[HN Gopher] LK-99: Team of Southeast University observed zero re...
___________________________________________________________________
LK-99: Team of Southeast University observed zero resistance below
110 K
Author : thecopy
Score : 402 points
Date : 2023-08-02 18:14 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| zootreeves wrote:
| Why would other teams be observing floating at room temp? Is it
| possible to have a diamagnet that becomes a superconductor?
| baq wrote:
| It's possible there are tiny bits of superconducting stuff at
| room temperature which connect into bigger and bigger bits as
| temperature drops, until it starts working as a whole at 110K.
|
| Maybe. Don't quote me.
| dinosaurdynasty wrote:
| That would suggest that a very high quality sample would
| superconduct at room temperature.
| feoren wrote:
| Unless the "low quality" part is actually causing the
| superconductivity. Remember the multiple simulations that
| showed Cu replacing Pb at a less favorable site
| (energetically) was better for superconductivity than at a
| more favorable site. It's possible "high quality" samples
| actually have less "imperfections", which seem important
| for the superconductivity.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Exactly it's quite possible that 'worse' is actually
| 'better' and vv. I'm sure that it won't be long before
| that will be resolved though, this is all happening so
| fast that such important answers will be sought by more
| than one team.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Not necessarily, but possibly.
| progrus wrote:
| Due to how these materials behave, this likely means you can
| manufacture a real-deal UFO in orbit...
| legulere wrote:
| I'm curious why the resistance is dropping by a lot in figure 3
| a) between around 230 and 260 K
| klimt wrote:
| The jump looks like bad contacts to me. The wires you attach
| undergo stress during the cooldown, and such artefacts can
| happen with small samples. Rewiring the sample should get rid
| of it.
| adad95 wrote:
| I want to believe.
| wilsynet wrote:
| The truth is out there.
| [deleted]
| jacquesm wrote:
| Fascinating and ultimately confusing result. What is happening in
| that higher temperature window where the resistance suddenly
| drops orders of magnitude?
| hatsunearu wrote:
| The Fig 3a)b) graphs are not showing superconductivity. That just
| looks like the resistance dips below the ~1e-5 mark and goes goes
| deep into the noise. That just looks like a normal conductor that
| has a positive temperature coefficient.
|
| edit: to add speculation, I think they made something that's not
| quite LK-99, and it's behaving like a normal conductor with no
| superconductance.
| floxy wrote:
| An excitation of 1mA and R = 1e-5 means the voltage is 10 nV
| (1e-8). Also the chart has a logarithmic y-axis.
| hatsunearu wrote:
| I know, I'm just saying their test condition has a really
| high noise floor and once you dive into the noise floor there
| is no meaningful result.
| ochn wrote:
| I also agree, looks like they just reached the instrument noise
| floor. This result should be taken with a grain of salt.
| norturnn wrote:
| [dead]
| barbegal wrote:
| That would be my interpretation too. Usually you get a stronger
| transition to 0 at the critical temperature but I can't see
| this (although it could be hidden under the noise)
| baq wrote:
| What would be the acceptable noise floor here?
| hatsunearu wrote:
| that's the wrong way to look at this.
|
| what i see in this noisy measurement is nothing interesting.
| that always means:
|
| a) the noise is obscuring something interesting
|
| b) there is nothing interesting
|
| for a), if it's practical and/or likely that there is
| something interesting in the noise, I'd try to find a way to
| lower the noise (or SNR).
|
| you would assert b) if you have some strong convictions that
| there's nothing interesting down there.
|
| Since the assertion that LK-99 is superconducting at room
| temp, there's already enough data to say that this is either
| A) whatever they measured is not LK-99 B) whatever they
| measured is LK-99, but doesn't superconduct at room temp.
|
| Their ridiculous interpretation pointing at the SNR=1 point
| saying that's the critical temperature is actually hilarious.
| legulere wrote:
| The noise is probably just an artefact from measurement.
| hatsunearu wrote:
| that's almost literally the definition of noise.
|
| I'm saying the results are useless because the noise floor is
| obscuring any interesting behavior (if any).
|
| Some people are saying "well, the Tc is 160K, so this result
| is invalid"--the way I see it, the Tc is not 160K because the
| test setup is so noisy so you're not really seeing any
| superconductivity at any temperature (not because it doesn't
| exist, but because their test setup is shitty)
| barbegal wrote:
| This doesn't look superconducting at all to me, simply the sample
| is very small and below 110K the resistance of the sample is too
| small to be measured by their measurement equipment. I'm happy to
| be proved wrong but there should be a steeper transition at the
| critical temperature.
| scarmig wrote:
| Interesting. Some people are getting strong diamagnetism at RTP,
| and now someone is actually seeing zero resistance at a low
| temperature.
|
| I'd take this as mildly positive news. It would be a surprising
| material if it were a high Tc (only in the LN2 sense)
| superconductor that is also strongly diamagnetic at room
| temperature (though I'm not sure if that's more surprising than a
| RTP superconductor).
| jacquesm wrote:
| It's confusing. You'd expect both to be present or none, it is
| strange to have a material that is conducting and diamagnetic
| at room temperature _and_ that shows super conductivity at much
| lower temperature. You 'd expect the diamagnetism to disappear
| with the superconductivity.
