. | nvm0n1 wrote: | Isn't military work mostly done by private contractors? | It's not like the USAF actually owns and operates its own | plane factories. | | Some companies do approximate market operations | internally, any company that has a notion of internal | billing or where teams talk about internal customers is | to some extent like this. | | Companies not using market principles internally isn't a | strike against markets, if you believe Coase's theory of | the firm i.e. companies form at the break even point on | transaction costs | eropple wrote: | _> What are good examples of their "disbenefits"?_ | | Overwhelmingly unaddressed externalities. | sterlind wrote: | Prediction markets seem blessedly free of externalities | though, compared to, say, the energy market (CO2) or | textiles (child labor, sweatshops.) | | except for incentivizing action to tilt the odds, which | is weirdly amoral. if you bet on a bad thing happening, | you can cash in by making it happen yourself. | Regnore wrote: | Feeding gambling addictions is the one big externality | that comes to mind. | someplaceguy wrote: | > except for incentivizing action to tilt the odds, which | is weirdly amoral. | | It depends on what's at stake. One example is predicting | someone's death. | | > if you bet on a bad thing happening, you can cash in by | making it happen yourself. | | Yes, and that could be a huge problem, don't you think? | It creates an incentive for a bad thing happening that | wouldn't exist otherwise. | | I say this as someone who is in huge favor of markets but | also hates their externalities. | ajuc wrote: | Child labor. | | Slave trade. | | Sweatshops. | | 1000 different environmental catastrophes. | | You know, the reasons we have regulation. We had markets | FIRST, then we got regulation on top of that, and we | never looked back. | Turing_Machine wrote: | All of those things, including environmental | catastrophes, existed for millennia before Adam Smith | came along. | ajuc wrote: | So did markets. | alchemist1e9 wrote: | Absolutely government's fundamental role in human society | is regulating against harm. | | But somehow the narrative is markets are "bad", they | obviously aren't as they seek out information and | efficiency, which is a good thing. Markets are the one's | you should thank for telling you child labor, slaves, and | sweatshops are a problem, and the environment issue, so | you pressured your government to regulate those issues. | Without free markets the alternative would be the | government doing all those horrible things, which btw | they certain used to. | | People are mixed up, the primary problem is government | failure to regulate and be transparent. It's very | difficult for governments to admit they create the | problems so academics and politicians find the boggy man | of markets. | | Kennedy understands this topic well and while it's | unlikely he will win, I deeply hope he can somehow. | | We need more markets for more things with clear and clean | regulations build based on empirical evidence and | scientific and not created by lobbyists involved in | regulatory capture. | ajuc wrote: | > But somehow the narrative is markets are "bad" | | The mainstream opinion is "markets are ok as long as they | are well regulated". | | The only narrative that is trying to compete with that | with any success is "markets are perfect without any | regulation". Which provokes the rebuttal you refer to. | | I've yet to see anybody claiming seriously that "markets | are inherently bad and can't be saved". Even in communism | there were markets, as abysmal as that system was (and I | lived in a communist country for 6 years). | | If our markets right now were regulated enough - we | wouldn't have global warming problems. Clearly there's a | lot of externalities that aren't priced-in. So - there's | too much market and too little regulation. | alchemist1e9 wrote: | We likely actually agree. | | The issue is politicians tend to push redistribution and | direct action of the government over rules and | regulations. | supazek wrote: | Child labor has been a thing since well before any market | ever existed. Slavery has always existed and was made | obsolete not due to some new moral prerogative but | because it couldn't compete with new labor saving | devices. Sweatshops are basically the same as slavery and | mostly exist in places which have not fully accepted free | markets or where the value placed on human life is | shockingly low. They can only obtain workers because | their economy is absolutely unbalanced - there is no | reason to believe a market wouldn't fix that eventually. | Regarding environmental catastrophes, that seems to be a | result of technological advancement more so than | "markets", but markets are the thing that is most | probably going to bring the third world out of poverty | and make them actually care about it. | | The only reason people like us are able to sit and argue | on HN is because we aren't worried about finding dinner | for our 8 kids tonight. We live privileged lives. By | demonizing the very thing that allowed us to move past | these things you are basically attempting to pull up the | ladder so no other unfortunate people can come up after | you | renlo wrote: | > If you are participating in a prediction market, either you | have some reason you believe you know something the market | does not or you should expect you are simply subsidizing | those with better information. | | Sometimes people just vote for "their team", similar to a | sportsball fan placing a large bet on their favorite team | winning, without any insider knowledge. I've seen it a couple | of times on PredictIt for the more contentious predictions | (presidential election being one, control of the house / | senate, etc). While in the end those with better information | will usually come out on top, in those kinds of markets the | favored prediction doesn't align well with the data. | andrepd wrote: | It's like they say, when all you have is a hammer... | jacquesm wrote: | That's not all that different from how the financial crisis | came to be: derivatives on top of bad loans. Here it is bad | bets on top of a possible phenomenon that probably none of the | participants in the bets have any insight in. | fallingknife wrote: | The bets were never the issue. The leverage in the banking | system was. The bad bets were just the spark that lit it. The | prediction markets are not leveraged | sudosysgen wrote: | No reason why they wouldn't become leveraged. | beowulfey wrote: | A few things: | | * the paper wasn't ready, and internal drama is what led to it | being released | | * I've read that the process of making it is quite difficult. | There probably are not many samples out there in the world | | Basically, it wasn't ready for primetime, but I believe it's | close | TrailMixRaisin wrote: | The topic on how hard or easy it is to replicate seems to be | as fast changing as other information. The first time I read | about it, it was deemed to be super easy as all you needed | are the two base materials and a vacuum furnace. But with all | the drama involved I would not be surprised if the process is | actually very complicated. | qingcharles wrote: | The paper is _vague_ unfortunately. Here are some of the | questions Andrew McCalip has (and he is fairly far along | the path of actually making LK99): | | Precursors: | | *What level of purity is required for the precursor | materials? | | *Are there any necessary preparatory steps for the | precursors just before use? | | *What are the required particle sizes for the precursor | materials? | | Thermal steps: | | *What is the environment (air or vacuum) for the Lanarkite | reaction? | | *What are the temperature ramp-up and ramp-down rates for | all three reactions? | | *Are there any thermal annealing steps involved? | | *How sensitive is LK99 to the duration of the final 925degC | step? | | Results: | | *Could you elaborate on the observed differences between | the bulk material and the thin film? | | *Does the bulk material share the same composition as the | thin film? | | *How repeatable is the prescribed recipe, is SC behavior | stochastic across samples? | | *Could you provide details on the equipment used, setup | photos, and procedures employed to measure the critical | current in response to an applied magnetic field, as seen | in figure 8 of paper 3? | | Thin film deposition: | | *What type of glass substrate was used in the vapor | deposition process for the thin film? | | *Could the exact set-point temperatures of the tungsten | boat be provided, instead of ranges? (e.g., 550 to 900 , | 900 to 2000 ) | | *In patent figure 22, from which region was the resistivity | value taken? The light gray or the dark gray area? | | https://twitter.com/andrewmccalip/status/168589172267568742 | 4 | c7DJTLrn wrote: | The stock market is no different, there's inequality in access | to information there too. | JonChesterfield wrote: | > buy options on the outcome once they confirm their findings | in order to cash out | | What stops that being textbook insider trading? | incrudible wrote: | Just making a bet does not really spend the money, it will just | change hands, presumably from the less informed to the more | informed, who should be able to eventually spend it more | wisely. As far as forcing the outcome, _if_ it turns out to be | possible, but the market got it all wrong, there is your | incentive to give it a shot regardless. | justinclift wrote: | > making a bet does not really spend the money, it will just | change hands | | Pretty sure most people would call the money changing hands | "spending" that money. | [deleted] | barelyauser wrote: | Yes, but the original post means "spending" as "making good | use of if" or "putting it to a productive end". People | betting money has very little effect on the world. But | consider the case where I pay you to be idle for an hour. I | destroyed 1 hour of your labor, you got paid but we are not | in any shape or form richer because of it. Or consider | people attending a charity event. They pay to attend, then | spent 1 hour having fun. After the event, they will have to | in fact labor to provide the charity when the fund raising | event starts to spent its money. There is no cheating | nature. | amelius wrote: | > Shouldn't the minimum requirements be a magnet and the | material sample, to demonstrate it floating through the | meissner effect? | | The minimum requirements should be that it doesn't heat up when | you send a large current through it. | cptaj wrote: | The worst part is that those market people are delusional | enough to believe what they say. | yreg wrote: | Are there any prediction markets where you can bet money on | this? | | I thought people talked only about Moneyfold, which is just a | game. (You cannot take money out of it, although you can use it | to make a charity donation.) | | I suspect that people on actual real money market would make | different predictions to Manifold. | yorwba wrote: | Polymarket uses real money, I think | https://polymarket.com/event/is-the-room-temp- | superconductor... | eurleif wrote: | https://polymarket.com/event/is-the-room-temp- | superconductor... | Cthulhu_ wrote: | I like that that website seems to use just smallish penny | amounts, no big betting amounts. And that it's a simple | formula; if you're right, you win $1 per share, if you | lose, you get nothing. There's one about whether Trump wins | the election with everyone voting 'no', so the winners will | gain fractions of pennies on their bet. But if he does win, | those voting 'yes' can gain 99% of their bet. | trompetenaccoun wrote: | The concept isn't bad but the problem with these markets | isn't necessarily the amounts played, rather it's how | they're resolved. What exactly counts as 'event has | happened' and 'event has not happened'? I think | Polymarket uses some kind of oracle1 to establish the | outcomes. What I know for sure is that there have been a | couple of cases of fraudulently set up markets already, | so anyone who wants to bet has to really understand the | conditions before jumping in, even if they're very sure | about the outcome. | | Again, I think it's a cool concept but I'd advice people | to stay away from touching these until there's a solution | for that problem. The small amounts people are betting | are likely a reflection of this problem, because it's | hard to understand if the setup is trustworthy. | | 1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockchain_oracle | jamilton wrote: | There's been at least one badly mis-resolved market on | Polymarket, too. | ummonk wrote: | It's worse than that. If you've confirmed results, you now have | an incentive not to publish your results, instead building up a | market position on prediction markets for as long as possible. | killerstorm wrote: | No. You're incentivized to build a market prosition on | prediction markets, or sell your information to somebody who | can. (E.g. if a lab has a replication proof it might partner | with a trading firm to maximize their profit.) | | But there's definitely no incentive to do it "for as long as | possible". E.g. once the trader gets into a favorable | position, they are incentivized to reveal their information | ASAP to be able to take profit. | kulahan wrote: | I was absolutely certain I saw a photo of LK-99 floating over | (partially, part of it was still touching) a magnet. Of course, | this proves nothing as it's a photo, but I have this memory of | seeing it, so maybe someone else saw it in some official | capacity. | r2_pilot wrote: | This is purported to be a video of what you saw a photo of: | https://sciencecast.org/casts/suc384jly50n | cubefox wrote: | Note that real prediction markets with money are currently | illegal in the US because of some legacy law. So Polymarket | (currently the major prediction market I believe) is only | usable outside the US anyway. | | Currently the only US alternative is play money. Manifold and | Metaculus use this system. Metaculus doesn't really use play | "money", but