| borkt wrote:
| Observed effects which have been given a name != a single
| universal truth. Just because we have experimental evidence
| of effects and theoretical explanations for their occurrence
| prove we actually have defined the underlying phenomenon's
| which produce the observed effect accurately. The reason we
| experiment isn't to prove our theories are correct so much as
| it is to probe where they break down so we can further refine
| our understanding of the universe. What we are likely seeing
| here is the result of an organized pattern of atomic nucleii
| forming a lattice which creates the conditions for the
| movement of electrons to be easier (or harder) than expected
| at certain temperatures (with temperature being the property
| which induces strain on the lattice). This is very crude, but
| begins to explain the multitude of factors at play here.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Yes, that's true, but that would require a shift in our
| understanding of physics and everything about this saga so
| far has not done that. And that in part is a reason why
| people take this serious: it is believable. New physics
| would raise the bar considerably.
|
| So for now I'm on the measuring error, impurity or process
| issue side of that without committing to which team I think
| has the problematic side.
| borkt wrote:
| The fact that our existing computational models are in
| agreement with the experimental behavior leads me to
| believe there is no new physics involved here. That being
| said this raises the question as to whether this class of
| material is known and characterized within our national
| research labs but has been kept classified, and if it was
| unknown it raises the question of why experimentation is
| what discovered it and why weren't we able to harness the
| computational model to identify it theoretically and
| develop a method to produce it practically prior to this.
| My money says there are people in this world who have
| long been aware of this, and its either already in use in
| a classified manner or it's interesting but there are
| other materials which are more practical in all use
| cases.
| jacquesm wrote:
| > why we [we]ren't we able to harness the computational
| model to identify it theoretically and develop a method
| to produce it practically prior to this.
|
| Because the computational requirements are off the scale
| in the most literal sense. The search space is so large
| that you won't be able to come up with an improvement in
| efficiency for your search unless you guide it very
| carefully with experimentally obtained results and that's
| exactly what these people were doing as far as I
| understand it. You mix up a batch of stuff, test it for
| gross properties, do crystallography and then use the
| information from that to do some numerical simulations to
| check if your assumptions and observations hold up.
|
| I don't think we had this compound before.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| I think one factor that's overlooked with these
| simulations is that there are a ton of parameters to
| these which really hinder automated searching.
|
| It's easy (relatively) to verify the results from a real
| world test since you know the physical parameters and can
| tweak the others based on intuition, where if the result
| matches the real world you can consider it valid, but if
| it doesn't you can have to check all sorts of things to
| be sure that it isn't a glitch due to some parameter not
| being reasonable.
|
| That makes searching for materials really hard because
| you either need an absurd amount of computational power
| to be able to set the simulation parameters so high as to
| not worry about their effects or you get tons of false
| positives simply because the computer can't as easily
| tune those parameters to ensure it produces correct
| results.
|
| As my PhD advisor has often put it regarding my own
| simulation work, if the simulations were that capable of
| modeling reality, there would be no need for billion
| dollar facilities to perform tests irl, you'd just spend
| all that on building many supercomputers.
| marshray wrote:
| Multiple teams have said they had to produce 10 batches just
| to get one sample with properties worth reporting on.
|
| Perhaps the simplest explanation is that different teams are
| all ending up with different variations of a common material,
| with different impurities, crystal structure, etc.
|
| There's likely a whole zoo of interesting materials here!
| jacquesm wrote:
| Yes, I thought that that might be the case from day one.
| When they wrote that they had only a 10% success rate it
| was clear that they were not at all in control of sample
| purity. The big remaining question for me is what happens
| when they start traveling with the original sample to have
| another lab test their samples and how those results
| compare with both the original results and the
| independently recreated different samples.
|
| There is a good chance that there will be substantial
| differences between them.
| dv_dt wrote:
| "Purity" is a really overloaded term here. There are vast
| set of material properties that simply don't map to a
| definition "purity" as in some homogeneous concentration
| of a material. This is so early no one likely knows
| exactly what configuration of material to "purify" for
| the intended outcome.
|
| There will likely be years of not decades of looking at
| differences in the materials and performance of related
| materials to more fully explore this discovery.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Yes, true, let me unpack that then:
|
| - purity as in the sample is uniformly constructed of the
| right atoms but they are not in the right configuration
|
| vs
|
| - purity as in the sample contains atoms that shouldn't
| be there in the first place
|
| and finally
|
| - purity as in: the sample that purportedly did show room
| temperature superconductivity turns out to be the impure
| one and that impurity is so poorly understood that we
| currently can not replicate it accurately, but a test by
| an independent lab of the sample would verify the
| properties as advertised.
|
| All of these are possibles, and not mutually exclusive.
| trafficante wrote:
| > purity as in the sample is uniformly constructed of the
| right atoms but they are not in the right configuration
|
| The conclusions in the linked pdf suggest this may be the
| issue with LK99.
|
| 1. https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.16892
| borkt wrote:
| More than likely there is only one interesting material in
| this specific composition. But understanding the phenomenon
| we are observing in this material can potentially lead to
| the development of other materials which display these
| characteristics, and tune those to function in this way at
| specific temperature/pressure situations. If we develop
| efficient ways to produce these materials in bulk (which is
| orders of magnitude more complicated than just
| characterizing what we see here) it would be unimaginably
| revolutionary. But the energy required to do this at scale
| will likely require our civilization to utilize orders of
| magnitude more energy, so if this is practical for our
| daily lives on a wide scale I believe it's development will
| be contingent on harnessing fusion. Otherwise it will be
| limited to only the most extreme use cases in the way
| superconductors are currently used now.
| AS04 wrote:
| My friend, what exactly do you think is so energy
| intensive with LK99 synthesis? I've briefly taken a look
| and the process proposed is really not that onerous in
| terms of energy consumed. It is a matter of perfecting
| the process that is the hurdle, we already spend tons of
| energy happily in similar industrial processes.
| jacquesm wrote:
| > But the energy required to do this at scale will likely
| require our civilization to utilize orders of magnitude
| more energy
|
| As opposed to smelting aluminum or steel? And that
| creates stuff that is dirt cheap in bulk...
| threatripper wrote:
| If only part of the sample is superconducting and the other
| parts are ordinary conductors or isolators, the superconducting
| islands could show diamagnetism while being isolated from each
| other which means that eletrical current needs to pass
| resistive areas and therefore experiences resistance.
| valianteffort wrote:
| Could it not also mean an impure sample? Everyone is in a
| rush right now but none of these research teams are exactly
| experts of manufacture.
| gchadwick wrote:
| Certainly no expert here but if you take the original video and
| replications at face value it does exhibit strong diamagnetism at
| room temperature. Superconductors are diamagnetic due to the
| Meissner effect at their superconducting temperature. This would
| mean LK99 is a superconductor at low temperature and separately
| be strongly diamagnetic at room temperature (no Meissner effect
| if it's not super conducting). Would that be unusual?
| scarmig wrote:
| Bismuth is a strong diamagnet, and it can enter a
| superconducting state (at a fraction of a degree above zero),
| so it's not impossible. (And lots of materials are weak
| diamagnets and superconduct at some point.) So it wouldn't be
| unheard of. That said, LK-99 would definitely be an object of
| lots of research if it does have those properties.
| Obi_Juan_Kenobi wrote:
| The premise is flawed because that assumes the samples they are
| studying are identical.
|
| Replication is difficult, and particularly difficult for novel
| processes where the important variables are not well
| understood. It could be that the methods were reported as
| accurately as possible but still leave out critical detail(s).
| zamalek wrote:
| The strength of the diamagnetism would be extremely anomalous
| if it were not a superconductor, and would need new
| physics/names - super-diamagnetism or something (which itself
| would still be very useful). The chances of it being new
| physical phenomena is vanishingly small - we're almost
| definitely seeing superconductivity at STP with this degree of
| diamagnetism.
| tigershark wrote:
| Exactly. And from the various videos it doesn't seem
| diamagnetic _at all_ because it floats in a stationary way on
| a single planar magnet. Diamagnetic material can't do that,
| they need an array of magnets.
| depereo wrote:
| I would say any results that are already out are from people
| speedrunning production; give it another six or so days and
| there will be a ton of labs that have managed to produce
| various, better samples and will have performed decent
| experimentation on these.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| I have seen it posted that diamagnetic materials require
| multiple magnets stuck together to create field "pockets" (?)
| for the material to rest in.
|
| The few videos of lk99 show it reacting to a singular magnet. A
| property of superconductors that apparently diamagnetic
| materials don't have.
| DistractionRect wrote:
| That's for levitating a diamagnetic material.
|
| It'll react fine to a singular magnet, it just won't be
| stable enough to levitate - that's why the videos show casing
| replication of diamagnetism show it standing on end.
| uyhgr wrote:
| The term is "flux pinning", and it only applies to the
| "quantum lock" effect. That is the specifically static
| hovering effect.
|
| The diamagnetism, importantly this means repulsion of both
| poles simultaneously and equally (this is how you can have
| these magnets spin, a regular magnet repels same poles and
| attracts opposites, diamagnets repel both poles), is simply a
| characteristic of the superconductor, but it alone would just
| repel the object off.
|
| Here is a timestamped link to NileRed's YBCO video that
| visually describes the flux pinning:
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RS7gyZJg5nc&t=1887
|
| And here's a timestamped link to Ben Krasnow's Applied
| Science YBCO video where he shows a close up of the crystal's
| cross section that shows the imperfections that allow the
| magnetic field through for the pinning effect:
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sLFaa6RPJIU&t=75
| Laforet wrote:
| Flux pinning of a superconductor should be able to hold it
| steady _below_ a magnet, and the magnet should be able to
| drag the superconductor with it when moving (within
| reasonable weight limits of course). These will demonstrate
| for sure that levitation is not simply a force equilibrium
| between gravity, magnetic repulsion and one corner of the
| material resting on the surface.
|
| There is a video from the Korean team showing LK99 moving
| when both poles of a large magnet is swung nearby, however
| the effect was a bit weak to conclusive.