a non-zero-sum system to award points for more | accurate predictions. It's in both cases a game and an exercise | in checking how well-calibrated your beliefs about the future | are. | | And here is the canonical FAQ on prediction markets, and the | social/policy benefits they could have: | | https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/prediction-market-faq | jamilton wrote: | Kalshi is a real money prediction market that's (only) legal | in the US. No market on LK-99 though. | cubefox wrote: | From the FAQ: | | > Kalshi can only ask a few specific regulator-approved | questions; the limits are so harsh that they're not even | allowed to predict elections | ssijak wrote: | This twitter handle contains some interesting back story | investigation https://twitter.com/8teAPi | junon wrote: | Where? I just see bandwagoning from a shitpost account. | ssijak wrote: | start here then go to comments for branching out | https://twitter.com/8teAPi/status/1685960703658860544 | drtgh wrote: | nitter link | https://nitter.net/8teAPi/status/1685960703658860544 | hobofan wrote: | > interesting back story investigation | | No! As stated in their reply to this, you should assume that | everything that account writes is fiction. | | They said that they were essentially trying to write a The Big | Short-style screenplay in real time as the story unfolds. To do | that, they link to actual newsworthy tweets and "fill it in | with realistic stereotypes". | | It's a shame that this account is one of the most responsive | aggregators of new developments, as I find their real-time | fictionalization incredibly irresponsible. | code51 wrote: | Damn, why is nobody talking more about the theory of it? | | What I see to ponder: | | - (1970, brinkman, rice) "application of gutzwiller's variational | method to the metal-insulator transition" | | - (2001, hyun-tak kim) "extension of the brinkman-rice picture | and the mott transition" | | - (2002, hyun-tak kim) "extended brinkman-rice picture and its | application to high-Tc superconductors" | | - (2021, hyun-tak kim) "Room-temperature-superconducting Tc | driven by electron correlation" | | even briefly reading relevant research (other than these papers) | says even if a group could not replicate lk99 at first try, | there's more to it. cooking the right way should be insanely | difficult because this is a probabilistic event after all. should | not be happening homogenously and should not be happening in a | wide-band of parameters. I think the groups will eventually reach | a narrow range of parameters to replicate but will take a lot of | effort. | dkqmduems wrote: | The brinkman paper is interesting, but the others are a bit too | hand wavy. | [deleted] | koreanguy wrote: | [dead] | throwaway849755 wrote: | Is there any HN effect by which enough contrary early opinion | here could increase the odds of eventual triumph? | | On the chance that there is, I will do my part: | | _In mice._ | twic wrote: | No synthesis. Less critical current than YBCO. Lame. | stevehawk wrote: | oh god i understood this reference. we love you cmdrtaco | moffkalast wrote: | The naysayers say nay. | ggm wrote: | Morphic Resonance theory | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rupert_Sheldrake | heliophobicdude wrote: | I've been live following this thread: | | https://twitter.com/iris_igb/status/1685731177523449856 | andersa wrote: | This thread is super frustrating. The person posting it does | not at all seem interested in actually demonstrating the effect | works... how can you have such a sample and only post this one | image which could easily be created by gluing a pebble to the | glass? Where's the video of it in action! | | I want this material to be real so badly. | Rzor wrote: | We all do, andersa. We all do. I can feel the disappointment | brewing. Deep down, I'm almost ready for the archetypal | "measurement error". | asimpletune wrote: | To be fair a video could also be faked and they explain why | they're not doing videos and that if you want a replication | just wait for the big labs. | yreg wrote: | I think it's an obvious fake, the account is trolling on | multiple fronts. | 7373737373 wrote: | Agreed, if they are unwilling or unable to demonstrate it | well, why even bother, why waste viewer's time and attention? | | A bad/unconvincing/incomplete demonstration is | indistinguishable from a scam | | If they want to show and distribute the capital-T Truth, they | need to take their ego out of the equation | Davidzheng wrote: | lol they're just having fun let them be. She's not trying | to claim anything | fullstackchris wrote: | gotta say, this is slowly looking like a giant nothing burger | code51 wrote: | We thought Oppenheimer was the way to instill a love of physics | to young people but turns out LK-99 was the way to winning | people's hearts and minds to delve more into physics. | legi0nary wrote: | Don't understand how a movie largely about the psychological | horrors of developing and using a nuclear weapons is being | construed to be "pro physics" lol. If anything it's the | opposite | Freedom2 wrote: | Yeah, it sounds like GP hasn't even seen the movie, the | themes conveyed are quite clear. | ly3xqhl8g9 wrote: | Regardless if LK-99 is truly a Room-Temperature Superconductor or | not, only 112 years passed since Heike Kamerlingh Onnes | discovered superconductivity on April 8, 1911, 4 PM [1] [2]: | resistance not futile, but "practically zero". The first loaf of | sliced bread was sold commercially on July 7, 1928 [3]. The rate | of progress is astonishing. | | [1] | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heike_Kamerlingh_Onnes#Superco... | | [2] 2010, "The discovery of superconductivity", | https://www.ilorentz.org/history/cold/DelftKes_HKO_PT.pdf | | [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Frederick_Rohwedder | ccity88 wrote: | Iris Alexandra's twitter is especially enthralling. Seems like so | much discoveries and innovation happens from computer science to | physics, chemistry and biology all from people with anime profile | pictures. | Accujack wrote: | She's acknowledged her results were a hoax at this point. | jabedude wrote: | Where? Saying something like this should be accompanied with | proof | generalizations wrote: | I haven't seen any such acknowledgement in her twitter feed? | justinjlynn wrote: | > anime profile pictures | | Either that or furry ones. Amusing apparent correlation. | WaffleIronMaker wrote: | Highlighting this tweet in particular: | | > Here's a chunk of pyrolytic graphite on the same magnet with | the same stick. Even with less density and more surface normal | to field.... It doesn't lift off. If it's diamagnetism it's a | fucking absurdly strong one | | https://twitter.com/iris_IGB/status/1685804254718459904 | | Her findings, and suggestions of manufacturing process | improvements, are very interesting. | psychphysic wrote: | Seems silly to compare to that absolute chunk of pyrplytic | graphite. Shouldn't it be a similar size spec? | jiggawatts wrote: | AFAIK the chunk will levitate irrespective of size up to | some maximum. Diamagnetism is a property of the material, | not the shape. | herculity275 wrote: | There's a certain subset of people on the intersection of high | IQ, high-functioning ASD and LGBT that produces a lot of high | impact activity in STEM fields. | twic wrote: | I think there's also an aspect of doing it and presenting it | in an unusually attention-grabbing way. | slily wrote: | I heard from a psychologist that homosexuality is associated | with higher creativity (possibly explaining why it wasn't | eliminated through evolution/natural selection). That seems | true in art anyway, but I am not sure if in science the | flamboyant online profiles simply make them more memorable | characters or if the association holds. | XorNot wrote: | Well I mean at this point, if I think I'm sitting on a big | discovery the _first_ thing I 'm doing is changing my avatar | to an anime one. | nonethewiser wrote: | High-functioning LGBT for sure | willy_k wrote: | Do you have a point or did you just feel like inserting | your homophobia? | nonethewiser wrote: | What homophobia? | zamalek wrote: | LGBT is not strongly correlated to diminished executive | function. | guywhocodes wrote: | I hope we get a video from Iris proving it's not glued to the | support, if they were able to produce a levitating grain that's | amazing. Regardless if superconducting or not. | jiggawatts wrote: | That's a small enough sample that static electricity alone | could explain the "levitation". | bhaak wrote: | https://twitter.com/iris_IGB for those looking for the account. | | I'm watching all of this unfold as an unknowledgeable | bystander. I'm at a loss for half of the technical terms and | have no clue how many of those people are just LARPing. | | But the positive energy of this all is very refreshing. This is | what the internet was made for and I'm glad I can take part of | it even if only by contributing moral support. | chunkyslink wrote: | Please can someone explain this to me ? | jerojero wrote: | There is a lab in South Korea that claims to have | discovered/developed superconductor that works at room (and | higher) temperatures. | | This kind of discovery would be worth a Nobel prize and would | probably give us access to a whole range of new/improved | technologies in the future. | | All of this happened maybe 10 or so days ago, so other labs are | trying to replicate the procedure to verify that the claims are | legit, as I said, this would be a huge discovery so it has | generated a lot of excitement everywhere in the world. | dom96 wrote: | I feel like I am out of the loop on this one. But everything I am | seeing makes me skeptical, can anyone explain why I should be | excited about this being anything more than just a fake paper? | [deleted] | jiggawatts wrote: | Multiple authors instead of a single quack. Former leader (now | sadly deceased) was a respected superconducting material | researcher. They ran the essential tests, albeit not very well. | They were at it for years in silence, and it was only after | this current material's synthesis that they were tripping over | each other to publish, with the apparent firm belief that they | were onto a Nobel Prize level discovery. The theory they | proposed -- while perhaps wrong -- also makes intuitive sense. | | Cold fusion had many of those elements also, but the difference | is that superconductivity is easier to verify. | | Many people like the overall concept of using doped crystals to | produce compressed or stretched lattices, which seem to be one | of the enablers for superconductivity. | | Compare with cold fusion, where there was no reasonable theory | to explain how the palladium lattice would bring hydrogen | nuclei close together. | pipo234 wrote: | tldr; no successful experiment outside original labs reproduces | the results. | | Fingers crossed... | yreg wrote: | OTOH only one lab announced a failure and they say they haven't | followed the recipe. | | Fingers crossed... | jboggan wrote: | This live crowdsourced approach is a far better way to test and | refine hypotheses than peer review and the current state of | science journals. | danbruc wrote: | Only as long as the experiments are reasonably simple. There | are probably still some things requiring only simple | experiments to be discovered, but most of the low hanging fruit | has probably already been consumed by a couple of centuries of | experimentation and scientific progress. | constantcrying wrote: | The single most famous mathematical result this century | (solution ofthe Poincare conjecture) was verified by | consensus after the claimed proof was published to arxiv. | danbruc wrote: | Which falls into the category where I said it would be | possible - you don't have to bring your own Hadron collider | but only your brain in order to check whether the proof is | correct. Admittedly not any brain will do, so in a sense | you still need some specialized equipment. | mjfl wrote: | requires a really significant result in order to demand | widespread effort in to replicate. | oldgradstudent wrote: | That's how it has always been done. | | During the 1989 cold fusion fiasco, the findings were announced | in a press conference, pre-prints were circulated in the | community, and many groups attempted to reproduce the results. | | The first publication came weeks later. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_fusion | FriedPickles wrote: | Everybody's talking about reproducing the material which is | great, but will take time. Why don't the authors supply their | existing material to an independent lab for earlier confirmation? | Vicinity9635 wrote: | Devil's advocate: If the existing material and the process to | make it can't be replicated, who really cares? Well, aside from | the people who might deserve a Nobel. The rest of the world | doesn't because we can't all share it like some kind of magical | medallion. | cthalupa wrote: | I'm on the "Probably a nothingburger" side of things but just | getting confirmation that it is possible and some | understanding of what the process involved is is a massive | jump for science. | | If it's actually superconducting we've got a wide variety of | ways to inspect what LK99 actually is that will shed a whole | lot of light on how to create more of it, or more of a | similar superconductor. It'll be one of the most important | scientific achievements in our lifetimes regardless of | whether or not it can be replicated with the process in the | paper. | psychphysic wrote: | If they really believe they have the only sample they won't let | it out of their sight most likely. | | It'll be superconducting tomorrow if it's really | superconducting today. | CoastalCoder wrote: | Is that necessarily true? | | I'm 200% not a physicist, but it is possible that during | transit, minor bumps / temperature changes / ionizing | radiation / oscillating E-M fields could screw up the | material in a way that matters? | foven wrote: | Not necessarily true. Complex compounds can be susceptible to | oxidisation and generally decay and degrade over time. | keenmaster wrote: | This was my thinking as well. | Ajedi32 wrote: | Whether or not this turns out to be real the whole incident has | been extremely entertaining, way more than I would have expected. | Replication attempts being documented in real time on Twitter and | livestreamed on Twitch, news about infighting and drama among the | researchers who published the paper, constant fluxations in the | betting markets as new news comes out. It's been a wild ride. | robterrell wrote: | I was in college (and a physics major!) when cold fusion hit. | Really similar vibe -- competing press conferences and | publications, huge public excitement tempered by frowning | disbelief from experts, a rush to replicate from many labs, | with only occasional claims of success, all of which turned out | to be errors. Still, I'm rooting for you, LK-99. | echelon wrote: | It's a lot like the EmDrive incident, except replication | attempts are easier. | | Both are strange discoveries that are poised to change the | world as we know it. | | Hopefully this one turns out, unlike the EmDrive. | jimmySixDOF wrote: | This is the best state of affairs sum up at the moment and my | favorite plot line is the soil scientist. | | https://twitter.com/8teAPi/status/1685960703658860544?s=19 | baq wrote: | > She posts her kitchen chemistry process over the weekend, | at arrives at 2 confirmed Meissner effect levitation | stones, beating all other public teams. She posts the pics | on Twitter and begins to indulge in her favorite hobby, | insulting the intelligence of westerners. | | Editorialized, but quite close. | | The original thread is one of the best on Twitter. The | character of the Soviet anime lesbian kitchen chemist | dropping some amazing lines in between posting pics of | casually cooking a superconductor is just chef's kiss. I | don't even need it to be true, got my money's worth. | foven wrote: | Can we stop promoting this ateapie loonie. Every post they | made is so thick with narrative it is completely divorced | from reality. | weard_beard wrote: | Can we put this LARPing scam artist out of the | conversation? They are setting up a bitcoin wallet to, | "raise money" to post a video of their admitted non- | replication (They didn't use the original replication steps | at all), but still superconducting result using kitchen | cookware? | | Also they spend more time promoting bizarre Soviet | propaganda, furry porn, and LARPing than science. | | Please, can we stop taking this seriously? | Accujack wrote: | She's also begging on twitter for people to stop | attacking her since it's "getting to" her loved ones. | pja wrote: | Who's taking it seriously? It's fantastic armchair | entertainment. | m463 wrote: | or the e-cat: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Catalyzer | throwawaymaths wrote: | You might be excited about ivo quantum drive that is going to | be tested in space, NET October | _a_a_a_ wrote: | That's a drive with which your exact position becomes | uncertain so... you might be there already. | [deleted] | baq wrote: | The good old improbability drive. | nine_k wrote: | Traveling on a spaceship like that, always know where | your towel is. | foobarian wrote: | It may be unfair to compare to EmDrive; that was not possible | under current physics frameworks, while there is no such | obvious restriction for superconductors. | BryanLegend wrote: | EmDrive was supposed to work better with Superconductors! | adad95 wrote: | I already completed forgotten about EMDrive. | marcosdumay wrote: | The social event is similar. But the experiment is nothing | alike. | | The EmDrive was hard to replicate because it was a tiny | reported signal in an ocean of noise. | chaorace wrote: | The neat thing is that -- whether or not LK-99 is a hoax -- the | public will have engaged with real scientists doing real | science in a rather personal capacity. It's novel and | interesting to be able to tune into the materials science | equivalent of live-coding. | m00dy wrote: | welcome to the new world...It is fast, efficient and very | interesting... | bananapub wrote: | it's not fast or efficient - the authors appear to think they | invented a very easy to make room temperature/pressure | superconductor far over a year ago, and then announced it in | a truly silly way with no clear data and no samples. | local_issues wrote: | Materials going from concept -> public testing in less than | 200 years is fucking shocking in the scale of human | history. | | When did the Chinese invent gunpowder? What about the | discovery of uranium? The rate of attention span decrease | is much greater than the still shocking increase in rate of | discoveries. | pengaru wrote: | [flagged] | [deleted] | aqme28 wrote: | Been following this very closely. Seems like the one takeaway is | that whatever material this is, it's interesting. It's also | difficult to synthesize in bulk, which is a shame because | superconductivity is not easy to observe in non-bulk materials | (think: powder). | | Note: I have a physics degree and a little bit of condensed | matter experience, but nothing like anyone actually working in | the field. Just some graduate courses and a bit of lab work | experience. | ChuckMcM wrote: | Yup, and the "preprint" (which doesn't have a number of | controls in the process) leaves a lot to be desired, so the | "real" paper will presumably have some of this worked out. | | I expect things like the cooling rate (which affects crystal | growth) and oxidation will both have variability in them. | justinclift wrote: | Is there's no sintering or other process that could fuse the | power together into a solid? (obviously without destroying its | useful properties) | Panzer04 wrote: | Assuming LK99 is legitimate, my hope is that the principles | that make it work are more broadly applicable - and with that, | refined production processes or newer alloys can be found. | Simply knowing that it's possible would lead to a huge amount | of research immediately focusing on this kind of thing. | | There's nothing more revolutionary than a discovery of a new | class of materials. After all, we often name eras throughout | our history after them :) (Stone age, etc) | ant6n wrote: | > There's nothing more revolutionary than a discovery of a | new class of materials. After all, we often name eras | throughout our history after them :) (Stone age, etc) | | I wonder what was involved in the discovery of stone. | bluerooibos wrote: | 2023, the beginning of the... Room Temperature | Superconductor Age! | Qworg wrote: | The RTS Age has a good ring to it. | tudorw wrote: | hitting each other with every other available substance? | DrScientist wrote: | I think the Ice age came before the stone age - can't | imagine those tools lasted very long - so Stone tools would | have been a big advance :-) | ljf wrote: | Ice ages tools : https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet- | earth/frozen-poop-kn... | justinclift wrote: | Being in the wrong place, at the wrong time. ;) | [deleted] | civilitty wrote: | _> I wonder what was involved in the discovery of stone._ | | Mostly archaic humans hitting rocks against each other | until they notice that flint knapping [1] creates a sharp | edge. | | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knapping | Eduard wrote: | _The CuO25P6Pb9 Age_ | vmilner wrote: | Evolution of enough intelligence to use stone as a club, or | make an edge on flint for cutting? | empiko wrote: | A rigorous peer review by graduate students. | aurizon wrote: | I see the potential for a Far Side cartoon in that... | kfarr wrote: | "Ooga ooga peer review..." | marcusverus wrote: | Abstract: Our rigorous dialectic treatment shows that | stone, while well suited for the smashing open of certain | types of nut, is not well suited for any other purpose. | Advocates from the more radical fringes of the tribe who | suggest stone may be employed in varied areas such as | warfare or even homebuilding(?!), are herein put in their | proper place. | DiogenesKynikos wrote: | There are many different types of stones, and techniques | for shaping them became progressively more sophisticated | over time. | | With instruction, it would probably take you less than an | hour to learn how to make the types of simple chopping | stones that human ancestors used 1 million years ago. | However, it takes much more considerable time and skill to | learn how to make the types of stone tools humans were | using 100k years ago. You get the sense that each group of | ancient humans probably had an old expert toolmaker who | passed on the trade to the next generation. | Retric wrote: | It just occurred to me that this might relate to why | people get near sighted with age. An old tool maker may | no longer be as productive in hunting and gathering but | instead masters his or her craft thus aiding the tribe. | wddkcs wrote: | Evolution caught using planned obsolescence | VierScar wrote: | Why is it hard to make in bulk? I thought the chemicals were | easy and cheap to obtain, and then you bake it at a high temp? | | What makes it difficult? | carabiner wrote: | There's a chemist who gave a breakdown with what's known so | far: https://twitter.com/Robert_Palgrave/status/1684615867726 | 7988... | | It's not clear exactly what compound constitutes "LK-99" | because the equations in the papers are unbalanced and the | synthesis is ill defined. What they say they got doesn't make | sense for how they say they got it. Most likely it's a | mixture of compounds, any of which could be producing the | alleged superconducting phenomena. | aqme28 wrote: | I don't have really any expertise here but it looks like it | bakes into a powder pretty much every time. Sure you get | LK-99, but you can't measure superconductivity in a powder | since it's a bulk property. | beowulfey wrote: | The variables that lead to its formation are not all | accounted for yet. The process is understood, but it doesn't | always work. So there must be something missing every now and | then. | aydyn wrote: | So they have a batch of the material as proof, but no idea | how to exactly reproduce it? | | That would be a wild story if true. | Accujack wrote: | >So they have a batch of the material as proof, but no | idea how to exactly reproduce it? | | No, _we_ don 't know how to reproduce it, with "we" being | everyone not on the South Korean team. | | The papers everyone is trying to work from to replicate | this are the "leaked" arXiv papers. That actual peer | reviewed paper is still in process, and presumably that | one includes more information on how to replicate the | material. | kraussvonespy wrote: | Could the material need to be "seeded" by the proper | polymorph? | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearing_polymorphs | tomatotomato37 wrote: | Given the sheer amount of samples material scientists may | produce I imagine accidentally hitting your target | characteristic through impurities rather than direct | formula may happen more often then they care to admit. | That being said even if they haven't actually narrowed | down on the exact formula knowing it can even happen in | the first place is a major discovery | weard_beard wrote: | The theory is the crystal structure induced by oxidation | and vibration is responsible for the superconducting | effect. They literally dropped and cracked the quartz | ampoule by accident and produced the sample. | | Its not enough to produce the material itself, it seems | it is an emergent property of the structure and formation | of the material similar to piezoelectric effect? | galangalalgol wrote: | Not that crazy. Steel was the same at first. | | Wild guess is that the dopant that creates wells doesn't | always end up where it should. The paper that claimed | superconductivity in layers of graphene at very | particular angles also seems to be very sensitive. A | similar one claimed graphene with alkanes was observed to | superconduct. Perhapes whatever impure hydrocarbon they | were using held the sheets at the perfect angle. All the | quantum wells these things are claiming to rely on seem | terribly difficult to arrange perfectly enough to work | consistently. Assuming any of them ever did. | WalterBright wrote: | Samurai sword making took what, a thousand years of trial | and error? The forgers had no idea how making steel | worked, they just found a way to make it work. | flamedoge wrote: | More interesting that they found a way to work with poor | quality iron | tialaramex wrote: | No indeed. Lots of this in our history. You can't do most | of electronics without semiconductors. But, if you have | no idea what's going on you can make some rudimentary | electronics experiments work - unreliably - without | knowing that - e.g. the "Cat's whisker" crystal radio | technology. The reason this actually works is because | it's a semiconductor, but since you don't know what those | are yet, you just know if you fiddle about with a fine | wire and certain types of crystal, sometimes it does what | you wanted, and if it doesn't keep fiddling with it until | it does. | | I'd imagine early history of sugar products is the same. | Today you can precisely control the temperatures and so | you can engineer getting exactly the desired products | from sugar, but if you're not so good at either measuring | or keeping careful control of temperature, you get... | something. It's sugar so in most cases it's delicious | anyway, but if you wanted fudge but you've made toffee | you may be disappointed. With practice you can "eyeball" | it without better equipment, like the cat's whisker, but | with better equipment an idiot with no experience can | make it do what they wanted because the numbers were | correct. | [deleted] | maxerickson wrote: | If it was well understood what made it difficult, odds are it | would be improving fast. | drbaba wrote: | Note that "bulk" in this context means a single large chunk, | not a large quanitity. | weard_beard wrote: | The first time it demonstrated superconductivity they dropped | the quartz tube it was in, cracking and accidentally | oxidizing it at a specific point in the heating process and | providing vibration that caused the formation of a crystal | structure in the material. | | That's... not easily replicable. | xxpor wrote: | I hope this doesn't end up like a physics equivalent to | Fermat's Last Theorem | bluGill wrote: | That would be better than the physics equivalent of cold | fusion (which seemed promising at first, but turns out to | not exist - at least so far). Only time will tell, though | if it really is, but so difficult to replicate that we | need a few hundred years it may as well never exist for | purposes of our lifetime. | TillE wrote: | Assuming that replications fail but they really do have | samples of a superconductor that can be thoroughly | examined, this is still fantastic. | | Once we know the exact structure, the problem of | synthesis is very solvable. | jansan wrote: | > It's also difficult to synthesize in bulk | | Is there any hard limitation that prevents synthesizing in | bulk? If not, I would not worry about this at the moment and if | it proves to be a material with desirable properties just leave | it up to the engineers who will hopefully find a suitable | production process. | aqme28 wrote: | There's not really such a thing as superconductivity for a | fine powder, so people are having trouble determining if this | material even superconducts. | | edit to clarify: Bulk here refers to having a single chunk of | the material, and does not refer to the total quantity. Some | physical properties only exist or only surface in chunks of | material, not in the powder form. | XorNot wrote: | Conversely, the tape-type high temperature superconductors | are generally made with a colloidal deposition process - | which is based on a powder as a starter material. | | Assuming this is real, that would be the obvious process by | which to try and build useful conductors and magnets - it | also suggests a refinement process (passing it over a | magnet would quantum lock superconducting grains and let | the rest slide off). | dsign wrote: | My two-cents from my armchair spaceship: I thought we had solved | quantum mechanics! If this material is real, why can't somebody | run a computer code and calculate its theoretical | conductivity/resistance? Did I suffer all that childhood trauma | with wave functions to now, in my forties, have to learn it was | all smoke and mirrors? | marcosdumay wrote: | Oh, Quantum mechanics is completely characterized. We have | complete theoretical modeling of chemistry and most electric | phenomenon. | | But you just try solving the equations our models create. | | A computer can certainly simulate this material, on the CS | theoretical sense, where all computers are the same and time | and memory are both infinite. | oneshtein wrote: | Currently, Cold Fusion used in small scale isotope breeders for | medical purposes. One 2kWt breeder with CF can replace 100kWt | traditional breeding plant. | ggm wrote: | Cite please. I think you've mistaken neutron feed sourced | medical imaging radionuclide from low energy research reactions | for cold fusion e.g. https://www.itnonline.com/content/fda- | approves-additional-mo... | | _NorthStar produces non-uranium based Mo-99 in collaboration | with its manufacturing partner, the University of Missouri | Research Reactor (MURR), in Columbia, Mo., using neutron | capture technology._ | oneshtein wrote: | See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtfUeip4vyA&t=335s | [deleted] | ggm wrote: | That's not "cold fusion" that's low energy fusion. It | explicitly has surplus neutrons and radioactivity. | | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertial_electrostatic_conf | i... | | It's energy consuming. It's just lower energy than other | methods, and it's emphatically not cold fusion. | oneshtein wrote: | Low Energy Nuclear Reactions (LENR), AKA Cold Fusion. | tomrod wrote: | When someone mentions cold fusion, they are explicitly | referencing a net energy-producing process that operates | at room temperature. That isn't what you are referencing. | oneshtein wrote: | > Cold fusion is a hypothesized type of nuclear reaction | that would occur at, or near, room temperature. Wikipedia | | It works at near room temperature. | | The goal of the reactor in the video is to produce | isotopes. It does the job. | jacquesm wrote: | It can not ever produce net energy in this setting, so | no, it doesn't do the job. | | It is in a room, but the temperature inside that vessel | is anywhere north of 35,000 C. Unless you have a very hot | room that isn't 'room temperature' by any stretch of the | definition. Note that room temperature is about the | temperature of the _process_ not the temperature of the | building containing that process. | oneshtein wrote: | 35kK in this reactor is much closer to room temperature | than 150MK in ITER, isn't? | MayeulC wrote: | Look, call 35K cold if you want. It's relatively easy to | make some fusion at home [1] at even colder temperatures. | However, the real issue here is __producing__ energy | (edit: more than you put in). This has never been done in | a sustained way (H-bombs produce net energy, there were | some promising inertial confinement and tokamak results | recently, but never for sustained periods of time). | | And in the chain, it's pointed out quite clearly that | everybody understands "cold fusion" as referring to "net | positive energy". | | [1]: https://fusor.net/board/index.php | oneshtein wrote: | I am old enough to remember "The Storm in a Glass". Back | then, there was a discussion about excessive heat, | because the scientific community doubted the possibility | of nuclear fusion reactions at such low temperatures and | energy costs. My own hypotheses were: a) the reaction is | caused by cosmic radiation (muons), and the deuterium | filled lattice only amplifies natural high-energy cosmic | radiation; b) the reaction occurs through contamination | of samples with radioactive materials, and the matrix | only amplifies natural decay reactions; c) cracks in the | material create resonance with alternating electric | current, and as a result, a natural particle accelerator | is formed. | | In the video, researches use lattice to boosts fusor | performance by few orders of magnitude. Why you think | that they cannot boost it further? | jacquesm wrote: | > Why you think that they cannot boost it further? | | That's not how this works. Why do you think it _can_? | sudosysgen wrote: | Sure, but that's fine and expected since you don't need a | sufficient fusion density for net energy. | jacquesm wrote: | I'm not saying it is 35K, I'm saying it is _at least_ 35K | and probably much higher. | | Whether it is closer to room temperature or not is not | relevant, when someone says 'room temperature' they are | talking about 21 degrees Celsius plus or minus a couple, | not above the temperature where any kind of solid matter | exists. Even tungsten, which melts at 3422 degrees C and | boils at the magic number of 5555 C is just vapor at that | point. Closer isn't relevant, at all. | oneshtein wrote: | As you can see, the apparatus didn't evaporate while | working, so, probably, temperature is much lower. | HideousKojima wrote: | Ordinary fusion reactors don't melt either, despite even | hotter temperatures, so I don't think you're making the | point that you think you are. | [deleted] | jacquesm wrote: | It didn't evaporate because it is constructed carefully | not to, but that doesn't mean it isn't blazing hot, just | like the gas burner on your stove can be made out of | aluminum which would be melted by the flame if it ever | became mis-aligned. | | But that doesn't mean the flame has a temperature lower | than the melting point of aluminum, it just means that | whoever designed it knew enough to ensure that the | aluminum is never exposed to more than that it can handle | _in spite_ of being in close proximity to something that | is able to melt it instantly. The biggest factors there | are flame shape, stand-off and cooling effect of the gas | supply itself. | | Note that when you casually write 'plasma' that you are | talking about material that is so hot that it has shed | all of its electrons, it is _just_ the nuclei that you | 're looking at and if it so much as touches anything at | all it will waltz right through it as if it isn't there. | See also: plasma cutters[1] for a nice demonstration of | what happens when you use these facts to your advantage. | But for things like plasma based fusion they are a very | tricky problem because you have to maintain the plasma | while simultaneously extracting energy from it. | | The device shown in the video is very, very nice and well | engineered, it is amazing that they got it work as well | as they did with such simplicity but the process is | eminently unsuitable for energy generation as far as I | understand this stuff, keeping the plasma stable and | cooling the whole thing uses many kilowatts. It's an | improvement over a linear accelerator or a tokamak for | the production of short lived nucleotides it is not an | energy generating device. | | [1] Plasma cutters _also_ don 't instantly disintegrate | the cutting tip, that's because they blow copious air | through the nozzle to keep the hot plasma away from the | tip itself and to direct it onto the workpiece that you | are cutting. But woe to you if your air pressure | unexpectedly drops. | oneshtein wrote: | Although the plasma cutter creates extremely hot flames, | it operates at room temperature and does not require | powerful radiation protection, except for protective | goggles, and it is easy to turn on and off. This sets it | apart from the blast furnace. Similarly, a cold reactor | may require a source of high-energy particles with very | high temperatures to start, but they operate at room | temperature, are easily turned on and off, and cannot be | used to create a bomb. Note that heat is the _problem_ | for an isotope breeder because the reactor will require | more powerful cooling. It 's not designed to generate | heat or electricity. This doesn't mean that it's not | possible to create a cold reactor that generates a lot of | heat, but it also doesn't mean that such a reactor will | be economically viable. We don't know. | | I mean that it is time to stop stigmatizing Cold Nuclear | Fusion because a reactor for isotope breeding could have | been created 30 years ago, saving many thousands of | lives. The hating of Cold Fusion has cost many people | their lives. It would be better to allocate a small | fraction of a budget for other nuclear power plants and | direct them towards CF, because the cost of CF iteration | is orders of magnitude lower, and a few million dollars | or euros could significantly advance science. | jacquesm wrote: | Can you explain why you continue to say things that make | no sense after it has been pointed out to you multiple | times by multiple people? It's a bit strange, normally | you'd realize your mistake and adapt, but you seem to | persist in purposefully misunderstanding what it means | when people talk about 'room temperature fusion'. | | Let me spell it out once more and then as far as I'm | concerned we're done here. Room temperature as a | qualifier for a process means that the _entire process_ | operates at room temperature. Boiling an egg does not | take place at room temperature, even if it takes place in | a room. Superconduction - for now - does not take place | at room temperature but far below it (this may change | shortly, the jury is still out on that). Plasma, aka the | fourth state of matter can in very extreme cases be | created at low temperatures but we 're talking about a | couple of nuclei worth at best ( | https://www.livescience.com/64422-plasma-cooled-with- | lasers.... ) but normally only does so at thousands of | degrees. | | This means that the term 'room temperature' simply does | not apply. | | > This doesn't mean that it's not possible to create a | cold reactor that generates a lot of heat | | You _really_ should read that sentence again. Cancel out | the double negative and see if it makes sense to you. | | > The hating of Cold Fusion has cost many people their | lives. | | This is complete nonsense. | | > It would be better to allocate a small fraction of a | budget for other nuclear power plants and direct them | towards CF, because the cost of CF iteration is orders of | magnitude lower, and a few million dollars or euros could | significantly advance science. | | Science budgets are limited and tend to be directed to | areas that are suspected to be fruitful. This makes it | hard to get funding for what is - charitably - called | crank science (or, more precisely, pathological science), | which includes cold fusion. If you are a strong believer | in the concept you should fund it yourself rather than to | put the burden of your beliefs on others. | oneshtein wrote: | Temperature is statistics. Our bodies are penetrated by | high-energy cosmic rays, but they do not change the room | temperature. Cosmic muons can accelerate tens of | thousands of nuclear fusion reactions in a deuterium- | filled lattice, melting the metal, but it does not change | the room temperature a lot. So, at what temperature do | these reactions occur? On one hand, high energies are | required to overcome the Coulomb barrier, and on the | other hand, the reaction does not require heating of | materials to 1MK or higher. | | I have used the term Low Energy Nuclear Reactions (low | relative to High Energy Nuclear Reactions in | thermonuclear fusion). LENR allows for the creation of a | cold fusion reactor, that can be started at room | temperature and operated at low temperature, unlike | thermonuclear fusion reactor. Please, see the difference | between <<nuclear reactions>> and a <<nuclear reactor>>. | | > You really should read that sentence again. Cancel out | the double negative and see if it makes sense to you. | | Not a native speaker. It makes perfect sense in my native | language. :-/ | | > This is complete