| uyhgr wrote:
| Correct, the imperfections of the crystal allowing the
| flux pinning permits even a "hanging levitation". Here is
| a timestamped video showing that:
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ws6AAhTw7RA&t=90
|
| If we develop methods of creating these superconductors
| with perfect crystal composition then there will only be
| the repulsion, allowing for levitation in a bowl shaped
| superconductor, but this "hanging levitation" would be
| impossible.
|
| Perhaps we will develop manufacturing techniques to
| induce specific imperfections into the material to ensure
| predictable flux pinning; it seems like a useful, and
| wildly interesting side effect.
| adolph wrote:
| When NileRed puts the YBCO on top of the row of bar magnets
| and it ping-pongs back and forth is awesome!
|
| Timestamp: https://youtu.be/RS7gyZJg5nc?t=2496
| uyhgr wrote:
| The best thing about the NileRed superconductor video is
| it shows him initially failing to reproduce a YBCO
| superconductor after having already succeeded once
| before!
|
| It goes to show how difficult manufacture, or in the case
| of the LK-99 news cycle "reproduction", of these
| materials really is, and YBCO was a well documented area
| of superconductor manufacture.
| jacquesm wrote:
| NileRed is youtube gold. It's one of very few channels that
| I follow and learn from.
| faraggi wrote:
| I agree, great channel, but the cadence in his narration
| is atrocious.
| jacquesm wrote:
| It's fantastic compared to a lot of the people that I
| interact with on a daily basis so it doesn't bother me.
| jacquesm wrote:
| It's all unusual because it is uncharted territory. My guess
| would be assuming that it all pans out that this is due to
| various impurities and that it will take a while before we have
| a sample that is pure enough that all of these properties can
| be nailed down for good.
|
| What's strange is that drop at higher temps, that's either a
| measurement anomaly or something really odd.
| lambdasquirrel wrote:
| According to wikipedia, that was observed by the original
| team in Korea.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LK-99#Replication_attempts
|
| > Claimed to have synthesized LK-99 and to have measured
| superconductivity up to a temperature of 110 kelvin. Claimed
| to have observed an abrupt drop in resistance between ~300K
| and 220K, aligning with the Korean LKK team's results.
| Claimed to have confirmed structural consistency with x-ray
| diffraction.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Yes, but it does not drop nearly as far and there is the
| suggestion of equipment malfunction while at the same time
| that gear seems to work just fine around -110 C.
| pama wrote:
| Just a word of caution that Wikipedia entries around LK99
| are unusually poor at this point in time. The citation of
| an attempt to publish it in Nature in 2020 is completely
| made up when the original Korean only mentions in passing a
| completely different paper that was withdrawn from Nature
| at the time. I hope the understandable excitement around
| this new invention will allow for a correct eventual
| accounting of the events.
| adolph wrote:
| > due to various impurities and that it will take a while
| before we have a sample that is pure enough that all of these
| properties can be nailed down for good.
|
| Do you think it will be "purity" or understanding material
| variance/specific impurity?
|
| It reminds me of Fogbank, the nuke material claimed to be "so
| secret they forgot how to make it." Part of the story of
| manufacturing difficulty was due to increased purity of
| modern materials/processes.
|
| _In a bizarre twist, the new production facility and
| reverse-engineered production process yielded a version of
| Fogbank that was of a higher purity than it had been in the
| past, according to the article. The problem, however, was
| that for Fogbank to work as intended in existing warhead
| designs, that previous level of impurity was actually
| essential. NNSA had to revise the process to ensure the final
| product was just as impure._
|
| https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/32867/fogbank-is-
| myste...
| hyperman1 wrote:
| It reminds me of Max Gergel's Isopropyl bromide book:
|
| When Hildebrand ran the baths the silver came out bright,
| and stuck to the objects; the minute he left troubles
| started. No one knew why. Shortly before he left to go into
| the antique business in Charleston he showed me the secret.
| It was his chewing tobacco, spat into the bath from time to
| time. From then on, one man in each shift chewed, and the
| problem was solved
| alephnerd wrote:
| What's the name of this book? It sounds really cool!
|
| Any other recommendations on books about the history of
| MatSE/Chemistry?
| grandpa wrote:
| The title is "Excuse me sir, would you like to buy a kilo
| of isopropyl bromide?"
|
| https://archive.org/details/gergel_isopropyl_bromide
| jacquesm wrote:
| That's a hilarious book: "There was a jar which I had not
| noticed before containing potassium metal. I knew that
| potassium was a silvery metal, but this was one inch
| spheres, green with the oil in which they were immersed.
| I removed two for a collection of elements we were
| starting at Columbia High, scraped off the oil and put
| the marbles in my handkerchief which I added to a
| collection of miscellaneous glassware in my back pocket.
| "
|
| Oops... I can see where that is headed.
| alephnerd wrote:
| Thanks for the rec! Gunna dive into it tonight!
| jacquesm wrote:
| > Do you think it will be "purity" or understanding
| material variance/specific impurity?
|
| It could be either.
|
| As I pointed out in other comments, that's how
| radioactivity was discovered and it is very well possible
| that they blundered into something exceptional by accident,
| it is also possible that _both_ parties got it wrong and
| there are yet other effects at play (see the big gap in the
| t /R curve, that really needs explaining).
| fgeahfeaha wrote:
| That's a failed repro then right?
|
| Below 110K is below -163.15 Celcius
|
| How would that compare to other superconductors?
| HybridCurve wrote:
| One of the most well known, YBCO, has a Tc of 95K.
| BasedAnon wrote:
| technically a failure, but still a strange result
| piyh wrote:
| I don't think it's a failure if the original claims are
| showing some kind of promise, science is being done, and the
| frontiers of knowledge are being pushed forward.
|
| In other words, not "Eureka!" but "that's weird".
| p1mrx wrote:
| Tc = 110 K would take the #4 spot on
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_superconductors
| [deleted]
| moffkalast wrote:
| > HgTlBaCaCuO
|
| New band name. And band gap.
| wthomp wrote:
| #3 spot at atmospheric pressure
| rbinv wrote:
| At atmospheric pressure, no less.
| jacquesm wrote:
| It is and it isn't. It's at ambient pressure (which is
| something useful), and there is something very odd happening
| much higher up that needs to be explained. They say their
| sample purity is higher than the one the Korean team had, so
| that would normally lead to better yield and easier
| confirmation of the superconductivity. But since it does show
| the Meissner effect in other samples as well at room
| temperature there is a lot that still needs explaining before
| we can say it is a failed reproduction.
| BasedAnon wrote:
| perhaps an impurity caused the effect they're looking for
| jacquesm wrote:
| Yes, that's possible and something that has already
| happened once before: this is exactly how x-rays and
| eventually radioactivity were discovered, a chance
| contamination.
| bloopernova wrote:
| I adore stories that include the phrase "that's odd" or
| "something odd happens when ..."
|
| Even if we don't get the astonishing result originally
| claimed by the rogue paper, it's still a triumph of science
| in my ignorant opinion.
| jacquesm wrote:
| And sometimes 'that's odd' leads to things larger than the
| original goal. You really don't want to hear those words in
| the doctors' office though.
| omgJustTest wrote:
| This appears to be a great result.
|
| "Room temperature" super conductor result? No.
|
| But this is basically showing there is some superconductivity in
| the sample, and cooler temperatures expose intrinsic band
| structures.
|
| Pretty exciting!
| hcks wrote:
| How is it exciting? It invalidates the original claim. We
| already have better SC.
| matsemann wrote:
| It doesn't invalidate the original claim, as they haven't
| been able to make a pure sample to test with, as I understand
| it. Or at least that there is some difference between their
| samples and the others, but still it shows promise.
| Palpatineli wrote:
| Purity does not affect Tc. Your argument is invalid.
| lnenad wrote:
| Holy shit what a statement.
| stasmo wrote:
| The worlds best scientists don't even know how to make
| room temp superconductors but this one person on HN is
| certain that purity doesn't matter.
| flumpcakes wrote:
| > Purity does not affect Tc.
|
| Here's a lump of 100% Cu and another lump of 50% Cu and
| 50% "other".
|
| If purity doesn't matter, they must have the same
| properties? Why not just use 0.0001% copper in all our
| applications and save millions on material costs.
| amluto wrote:
| I know nothing about the theory of superconductors, but
| purity can affect electronic properties. For example,
| pure silicon is quite a poor conductor. If you dope it
| with a little bit of an n- or p-type dopant (an
| impurity), it conducts better. Add a bit more, and it
| conducts more. There are other effects, too.
| overnight5349 wrote:
| Purity would affect superconduction. Consider grains of
| superconducting material embedded in a matrix of regular
| conductive metal.
|
| One of the theories for the behavior of this material
| explains that the copper atoms preferentially form a
| structure that does not superconduct. The structure that
| _does_ superconduct is tricky to achieve due to the
| energy levels. (Paraphrased summary)
|
| It's likely that a poorly prepared sample will have
| discontinuous regions of both superconducting and non-
| superconducting material. If that is the case, you won't
| observe superconduction.
|
| It may be that the non-superconducting material _does_
| superconduct at low temperatures, which would mask the
| purity problem.
|
| The truth is that quite literally nobody fully
| understands what's actually happening here. That's kind
| of the point of all this experimentation
| numpad0 wrote:
| That supplemental video files and drama around submission
| process seemed to exhibit telltales signs of forged science,
| so the fact that this seems not nothing and is getting
| material scientists excited is exciting.
| notorandit wrote:
| > below 110 K
|
| It is not room temperature, is it?
| nmeagent wrote:
| 0 C is 273.15K, so room temperature is around 295 K. 300 K is a
| decent approximation to make back-of-the-envelope calculations
| easier, but I don't know anybody that actually keeps their room
| at 80 F.
| brookst wrote:
| Not Canadian, eh?
| motoboi wrote:
| I suppose it is, if the room is in Mars.
| MayeulC wrote:
| Room temp is 300K. Liquid nitrogen boils at 77K, though.
| [deleted]
| saberdancer wrote:
| Huge news. This means it is not a scam as a discovery of this
| type of superconductor would be big enough.
|
| It also means it is unlikely they were measuring wrong for
| multiple years.
|
| My layman take is that Korean sample is just a better or
| different batch that is properly superconducting at room
| temperature.
| carabiner wrote:
| As a layman, how do you know this is huge?
| vl wrote:
| I don't know why people say it's huge, so far all the images
| released show it is tiny.