nonsense. | | I mean that delay or absence of medical treatment caused | lot of premature deaths in these 30 years. Progress saves | lives. Delaying of progress reverses the process. | | > Science budgets are limited and tend to be directed to | areas that are suspected to be fruitful. This makes it | hard to get funding for what is - charitably - called | crank science, which includes cold fusion. | | As you see, private capital is not afraid about loss of | scientific reputation. IMHO, it will easier to get | funding for LENR reactors when they break the ice. I was | unable to find a funding for similar idea before the war. | | > If you are a strong believer in the concept you should | fund it yourself rather than to put the burden of your | beliefs on others. | | I will try that after the war. However, I may pursuit a | different goal - a bluster (photon streams with watts of | energy per single photon), to kick Russian drones out | from the sky. | jacquesm wrote: | > Temperature is statistics. | | Temperature is a measure of the kinetic energy of the | molecules in a substance, a measure of velocity. | | > Our bodies are penetrated by high-energy cosmic rays, | but they do not change the room temperature. | | They in fact do. Every time a high-energy cosmic ray | interacts with a particle in the room the room | temperature goes up. The chances of that happening are | small because from the perspective of such a ray space is | very much empty. But some substances (such as water) are | pretty good at absorbing those rays and that's part of | the reason why hard radiation is risky for organisms. | | > So, at what temperature do these reactions occur? | | Those reactions, when they occur are more like traffic | accidents. The impact results in the transfer of kinetic | energy and will result in a 'shower' of particles | emitting from the point of impact and some of those | particles in turn will fragment (but slightly later). | They will typically spray out from the impact point. | Cloudchamber photographs can show you in nice detail what | such interactions look like. So the question at which | temperature those reactions occur doesn't really have | meaning, each particle has it's own velocity and the end | result is some photons emitted by the electrons of the | excited particles and probably some new particles (think | of them as fragments spraying out from a traffic | accident). | | > Cosmic muons can accelerate tens of thousands of | nuclear fusion reactions in a deuterium-filled lattice, | melting the metal, but it does not change the room | temperature a lot. | | I can't parse any of this. But you're going to have to | trust me on the physics of electostatic confinement | fusors: the losses are such that there is no known path | to producing net energy through that method. You _can_ | fuse nuclei, and your link above is interesting but it | doesn 't change the fundaments at all, it is an | optimization and a good one but it doesn't get you closer | to 'net out' any more than being able to run the 100 | meters in 5 seconds would get you closer to breaking the | lightspeed barrier, or like how piling up bricks gets you | closer to the moon with every brick but you will never | get there. | | > So, at what temperature do these reactions occur? | | This is again not a very meaningful question, the answer | is 'much higher than room temperature'. The interesting | question would be: does it produce more energy than you | put in and if not can it be improved so that it does and | I'm afraid the answer is simply 'no'. | | > LENR allows for the creation of a cold fusion reactor, | that can be started at room temperature and operated at | low temperature, unlike thermonuclear fusion reactor. | | That's a novel interpretation of the words 'cold fusion', | and uses 'low temperature' in a way that I'm not | comfortable with, even if it stops short of getting into | the millions of degrees. | | > I mean that delay or absence of medical treatment | caused lot of premature deaths in these 30 years. | Progress saves lives. Delaying of progress reverses the | process. | | Nobody is delaying progress. Well, maybe except for those | that would siphon off budget from legit science to pursue | their pet fringe science subjects. | | > As you see, private capital is not afraid about loss of | scientific reputation. | | And that's perfectly fine. Whoever manages to do this in | their garage will win a Nobel anyway. But if you don't | have an advanced physics degree the chances of you | discovering a novel principle for fusion that leads to | net energy out on your table top are nil, and if you _do_ | have that degree you are probably not much better off. If | there was so much as a theoretical path to net energy out | fusion that does not require many billions of $ you can | bet that there would be people all over it, in fact I | would wager that we would have already found it. | | > IMHO, it will easier to get funding for LENR reactors | when they break the ice. | | Possible, but not likely, see above bit about breaking | the speed of light. | | > I was unable to find a funding for similar idea before | the war. | | That's not surprising, really. Investors tend to evaluate | the risks. | | > However, I may pursuit a different goal - a bluster | (photon streams with watts of energy per single photon), | to kick Russian drones out from the sky. | | I wish you all the best with that. But do be aware that a | single photon carries no more than 10^-19 Joules and that | Watts are a measure of power, not of energy...). This | makes me suspect that you know a lot less about this | stuff than the confidence with which you present yourself | warrants. | jjk166 wrote: | It doesn't work anywhere near room temperature. Fusors | operate at 10-30 keV, which is about 100 Million to 300 | Million C. The plasma is extremely low density so there | is very little power to heat things, and thus these units | can safely run on a table top, but the temperature of the | ions is enormous. | oneshtein wrote: | You are right, nuclear reactions requires enough enormous | energy to overcome the barrier OR a heavy particles | (muon). However, fusor works at room temperature. It | doesn't require preheating to 150MK to start operation, | like ITER do. | jjk166 wrote: | No, the Fusor does not work at room temperature, the same | electric coils that contain the ions also heat the ions. | It actually runs substantially hotter than ITER. | tomrod wrote: | Aye, it produces neutron isotopes, but not at room | temperature and not with a net excess of energy. | | It's the difference between going on a Sunday walk and a | Monday commute. Yes, technically, your body is physically | moving places, but the similarities don't extend much | beyond that point nor would we encourage mistaking one | for the other. | oneshtein wrote: | 35 thousand Kelvin in a "cold" nuclear fusion reactor is | much closer to room temperature than the temperature in a | "hot" nuclear fusion reactor. Both types of reactors do | not produce excess energy, but the cold reactor has | already found application while the hot reactor will be | ready in 25 years. Which kind of reactor is hoax? | jacquesm wrote: | The cold reactor fuses nuclei by virtue of _energy input_ | , the other tries to extract energy from a fusion | reaction larger than its input. On a complexity level | you're looking at 1:10000 difference or worse. | oneshtein wrote: | Cold Fusion doesn't work because we are exchanging high- | energy particles, which are expensive to produce, for low | grade heat in bulk of material. | | If we will have cheap source of muons, we can change | equation. We can drop a tiny bit of Nickel lattice filled | with Deuterium, and then strike it with muons from all | angles, to create implosion. This will allow us to create | tiny blast of hot plasma, which is much easier to extract | energy from. | | Sadly, we have no such cheap source of muons, AFAIK. | jacquesm wrote: | > If we will have cheap source of muons, we can change | equation. | | You can make them but the cost in energy is exactly the | problem: you will be spending money on energy to make | muons at a considerable loss due to the inefficient ways | in which we know how to make them (proton beams, which | require a huge amount of energy to create), resulting in | an insignificant number of particles. If your goal is to | get net energy out it would be good to keep an eye on | process efficiency from the beginning. Starting off with | a billion to one or so conversion loss for step one | raises the bar for the subsequent steps considerably. | | > Sadly, we have no such cheap source of muons, AFAIK. | | Indeed we do not, and that's pretty logical. | tomrod wrote: | This one, specifically. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_fusion#Response_and_fa | llo... | dang wrote: | We detached this subthread from | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36940489. | optimalsolver wrote: | Stone Age | | Bronze Age | | Iron Age | | LK-99 Age | | (source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36869209) | bhaak wrote: | No silicon age and plastics age? | antupis wrote: | Stone Age | | Bronze Age | | Iron Age | | I would add Steel Age here | | LK-99 Age | askvictor wrote: | Given that human flight and putting things in space rely on | Aluminium, I think that's worth a mention too. | tetrep wrote: | And the beverage can! While it seems mundane it's extremely | effective at what it does and it's actually recyclable | (unlike most things). | | I think a silicon age would be appropriate too. | antupis wrote: | I was thinking steel reinforced concrete but yeah Aluminium | or Silicon would fit here also. | jacquesm wrote: | Silicon? | Phelinofist wrote: | Don't forget the plastics age... | acjacobson wrote: | And Silicon after Steel | Maken wrote: | Do not forget the Carbon Fiber age. | A_D_E_P_T wrote: | Okay, I think I've got it. | | Stone Age | | Bronze Age | | Iron Age | | Steel Age (1800 - 1940. The development of mass-produced | steel of high quality, and its widespread adoption and use in | construction and by industry.) | | Aluminum Age (1940 - 1965. Tremendous growth in the | aeronautical and space industries, enabled by the futuristic | light alloy.) | | Plastics Age (1965 - 1985. Ubiquitization of lightweight, | durable plastics in all forms of consumer goods and media. | The M-16 "plastic rifle" and the polycarbonate compact disc | are symbolic of this era.) | | Silicon Age (1985 - 2023. The age of computers in everything, | the internet, "smart" devices, gig economy, etc.) | | LK-99 Age (2023 - ??. Could end next week, could last a | while. Nobody knows.) | m3kw9 wrote: | This some big leap type world changing stuff if it's true. I | wonder how gas prices would fall if this is true | syndicatedjelly wrote: | I hope people work on something more interesting than making | gas prices go down slightly | andersa wrote: | Gas powered vehicles would be obsolete. | empiko wrote: | It is interesting to see how much of the replication is done by | the Chinese and how little is done by the Western countries. Is | this the difference between the making-stuff-happen attitude and | the sclerotic attitude? | nonethewiser wrote: | In one of the notes it says | | > Red phosphorus cannot be obtained on short notice from a new | customer in the USA due to DEA restrictions | TillE wrote: | "From a new customer" is the key phrase. This is only a | serious issue for amateurs, not for real established labs. | nonethewiser wrote: | It's definitely a serious issue for amateurs or new | entrants in general but I think it's conceivable that a | capable and legitimate institution might want to or | otherwise be able to run the experiment, but they just | didnt happen to have red phosphorus. | mlyle wrote: | Yes, but they won't be a new customer to chemical | suppliers. If they've ever bought anything DEA List I | before (like iodine) they can just pay a few hundred | bucks and get a few hundred grams in a couple of days. | empiko wrote: | Isn't that also a part of the same sclerosis? | staticautomatic wrote: | So we just need some fireworks companies to get after | reproducing it, then? | dekhn wrote: | The US was a hotbed of scientific quackery at the same time it | was developing its leading position in the physical sciences | (~hundred plus years ago). So, let's just wait 100 years and | see how many of these "replications" are really just fooling | themselves (and others). | hobofan wrote: | I doubt the table is representative of actual replication | efforts going on, as according to some tweets, suppliers | everywhere are out of precursors due to a large amount of | orders. I would guess that there are many labs that started | trying to replicate as a side-project with an attitude of "if | it replicates we'll go public, if not, we don't, as we don't | want to spend a lot of efforts on retries". | | Based on that trying to connect that to wider cultural | innovation trends seems quite far-fetched. | h2odragon wrote: | In the West, people are feverishly writing papers about how | this invention will worsen Climate change, cause cancer, and | about the social justice implications of the inventor's | ancestry. | | We don't do "mix things up and cook them" type science anymore, | we just tell others how they're supposed to think of the | results of those efforts. | dang wrote: | " _Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents._ " | | https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html | aqme28 wrote: | Someone on Twitter spoke on this, so I cant' confirm its | accuracy. They said that the reagents for this are usually made | in China. As soon as this paper was published, labs in China | bought out the reserves and they became hard to source in the | West. | perlgeek wrote: | Weren't the raw materials lead, copper, sulfur and | phosphorous or something like that? Seems hard to to buy out | elements that are so common in industrial and chemical | processes. | aqme28 wrote: | Those are the raw atomic elements, which are not the | products you just put