| saberdancer wrote:
| Until today main hypothesis was that it is a scam by original
| team or a mistake when measuring resistance.
|
| Now it looks unlikely as it would be very strange to luck
| into a new superconductor (pretty "good" one too) if they
| were faking it. It also means it is unlikely they made
| fundamental measuring mistakes such as thinking the sample is
| in room temperature when it was at 100K.
|
| What seem plausible is that the process to make the material
| is not well defined and that there is high degree of
| variability. Even this chinese 110K replication only one of 6
| samples shows superconductivity, meaning there is much room
| for improvement, perhaps with fine tuning they will find
| sample with characteristics that Korean team observed.
| d1str0 wrote:
| Assuming they discovered a low cost, room temperature, room
| pressure, superconductor, there are many HUGE technological
| advancements that can be made that would impact your daily
| life.
|
| Possibilities include improved battery longevity in all
| devices(probably in an order of magnitude), low friction
| transport improvements (ie. cheaper high speed rail), and
| faster and higher bandwidth wired connections.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_applications_of_.
| ..
| cogman10 wrote:
| > improved battery longevity
|
| No
|
| > probably in an order of magnitude
|
| Absolutely not.
|
| > Low friction transport improvements
|
| This material is superconductive at 110K (-163C). Not
| exactly usable for transport applications.
|
| > faster and higher bandwidth wired connections.
|
| Absolutely not, resistance has no impact on bandwidth.
|
| I've seen variations of this comment on hacker news.
| Superconductors are not magic dust to make things better.
| They are conductors with 0 resistance. There are certainly
| applications for that (see the wiki you linked) but like
| all things based in reality those are all a lot more muted
| and probably not possible with the current materials.
|
| You are getting excited about the possibility of wires.
| There are certainly cool things you can do with a nice
| wire, but it's still a wire. You can't store power much
| with it, It's too big to make logic circuits with, and
| applications (like levitating a train) require too many
| amps for our poor wire to remain a special wire. (Most
| super conductive materials lose conductivity when amps are
| too high).
| [deleted]
| carabiner wrote:
| No I mean why is this "huge" when each time that's happened
| it's been deflated within 12 hours:
|
| - initial LK-99 paper upload on Arxiv: HUGE, then it's
| probably nothing until replication (waiting)
|
| - DFT release: HUGE, then probably nothing (DFT has poor
| predictive power)
|
| - 110K SC: HUGE, then ... ?
|
| In every case it's been the laymen saying HUGE, then the
| experts saying it's probably insignificant. Then the laymen
| settle on what the experts said.
| throwanem wrote:
| Derek Lowe is a layman? I grant his specialism doesn't
| precisely match the field, but it's easily close enough
| I'd expect him to be able to smell bullshit on this if
| there was any, and his latest "In the Pipeline" suggests
| much more the scent of roses.
| tigershark wrote:
| Why are you always trying to ignore every new positive
| result since the beginning? Maybe because you are scared
| of getting called out for throwing literal sh*t at what
| it seems to be a very fundamental discovery in the worst
| case and in the best case a world changing, nobel prize
| worth research?
| norturnn wrote:
| [dead]
| creatorpiece123 wrote:
| Read the graph, there is a sharp drop in resistance from
| 220K-250K. Its still not superconducting but it could be hinting
| something?
| valine wrote:
| That's what I was thinking. In the video he brushes it off as a
| potential equipment malfunction, but perhaps it's the effect
| everyone is looking for.
| pokey00 wrote:
| A sudden discontinuity like that but continuing the same
| curve and jumping back... that's equipment malfunction 99% of
| the time.
| jacquesm wrote:
| And yet, they published that instead of figuring out what
| is possibly wrong with their gear which in turn may
| invalidate the rest of the their results. I'm not going to
| second guess their motivations though, they probably know
| what they are doing but it is interesting and deserves
| explanation.
| valine wrote:
| Seems reasonable, then again we're dealing with a potential
| superconductor where sudden discontinuity is the expected
| result.
| baq wrote:
| Why publish this graph without running the measurements
| again though? Serious question since I've no idea about the
| effort needed to get this data.
|
| I've got a small hope that they actually did and found the
| effect didn't go away. They'll still say 'equipment
| malfunction', there isn't any downside, only upside if it
| gets reproduced somewhere else.
| jacquesm wrote:
| I'm _really_ curious what the eventual explanation of this is
| and whether other teams will observe this happening as well.
| azernik wrote:
| Could indicate some superconducting regions in the whole
| sample, or some weird anisotropic superconduction at higher
| temps...
|
| That sharp drop, if not equipment error, could be a lot of
| things.
| obituary_latte wrote:
| There are multiple mentions of "extraterrestrial super islands",
| is this a mistranslation of the Meissner effect? Great term
| nonetheless.
| ansbalin wrote:
| The extraterrestrial super island of stability
| jacquesm wrote:
| Let's break one rule at the time, please. I don't think I'm
| quite ready for heavy elements that are long lived, either at
| room temperature or any other, and even less so if they turn
| out to be non-radioactive...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_of_stability
| jacquesm wrote:
| Yes, I saw that, there are some more obvious translation
| errors.
| rfoo wrote:
| It's the mistranslation of room-temperature superconductivity.
|
| "super islands" is likely translated from Chao Dao which
| sounds the same as Chao Dao (superconductivity). I have no
| idea how Shi Wen (room-temperature) became extraterrestrial,
| must be extraordinarily bad speech to text model.
|
| edit: could be Shi Wen (shi4wen1) -> shi4wai4 -> Shi Wai
| (outdoors)/Shi Wai (out of this world) -> extraterrestrial
| devindotcom wrote:
| What a hilarious mistranslation. Somehow it is fitting
| though, as a totally unprecedented floating material.
| wg0 wrote:
| I wish I could learn CJK. Will take a lifetime to master.
| eunos wrote:
| Almost all replication attempts are done on Bilibili, which
| namesake Mikoto Misaka using Railgun which would be made by
| superconductors.
|
| Very beautiful.
| modeless wrote:
| To me this is encouraging. 110K is really high! It's higher than
| YBCO which is what they make commercial "high temperature"
| superconducting tape out of. IMO if this is legit (I have no way
| of judging the source) then this is the first good third party
| evidence that the original researchers are not just doing some
| kind of fraud. A total fraud wouldn't have actually discovered a
| novel high-temperature, but not room temperature, superconductor.
|
| At worst it seems to me like they discovered a cool new
| superconductor that may have commercial applications. At best,
| they may have a variant of this material that really is a room
| temperature superconductor. Either way, there is an important
| scientific discovery here.
|
| I'm surprised the prediction markets don't seem to be reacting.
| Maybe the source isn't actually credible? Any Chinese speakers
| here know?
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _I 'm surprised the prediction markets don't seem to be
| reacting._
|
| Where can we look at prediction markets on this? For those of
| us who aren't familiar.
|
| I'm very curious -- because unlike sports scores or political
| elections, this seems like such a hard thing to define a
| prediction market around, because what is the exact threshold
| you're defining and what is the threshold of proof of that
| thing and on what date is that decided?
| staunton wrote:
| Metaculus has some markets on LK-99, for example
| asdfman123 wrote:
| Those rules are defined in the actual bet. I think it was
| "three replications of room temperature superconductivity by
| X date" or something like that.
|
| I looked closely because I very much wanted to bet tens of
| thousands of dollars on "no", but I couldn't because I'm in
| the US. The two outcomes would be I'd make a lot of money or
| humanity would make the biggest breakthrough in generations.
| tshaddox wrote:
| > I think it was "three replications of room temperature
| superconductivity by X date" or something like that.
|
| That doesn't sound like a sufficient market resolution
| condition. Surely it would need to be something like
| "declared by specific Party X to be a room-temperature
| superconductor" where Party X is sufficiently trusted by
| all market participants.
| asdfman123 wrote:
| I was worried about that too before making the bet, but I
| realized I couldn't do it anyway and stopped worrying
| about it.
|
| You can find the whole resolution criteria here if you
| want:
|
| https://manifold.markets/QuantumObserver/will-the-
| lk99-room-...
| crazygringo wrote:
| Thanks. And wow, that's as fuzzy as I was afraid it would
| be:
|
| > _...Willing to adjust this criterion after receiving
| more info from relevant theorists /experimentalists..._
|
| > _...I don 't intend to require that replications be
| published in a peer-reviewed journal... However, I do
| intend to wait a few weeks/months to resolve so that any
| pre-print can be adequately investigated..._
|
| > _...Since high Tc superconductivity is not my specific
| field of expertise, I 'm willing to defer to a consensus
| of subject matter experts on whether a pre-print is
| convincing or not, and I am willing to contact some
| beyond the usual twitter personalities..._
|
| In other words, if there's any kind of gray area in the
| results, it's going to be whatever this person decides,
| whenever they want to decide it. Definitely not something
| I would ever put money behind.
| asdfman123 wrote:
| Yeah, I was definitely concerned about losing my money to
| a technicality.
| [deleted]
| codethief wrote:
| Yesterday someone posted a couple links and I remember this
| one:
|
| https://manifold.markets/QuantumObserver/will-the-
| lk99-room-...
| aqme28 wrote:
| > I'm surprised the prediction markets don't seem to be
| reacting.
|
| Which way would you have the prediction markets go? Is this
| evidence for or against room-temperature superconductivity?
| modeless wrote:
| Since IMO this makes fraud a less likely explanation, and it
| seems easily possible to me that there are many materials in
| this family with different critical temperatures, and it
| seems really unlikely that the original researchers would
| correctly measure superconductivity but simply get the
| temperature wrong by more than 200K, then it seems strongly
| positive to the probability that the original researchers
| discovered room temperature superconductivity. Not
| confirmation, of course.
| spandrew wrote:
| The initial claim was speculated to be room temp and ambient
| pressure superconduction. 110K is a far cry from that.
| ivalm wrote:
| It's easy to make a high tc superconductor have lower tc
| through poor production quality. It may very well be that a
| poor sample is 110K while a high quality sample is >400K.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Looks like 110K still puts this in the top 5 highest temp
| known superconductors and it only takes a couple of days to
| produce out of the blue.
|
| So even if that's all it sounds like an important discovery.