into your oven. | mlyle wrote: | There's nothing exotic in there that you can't just buy | from Spectrum Chemical (though they need to know you and | that you're not likely to be making methamphetamine). | [deleted] | [deleted] | namuol wrote: | So much speculation but I don't see anyone asking this: Who has | access to samples from the original lab? If synthesis hasn't been | cracked yet, wouldn't the next-best thing be independent | validation of the original samples? | asynchronous wrote: | I love being excited about science and research again. | | These are the kinds of things I truly enjoy seeing in HN. | alecst wrote: | I'm not an expert, but I've used superconductors (I believe YBCO) | when I taught physics lab. We cooled samples down with liquid | nitrogen and put them over a magnet. They levitate, but not like | in the video that the Korean team released. True superconductors | enjoy "flux pinning", meaning wherever you put them on a magnet, | they'll freeze in that position (or move around an axis of | constant flux.) In the LK-99 video that they released, they show | that the sample is repelled by a magnet. This seems to contradict | the HTS claim and wondered if I'm missing something because | surely so many experts can't be this wrong. | | My background is in physics, but not superconductors. | cnhajzwgz wrote: | Many experts are indeed questioning the apparent lack of flux | pinning and wonder if it's just strong diamagnetism. | m3kw9 wrote: | I think it would be easy to recognize diamagnetism vs | Superconducting and thus these superconducter experts | wouldn't embarrass themselves outing such papers | aqme28 wrote: | They claim that only a small part of that sample is | superconducting, and that's why it shows that unusual behavior. | dawnofdusk wrote: | Type-II super conductors may exhibit "flux pinning". Type-I | super conductors do not. | asdfman123 wrote: | > Type-II super conductors may exhibit "flux pinning" | | Type-II diamagnetism? | alecst wrote: | Cool thanks. Gonna read up a little on that. | | Edit: yea it's interesting. Believe it or not, I studied L-G | theory in grad school, taught a lab about (type-II) | superconductors, but had no idea that type-I superconductors | didn't flux pin. | | Just leaving this here from Wikipedia: | | > The superconductor must be a type-II superconductor because | type-I superconductors cannot be penetrated by magnetic | fields. Some type-I superconductors can experience the | effects of flux pinning if they are thin enough. If the | material's thickness is comparable to the London penetration | depth, the magnetic field can pass through the material. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flux_pinning | adastra22 wrote: | Also to follow up on your original point, this is a | purported example of a _linear_ superconductor. There are | parallel columnar lines of superconductivity inside the | mineral, like a bundle of wires. No such thing has ever | been demonstrated before, and it is unlikely to have macro | properties like those you are familiar with. | | For example, flux pinning is (IIRC) due to circular | currents induced in the superconductor. But how do you | induce a circular current into a straight-line conductive | wire with ~zero cross section? | someplaceguy wrote: | > If the material's thickness is comparable to the London | penetration depth, the magnetic field can pass through the | material. | | Indeed. A girl I was seeing told me the same once, but | obviously things didn't work out between us... | zarzavat wrote: | As far as I understand it (not an expert on these things), | flux pinning is caused by microscopic defects that allow the | magnetic field to penetrate at certain points. An idealized | superconductor that is perfectly uniform expels the magnetic | field at all points and so would not display the effect, it | would simply be diamagnetic. So it's mistaken and somewhat | perverse to view the absence of flux pinning as proof that | something is not a superconductor. | | In the case of LK99, the claim is that it does not show flux | pinning because the sample is impure and not uniformly | superconductive, i.e. it is not expelling the magnetic field | _enough_. | jamesmaniscalco wrote: | No defects needed for flux penetration in a type-II | superconductor. When the conference length is smaller than | the penetration depth (up to a factor of sqrt(2)), flux | vortices can nucleate as soon as the surface magnetic field | gets above the lower critical field Bc1. | jamesmaniscalco wrote: | Sorry, that should say "coherence length". | jacquesm wrote: | That also explains - assuming it is all true - the lack of | current through the sample. | ChemSpider wrote: | I am surprised that anyone still thinks this thing is legit. I | mean, I wish it was true, but the publication, the approach and | the infights in the team do not instill confidence. | | To me, it seems they can not recreate the "effect" themselves. | Otherwise they would be shipping their samples around the world | by now. | wg0 wrote: | Don't really get this extreme sensitivity to downvote. I mean - | it seems what it seems. May be it seems really promising and | trustworthy to some, good for them. | | That apart - it seems low hanging fruits in the nature are | almost over. Scientific progress might not be as rapid and | consistent as in past in coming decades especially when world | seems to be heading towards multiple (avoidable) conflicts. | Hakkin wrote: | I'm not necessarily saying I believe it's real, I'm still on | the fence, but if anything, the in-fighting for credit from the | researchers almost makes it _more_ credible for me. Why would | they be so desperate for credit if they knew their findings | would be disproven in a week or two? It seems obvious they 're | vying for a Nobel Prize. So at the very least, I believe the | researchers believe what they published is true. | Workaccount2 wrote: | Could well be experimental error, and they are fighting over | a false positive result. | ChemSpider wrote: | That is exactly my guess. I have been in the lab, and I | know how easy it is to see something because you | desperately want to see it... | Eduard wrote: | then reading about the many failed attempts of creating the | first transistor will give you hope. | | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_transistor | r0m4n0 wrote: | I'm just curious as a layman, why aren't the paper authors | helping in this race whatsoever? It seems a lot of folks are | guessing on the recipe. I haven't seen any communication from the | LK from LK99. Seems like radio silence | ncann wrote: | They are, if you follow the threads they are apparently quite | available through email and has responded to quite a number of | people. Though probably not everyone, given the amount of email | that they must be receiving right now. | psychphysic wrote: | If they have this unicorn superconducter. Then they have it | next week, and next year. | | And it's patented. There's no rush for them. | | If they are faking, then there's still no rush. | [deleted] | Eduard wrote: | maybe NDA, maybe trade secret. commercialization is a valid | reason not to be all too chatty | WaffleIronMaker wrote: | Note that the original table has been more recently updated: | https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/claims-of-room-tempe... | 7moritz7 wrote: | So what is the wordpress post for? | rcme wrote: | Basically theft. | | > This is (initially) a copy of Guderian2nd's table on the | discussion thread on Spacebattles with a bit of cleanup. I've | rewritten most of the notes to be more concise as I track the | updates myself, where I can. | ot wrote: | How is it theft? The original source is prominently cited, | the author of the blog post is an active participant to the | original discussion, the whole point of the post is to | collect and summarize various sources in one place. | rcme wrote: | Usually copying someone else's work without permission is | considered (intellectual property) theft. | | Also, this person just copied the initial work but isn't | as committed to keeping things up to date. Much better to | use the original source. | tomrod wrote: | Except in the case of citation. | rcme wrote: | No, citing who you copy doesn't remove copyright | protection. | swombat wrote: | Go look up "fair use" under copyright laws. | Symmetry wrote: | I did, there's nothing about including a citation to the | original making something fair use. Although if I cite | some work using its title like so Person | *et al*(2023). "The Unbearable Lightness of Tardigades", | *Little Creatures*, 27, 100-110 | | Then even though the title is really clever and creative | copying it into my citation list is still fair use. | | EDIT: I guess you could argue that the absence or | presence of a citation is a factor in the character of | the use or the use's effect on the market value of the | original with a straight face but it's very, very much | not going to be either necessary or sufficient for either | of those tests. | adrianmonk wrote: | IANAL, but copying this table in the way they did seems | OK under US copyright law. | | In the US, _some_ compilations cannot be copyrighted and | some can. | | Before a Supreme Court decision called Feist, copyright | could be based on either "sweat of the brow" or | creativity or both. Sweat of the brow is the work of | taking data from original sources and putting it | together. Creativity is something you add, like choosing | what to include. (If I make a mere list of all | restaurants at Disneyworld, that's sweat of the brow. If | I make a list of the restaurants that are worth visiting, | that's creative.) | | The Supreme Court decision was about one company copying | another company's white pages phone book. (White pages | are the simple name/number listings.) The court said | sweat of the brow isn't enough. There must be some amount | of creativity. It's a low bar, but it has to be there. So | they said the white pages cannot be copyrighted, and | copying the entire thing is allowed. | | About these LK-99 tables, the "Notes" and "Reliability of | Claim" columns of the original table look creative to me. | So I'd guess the table can be copyrighted. But the copy | of the table didn't include those columns. It just | included the factual data, and I think that's allowed. | | Sources: | | (1) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_in_compilation | | (2) https://www.copyright.gov/reports/db4.pdf (Sections | IA and IB give the basic idea.) | WaffleIronMaker wrote: | The author apparently did not intend widespread readership: | | > Whoever is out there, please stop clicking my link. I used | to get 10 views a day from Vtuber wannabes and it's now a | weekday. I don't even consider it a good enough summary! I | thought the 60 views yesterday on the post was good, and now | it's a hundred times that! What. Is. Happening. | | > Seriously, this is weird. I already got two pingbacks from | suspicious sites stealing my post. Joke's on them though, I'm | constantly editing it when I have time. | | https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/claims-of-room- | tempe... | dang wrote: | Ok, I guess we'd better switch to that from | https://eirifu.wordpress.com/2023/07/30/lk-99-superconductor... | (the submitted URL). Thanks! | [deleted] | wg0 wrote: | I'm pretty sure that by the end of this month we'll know that the | discovery was either instrument, method, process or humam error. | WizardClickBoy wrote: | This month ends in about 10 hours depending on timezone, so | they'd better get their skates on. | alangibson wrote: | From what I've gathered, the ingredients of LK99 are common but | cooking the right way is difficult. Supposedly the team itself | only gets it right 1 time in 10. | | There have also been a lot of complaints that the patents and | papers are missing info you'd want to have when reproducing. So | that's making it even harder to reproduce. The upshot tho is that | the discoverers seem to be available for tips by email. | | All in all were going to have to wait more than a few days for | reproduction it seems. | dist-epoch wrote: | [flagged] | CrimsonRain wrote: | People like you will crucify whoever finds cure for cancer and | pat yourselves in the back | koheripbal wrote: | Is this comment serious? | coffeebeqn wrote: | Inclusive of what? | PartiallyTyped wrote: | Could this be the new 4 minute mile? Will [humanity] evacuate on | ourselves? | | Whatever this may be, it's exciting. | aqme28 wrote: | I don't know what you're trying to say, but to "evacuate on | ourselves" means to shit ourselves. | PartiallyTyped wrote: | That is exactly what I intended to say. | | Everyone thought the 4 minute mile was impossible, until it | was done, and then everyone started doing it. Had Roger | Bannister had a cardiac arrest and evacuated on himself, | people would have stopped trying for it. | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFH0qcmw36Q | zelos wrote: | I've seen the 4 minute mile myth posted a lot around LK-99 | stories: | | https://www.scienceofrunning.com/2017/05/the-roger-bannister... | dang wrote: | We detached this subthread from | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36940487. | Vicinity9635 wrote: | here's a video I listened to | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLr95AFBRXI on it that delves | relatively deep for anyone catching up (22m) | asimpletune wrote: | So, Russian anime cat girl seems to have cooked a sample and | demonstrated some of the claimed properties, although she's | explicit that it shouldn't be considered a "replication". | | https://twitter.com/iris_IGB/status/1685731177523449856 | dmitrybrant wrote: | The "demonstration" is a photo of a single crumb of material | inside a transparent pipette. It's claimed that the crumb is | "levitating" inside the pipette, but what's stopping a random | internet anon from _gluing_ a crumb onto a pipette and taking a | picture of it? | | I don't know about you, but if I had just succeeded in | replicating a literally history-making experiment, I would | perhaps take a _video_ of it, and demonstrate how the crumb | actually behaves without the support of the pipette. | n2d4 wrote: | _> but what's stopping a random internet anon from gluing a | crumb onto a pipette and taking a picture of it?_ | | Nothing, just like nothing would stop a random internet anon | from faking a video of the same thing. Even if that existed, | it still wouldn't be sufficient evidence (especially given | this is a different synthesis than the one in the paper), it | would just be much more overblown. | | Wait for lab reconstructions, or at the very least, this | anon's writeup, instead of following a live twitter blog and | then complaining that it's not conclusive. | | _> I don't do videos of things I intend to be writing a text | from. Ever. It's bad tone. I hate when it happens to me, and | I don't want anyone to share this fate._ _> I will put a | GdPO4 bead and one of the good samples onto paper ships and | film_ _> But it will be only After I will be sure I Got It, | okay?_ | | https://twitter.com/iris_IGB/status/1685930149739409408 | KennyBlanken wrote: | "I don't do videos of things I intend to be writing a text | from. Ever. It's bad tone. I hate when it happens to me, | and I don't want anyone to share this fate" | | Ah, yes. The good old incoherent "here's why I can't do | something totally normal" excuse. | | Looking through their tweet history, they're an | insufferable and toxic troll. | plutonorm wrote: | This makes it more believable not less. History is | littered with nut jobs achieving. The wilder the story | the more credibility I give it. Within bounds. Universe | is optimised for entertainment and irony | bawolff wrote: | That's pretty untrue. Its just that nobody remembers the | crackpots that achieve nothing. | mr_mitm wrote: | History is littered even more by several orders of | magnitudes with nut jobs achieving precisely zilch. If | someone seems like a nut job, it's probably because | they're actually a nut job, not some misunderstood | genius. | dmitrybrant wrote: | Can you give an example? I'm struggling to think of | historical comparisons. I suppose I can think of a couple | of "unlikely" achievers: | | - Ramanujan: if he lived today, I could imagine him | tweeting some awesome infinite series, which could be | verified easily by other mathematicians. | | - ...maybe Tesla? But he had a solid track record of | invention before becoming a nut job. | | But who else? | ChrisClark wrote: | They seem to block anyone that doesn't agree that the | USSR, despite not existing anymore, is still pushing | progress worldwide. | practice9 wrote: | The revisionist types are the worst and they are | emboldened by the war. | | I'm amused people actually believed and retweeted | whatever that troll posted. | dmitrybrant wrote: | Don't get me wrong, I want to believe (tm) as much as | anyone, but this particular part of the story has a lot | working against it: | | * This person is anonymous (account created in Apr 2023), | so we don't know anything about their affiliation or | credentials. | | * They do seem to have good knowledge of materials science | (although I have no way to judge), but the rest of their | twitter history, which is all we have to go on, doesn't | inspire confidence. | | * This person decided to replicate this experiment on a | whim, as a distraction (because they couldn't stream a | movie that night, according their tweets), while serious | labs around the world have been trying frantically for | several days, without any results. | | * This person refuses to submit a video ("bad tone") or any | additional footage of their achievement, despite it being | the most unique and world-changing compound on the planet. | whatshisface wrote: | If 1000 people with geeky interests all try to make this | stuff I would be surprised if one did not get lucky with | the variations in their uncontrolled home lab environment | and hit the perfect sequence for making a grain of it... | unless the material does not exist; but honestly if you | want to hear the opinion of some person on the internet, | I think that it is real. | dmitrybrant wrote: | That may be true, but I'm not seeing 999 other people | with geeky interests reporting their _failed_ attempts. | We are, however, starting to see actual labs reporting | negative results. | floxy wrote: | People getting excited over an oreo cookie crumb in a | pipette? Wait till someone puts the oreo cookie wafer on an | air hockey table for a fun levitation video. | supriyo-biswas wrote: | Is there any reason to believe their results? While their | reproduction could definitely be legitimate, there are no | credentials or affiliations mentioned on their bio, except for | "molecular biologist" which typically means a skill set more | oriented towards organic chemistry (as opposed to inorganic | chemistry, which this is about), and neither have they posted | any hints as to what their methods are. | stainablesteel wrote: | its always the people with an anime pfp that do the most godly | shit | cubefox wrote: | Probably often people with autism. | Workaccount2 wrote: | I think it's what happens when you just stack all of your | character points in intelligence. | | Smartest person I ever met is now some kind of non-binary fox | person. An ivy league masters in math, does risk modeling for | some mega insurance company, and lives in a kawaii fever | dream while doing it. | drexlspivey wrote: | there are some weapons grade anons with 30 followers | spaceman_2020 wrote: | If you could magically erase all anime from the world, the | global tech industry would come to a grinding halt :) | fanick wrote: | nitter link | https://nitter.net/iris_IGB/status/1685268812663271424#m | zamalek wrote: | > If it's a diamagnetism it's a fucking strong one | | That's a pretty good point. | ThisIsMyAltFace wrote: | By their own admission, they've messed with the prep and | synthesis stages mentioned in the paper: | | https://nitter.net/iris_IGB/status/1685774956330635264#m | | Also, forgive me for taking this person's word with a massive | grain of salt when they post stuff like this: | | https://nitter.net/iris_IGB/status/1686017042665582593#m | mempko wrote: | Sure, but what is this? | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32047663 | WinstonSmith84 wrote: | huh lol ... Well she obviously has the time to tweet a lot of | sh*t while being much faster than any other team on earth. | She alone from the USSR must still be the primary | (progressive) power worldwide ... who knows ... | Simon_O_Rourke wrote: | This is a race that I earnestly hope either someone wins quickly, | or everyone loses... again rather quickly. For incredible claims | you typically require incredible evidence, at the moment we're | slightly better than hearsay but we've a long way to go get | conclusive proof. | m463 wrote: | > everyone loses... again rather quickly | | that's the thing - if it is hard to manufacture and works maybe | 1:10 tries, how can it lose quickly experimentally? | | In other words, what is a satisfactory proof that it doesn't | work, apart from analyzing the original apparatus? | nmwnmw wrote: | Isn't it sufficient to have another lab confirm that the existing | sample is a super conductor? Then we can all sprint to | replication. | bhouston wrote: | Yeah, having another lab confirm the behavior and makeup of | that sample would go a long way. I wonder why that isn't | happening? | | Does anyone have an explanation on why no one is | examining/validating the sample they already have? | bananapub wrote: | what are you talking about? | | the authors haven't given anyone a sample to inspect, so | every other solid state physics lab in the world is instead | trying to follow the notional recipe and test their own | sample. | bhouston wrote: | > the authors haven't given anyone a sample to inspect | | Why not? It would help their case immensely, especially if | replication is tricky. | bluGill wrote: | There are claims that they are going to share, but since | it is fragile and they only have a few samples the | logistics are tricky. They might not be telling the truth | about sharing samples, but I'd wait a couple months | before accusing them of lies. In fact if they share too | quick I'd suspect it is so they can ship a box of dust | and claim shipping damaged the only sample! | moralestapia wrote: | >I wonder why that isn't happening? | | Because it's been ~10 days since it was announced in a | preprint article. | | The complexity and resources involved are much higher than | "building websites with React", so, things happen on a | different timescale. | peyton wrote: | I mean they already characterized it six ways to Sunday and | posted a video of it levitating. | bhouston wrote: | Independent validation. Physical peer review. | | That basically helps rule out scammers or gross | incompetence and ensures that even if initial attempts to | replicate fail because of the complexity or lack of | clarity, people keep trying. | bluGill wrote: | Any physicist can make up something that sounds reasonable | to other physicists. With a little trick photography (or | CGI!) you can make a video something levitating that looks | like room temperature super conductors. | | Don't read the above as an accusation. Only a justification | to wait until it is replicated. | chaorace wrote: | At the end of the day, materials science is still science. The | institutional framework is optimized for a very specific | process, so it's generally faster to let the process play out | as usual rather than go and cut corners. Rest assured; there | are a _lot_ of scientists out there! We can afford to let a few | of them chase clouds once in a while. | | In any case... the creation process described in the original | paper is relatively cheap and low-tech enough that labs will | likely generate their own samples in less time than any | procurement process would take. | brucethemoose2 wrote: | > the creation process described in the original paper is | relatively cheap and low-tech enough that labs will likely | generate their own samples in less time than any procurement | process would take. | | But what if the probability of synthesis failure is very | high? This seems to be the case given then "1000 experiments" | history of the original scientists. If they have a golden | sample that is at least extremely paramagnetic, that would be | huge. | | And again... This is no ordinary claim. Everything in the | procurement chain would be expedited. No sane lab would turn | it down. | epivosism wrote: | Yes, the fact that everyone is trying to replicate the process | rather than validate the existing material is very weird. | Replication is hard, validation is much easier. If they've had | this material for years, just send some off to a few labs... | | People claiming unusual abilities/etc usually focus on a very | difficult ceremony/situation/feeling/process rather than the | outcome. Ghosts, spiritual experiences, etc. really avoid the | areas where they would be easily disproven - they prefer murky, | unspecified criteria. This paper is full of unspecified | details, and also doesn't provide samples. Of course, there is | a story for why - the drama between the scientists, etc. There | always is a reason. But at the end of the day, they're claiming | something amazing, which if they would just _send a piece of | the material to MIT_ this whole drama would be over. The longer | the uncertainty lasts, the more suspicious it is that they | haven't taken this path. | | It's the same with the recent US Government reports on alleged | aliens. There is a lot of focus on rare, hard-to capture or | reproduce events, and little focus on just showing us the | actual alien ship wreckage, even though that'd be much easier, | if it were true. | | I have made a play money market asking the same thing: "A | physics lab will have received a package of the LK-99 material | sent from the researchers by the end of August" [ | https://manifold.markets/StrayClimb/a-physics-lab-will-have-... | ] | | Not many traders yet, 57% yes, too optimistic in my view. | 7373737373 wrote: | Agreed, why haven't hundreds of journalists with cameras | lined up on the lab yet? Document everything, _film and | publicize_ the floating sample, film the entire production | process, have a press conference etc. | n2d4 wrote: | Why do you silently assume that samples aren't being shared | around as we speak? CMTC of the University of Maryland stated | that the authors are cooperating in regards to this | https://twitter.com/condensed_the/status/1684960318718406656 | | There's value in both validating existing samples and | producing new ones. | jerf wrote: | I would find it very easy to believe that they produced | something that is superconducting _but_ following their | directions didn 't work. An unknown factor could very | easily be involved. But proof that their sample is even | "interesting" (it doesn't need to be "superconducting" in | the strictest sense of the term to still be "interesting") | would be enough to say "Hey, let's keep looking over here, | we know there's _something_ to find! " | | Sometimes just knowing there's something to find at all is | 90% of the battle. Many historical examples, in both | science and non-science fields. | epivosism wrote: | Oh that would be great! Sorry if my assumption is mistaken. | I'd love this to be real! I'm not just thinking about this | last week, though - if the LK group had these samples for | multiple years, it seems like they would have been able to | share & convince at least one PhD to support them publicly. | The fact that they haven't just seems weird! Sure, they | were preparing the papers, etc. etc but you do have to | balance that against the life they would have if they just | published asap - wealthy, famous, respected, free, as well | as the benefits to the entire world of letting this be | known. | | Talk about a confusingly written tweet, though! | [deleted] | floxy wrote: | >it seems like they would have been able to share & | convince at least one PhD to support them publicly. The | fact that they haven't just seems weird! | | Isn't that Hyun-Tak Kim of William & Mary? | | https://www.wm.edu/as/physics/people/researchfaculty/kim_ | h.p... | [deleted] | Lewton wrote: | Allegedly, samples have already been sent out | bitcurious wrote: | Validation is good for the original team, replication is good | for the new team. | epivosism wrote: | Interesting point, yes. Also, if LK-99 is real, there are | may be some close or easy adjustments or improvements to it | to produce other, new interesting materials, which a | replicating lab would be set up to start exploring ASAP. So | I can see their preference for that path. | jjk166 wrote: | Validation proves that the material exists, it doesn't prove | that the specified process creates the material. A few | samples are worthless if no one actually knows how to make | more. | Lewton wrote: | > A few samples are worthless if no one actually knows how | to make more. | | If the samples are actual RTSC, knowing that such a thing | can actually exist is pretty far from worthless | jjk166 wrote: | Researchers were already working under the assumption | such a thing can actually exist. | postalrat wrote: | What if I told you stimulating a universe like ours is | also possible. | dspillett wrote: | That would support the existence of a material with the stated | properties, which would be important on its own, but not that | we can manufacture one. Why not prove both at once? Depending | on the size of the sample produced, distributing it around | several labs for independent testing may be impractical so you | would still get this race as the sample was sent to one lab and | the rest rush to try be first to reproduce the processes _and_ | test the result. Also transporting what could be a very | valuable substance (maybe a fragile one, I 've not looked into | it) as far as another lab with the relevant equipment, may be | difficult/costly to arrange. | | Given the finding seems to have been rushed out, perhaps they | did plan to send a sample (perhaps producing another | themselves) to another lab for confirmation, but those plans | have been overtaken by the interest as details slipped out | earlier than they intended. | andersa wrote: | I'm really confused why everyone is claiming the replication | would be easy. The paper specifies very large ranges for both | times and temperatures that would take years to try all | combinations, and ignores basically all of the details. | | The effect could be caused by some incredibly lucky | contamination/impurities and then nobody would ever be able to | reproduce it at all. Why not reverse engineer this one | apparently working sample instead? | buildsjets wrote: | How do you know for sure that the existing sample was actually | produced by the LK-99 process? | | Even if it was produced by the LK-99 process, how do you know | if all of the required steps and conditions to achieve | replication are adequately documented in the process? Reference | the FOGBANK debacle. | caturopath wrote: | > How do you know for sure that the existing sample was | actually produced by the LK-99 process? | | If you hand me a room temperature superconductor but your | published recipe doesn't work for me, I'm about 95% as | excited as I'd be if I had the right recipe. | bananapub wrote: | no one gives a shit at all about any of that if anyone shows | up this week with a room temperature/pressure superconductor. | | whoever eventually does it gets a nobel prize and the front | cover of whatever journal they pick, and then a chapter in | the history of the 21st century. | Larrikin wrote: | What does it matter if the sample is a room temperature super | conductor? | nemo44x wrote: | Sure but if you had in your hands a superconductive material | at room temperature and ambient pressure you'd be pretty | amazed. That's a lot of credibility right there. | idopmstuff wrote: | Why would that matter? It's not like they could just be | taking an over-the-counter room temperature superconductor | and passing it off as something they made. If the thing | exists and someone can make it, the specific process doesn't | matter (but also why would they make it, publish a fake | process and then go through all this rigamarole?). | gorlilla wrote: | Grifting doesn't always make sense to those not in on the | grift. | adastra22 wrote: | Huh? | dcow wrote: | Desperation? Momentary fame? To get funding to continue | research? Any number of reasons humans do silly half-honest | things... | | There are some plausible allegations that the authors were | a struggling pair of researchers and essentially stole this | research and published a sloppy half baked paper they knew | would make waves. | lolinder wrote: | I think you're missing the point: there is no such thing | yet as a room temperature superconductor. If they have | such a thing, they made it. If they failed to document | the process well, that's a separate issue from whether | the sample they have actually is a superconductor at the | temperatures described. | dcow wrote: | The data isn't good. They don't have such a thing. They | think they have such a thing. What they think they have | is certainly interesting and potentially world changing, | but if this (or some other reason like infighting over | credit) lead them to rush publication, you have to be | ready for the conclusion that whatever they have isn't a | superconductor as we know it. | lolinder wrote: | This subthread is discussing whether it makes sense to | have another lab validate the existing sample before we | even try to follow their steps. Neither I nor the person | you're responding to are assuming that the sample is what | they claim it is, we're simply arguing that it doesn't | matter how it was obtained--it's either a room | temperature superconductor or it isn't, and if the | researchers failed to document the process well but still | have a room temperature superconductor then we can move | on from there. If it turns out that it isn't, then we | saved ourselves a bunch of time trying to follow their | instructions. | dcow wrote: | > but also why would they make it, publish a fake process | and then go through all this rigamarole? | | This, from this subthread and directly from the comment I | replied to, is what I was responding to. I don't think | I've missed some obvious point. I think you just | misunderstood which topic I was responding to. | lolinder wrote: | > > How do you know for sure that the existing sample was | actually produced by the LK-99 process? | | > If the thing exists and someone can make it, the | specific process doesn't matter (but also why would they | make it, publish a fake process and then go through all | this rigamarole?). | | You took one sentence out of context, reinterpreted it, | then replied to your own reinterpretation. In the context | of the full "if" sentence, it's pretty clear that OP was | asking: "in the hypothetical situation where they did | successfully create a superconductor, why publish an | invalid process?" | | There are lots of possible answers to this question, but | your answer was not addressing that question, it was | answering the question "why would they lie about having | created it?" | | Context matters, otherwise we'd all end up talking past | each other all the time. | dcow wrote: | I didn't reinterpret anything and I don't think what you | state as pretty clear is entirely clear to me (or I just | didn't read into it as deeply). Anyway I simply responded | with some reasons why one might publish a fake process | and go through all the rigamarole. I probably should have | quoted the sentence in my reply to avoid confusion. | jjk166 wrote: | > and someone can make it | | If the specified procedure is incorrect, then we can't make | it. It doesn't need to be an elaborate con, it could just | be a reasearcher misread a measurement, or recorded the | wrong number, or their feedstock was contaminated. | Replication ensures that the recipe includes the secret | sauce that makes it actually work. | lolinder wrote: | I don't think they're arguing that no one should try to | replicate the process of making it, just that it makes | sense to have another lab test the sample that has | already been created. If it is in fact what they claim it | is, then the worst case scenario is that we have a repeat | of FOGBANK[0] and have to reverse engineer it. | | [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fogbank | jjk166 wrote: | I'm not arguing that another lab shouldn't test the | sample already created, just stating why replication is | important. A FOGBANK situation is a very bad scenario. | nemo44x wrote: | Do we know they haven't? The published papers were rushed (due | to rogue ex-team member publishing one unauthorized) and they | maybe weren't ready. | | I've heard a rumor a team from MIT has travelled to Korea. | | Who knows right now. | [deleted] | once_inc wrote: | I've heard those rumours as well, and also heard rumours that | a sample was sent to a Chinese group. | progrus wrote: | There's some emerging evidence that it may be a new class of | "1-d" superconducting material that only superconducts in | certain places/directions. Will turn into big academic fight to | redefine superconductivity if so, I think. | progrus wrote: | Importantly though, 1-d is all it needs to sound incredibly | useful. | est wrote: | Why does China alone have so many reproduction attemps? I assumed | it would be tried everywhere. | orangepurple wrote: | China has more people, more money to spend on research, more | equipment, more manufacturing base, more STEM graduates, more | everything, and all of that by huge margins. | [deleted] | senttoschool wrote: | I'm not sure about the other claims but the most logical | reasoning is that China has better supply chains and way more | STEM graduates. | Accujack wrote: | China wants to gain a technological edge on all other | countries. If they happen to be the first to turn a room | temperature superconductor into usable commercial or military | materials, then they'll have a huge military or economic | advantage for some period of time. | danbruc wrote: | As I learned from the Dave's EEVBlog video [1], their | demonstration video [2] says in the description that the material | was deposited onto a copper plate which could probably explain | the interaction with the magnet. And as I just noticed, the | description has since been changed and now says >>The sample was | thermally deposited on a enriched uranium 235 plate.<< | | EDIT: Correction, I got the link to the video saying deposited | onto uranium [2] from [1] but that is not the actual link from | their web page which is [3] and still says deposited onto copper. | So someone on eevblog.com was having some fun. | | [1] https://www.eevblog.com/2023/07/31/eevblog-1555-korean- | lk-99... | | [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-w2qc_BoEiU | | [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtVjGWpbE7k | andersa wrote: | That's highly suspicious. I guess they're banking on nobody | having an enriched uranium 235 plate at hand to verify what | happens if you do this without any LK99... | bawolff wrote: | Its not like nobody has ever investigated the magnetic | properties of uranium. You could just look it up. | 7373737373 wrote: | For me, this, and the combination with the name ("Quantum | Energy Research Center") is another push in the direction of | ignoring everything named "quantum" | | too often quacksalver territory | | Is this really their channel? Why do they only have 1 video, | 8 subscribers, and why is the video unlisted? | n2d4 wrote: | _> ignoring everything named "quantum"_ | | This heuristic is probably a good one for non-scientific | stuff but I'm not sure how accurate it is when we're | looking at a group researching quantum effects | godelski wrote: | Can someone explain why you'd use the 235 isotope? I know there | are different magnetic properties but it still seems an odd | choice to use something that is highly controlled, difficult to | produce, and rather dangerous. It seems like there would be far | better choices unless you absolutely need that mass or they | very weak valance electrons. | | And those videos being identical is also suspicious. [2] | Uploaded 2 days ago, claims 235U substrate, is from @q-center, | and created their youtube account in 2012. [3] is from | @qcentre, uploaded 5 months ago, claims Cu substrate, and | created their account in February. If it was the newer account | posting the new video it would be easy to believe lost password | or something but this reversing feels weird. It makes it feel | like they changed the video description (but didn't edit the | original to prevent history checking? But could have just | uploaded a different video?) to combat the induced magnetic | field as claim? | | But it feels like it gets even worse. [3] (older) is a 4k video | while [2] is 720p. Just hiding detail? The material looks | neither like copper nor uranium ceramic (very distinctive | orange color), but that can just be the material which is | claimed to be thin film deposited and that's believable. Maybe | they're hiding the sample identification etching on the front? | I'm not sure what those mean and it's very possibly arbitrary. | But adds a level of suspicion. | danbruc wrote: | I just assumed the uranium one is a joke created after this | story started by some third party and made to look like the | original one, so I also did not look any deeper. But the | channel being created in 2012 then makes no sense. Someone | just sitting on that channel name? Or can you rename a | YouTube channel? | euazOn wrote: | Yes you can rename, probably just trolling. | willis936 wrote: | "Their demonstration video" makes it sound like there is only | one. | | No smug takedowns of the video that made the rounds first: | | https://sciencecast.org/casts/suc384jly50n | | The most people have been able to say is "it might be the most | diamagnetic material anyone has ever seen by a remarkable | amount". ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-07-31 23:00 UTC)