| asdfman123 wrote:
| 110K actually makes me excited as someone with a physics
| background. It seems more realistic, and there's always the
| possibility of finding full room temp later, too.
| kulahan wrote:
| That could still be possible. We haven't found the ideal form
| of LK-99 yet, so another lab might have a form which is only
| stable to 110K, but that doesn't mean all will see the same
| thing.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| Not to mention that every new category of SC discovered
| helps nail down the theory of how it all works.
| gus_massa wrote:
| Everyone agree. Oversimplifying, there are 3 categories to
| classify the initial team:
|
| 1) A bunch of clowns.
|
| 2) Interesting
|
| 3) Next Nobel prize winners
|
| I think they had a good reputation in the community, so the
| opinion of the hivemind was to discard 1. But there was still
| the possibility of a honest mistake or something weird.
|
| If this post is correct, other team confirmed that they
| discovered a new family of "high temperature" superconductor.
| The old families have been tweaked and explored to death. A
| new family gives a lot of room to optimize the composition
| and building process. So perhaps they found it.
|
| If this is confirmed they are definitively in the
| "interesting" category, at least.
| _hypx wrote:
| It seems pretty similar to BSCCO:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bismuth_strontium_calcium_copp...
| callalex wrote:
| What prediction markets are you looking at? Are there any
| concrete examples of these markets being accurate, or just a
| venue for gambling addicts to feel smart?
| refulgentis wrote:
| One prediction market company spent a day spamming e v e r y
| tweet with a link to their own stuff, so it's adopted a
| meme-y link to LK-99 but it's honestly unrelated other than a
| clever marketing campaign
| callalex wrote:
| My question is also broader than LK-99, and my point still
| stands.
| freitzkriesler2 wrote:
| What's impressive to me is how simple making it is. There are
| still low hanging scientific discoveries that are out there but
| that we haven't figured out yet.
| cyberlurker wrote:
| Like ancient Roman concrete.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| I believe that one was recently figured out -
| https://news.mit.edu/2023/roman-concrete-durability-lime-
| cas....
| qwezxcrty wrote:
| For non-Chinese speakers: one can jump to 01:50 and 02:32 of
| the original video, the key figures (XRD and resistance) are
| presented with English captions.
|
| The data look legit although there is a curious dip in
| resistance in Fig.3(a) between 200K and 250K. Fig.3(b) is also
| a bit weird as somehow the resistance behaves irregularly with
| magnetic field strength.
| saberdancer wrote:
| I think most people are just seeing the headline 110K instead
| of realizing the implications (not a scam, not a mistake, hard
| to replicate).
|
| I was quite sceptical earlier today due to unconvincing videos
| but this finding pushes it heavily into "This might be it"
| territory.
| tootie wrote:
| I'm still unclear. Why is the test limit 110K? If this is
| supposed to be usable at ambient temperature then this seems
| like not a useful finding. Is it just some artifact of how
| superconductivity is measured?
| saberdancer wrote:
| Most materials are not superconductors at 110K. If this one
| is, it is possible Koreans did not fake room temperature
| results but rather their sample is slightly different for
| some reason, maybe pure luck, maybe some part of process
| that they didn't clearly define or that their precursor
| materials have certain impurities.
| [deleted]
| danielheath wrote:
| Some people say they can get it to work at room
| temperature, and others say they can't.
|
| Testing a sample at superconductivity-friendly temperatures
| helps figure out whether there's something to investigate
| here, since most materials do not superconduct at any
| useful temperature.
| golol wrote:
| The common understanding seems to be that producing true
| LK99 is very difficult as you need to get the crystal
| structure just right. Many samples probably have mixes of
| the correct and other structures. That's why some float and
| some don't. The sample might be quite "dirty", meaning the
| critical temperature is lower.
| trafficante wrote:
| Seems like it may depend on getting specific binding
| sites.
|
| > Finally, the calculations presented here suggest that
| Cu substitution on the appropriate (Pb(1)) site displays
| many key characteristics for high-TC superconductivity,
| namely a particularly flat isolated d-manifold, and the
| potential presence of fluctuating magnetism, charge and
| phonons. However, substitution on the other Pb(2) does
| not appear to have such sought-after properties, despite
| being the lower-energy substitution site. This result
| hints to the synthesis challenge in obtaining Cu
| substituted on the appropriate site for obtaining a bulk
| superconducting sample. [1]
|
| 1. https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.16892
| valianteffort wrote:
| I believe 110K is where it hit zero resistivity (the lower
| bound) but any increase from there and it was no longer
| presenting superconductivity.
|
| If we are to trust the SK team, it's possible the design in
| the paper is outdated and in-house they have dialed it in
| to something stable at room temperature.
| cpleppert wrote:
| They aren't reacting because this isn't really proof of
| anything. The test apparatus they used can't actually measure 0
| resistance. Superconductivity is implied (thats the most
| straightforward explanation) but not actually demonstrated
| here. Its very hard to interpret from the limited data
| presented. There could be a whole host of contaminants, issue
| with the experimental setup etc etc. Its hard to go from look
| at the interesting material properties in this graph to room
| temperature superconductor. This is also the only confirmatory
| information we have from the team; their sample didn't show
| diamagnetism.
|
| The reasons to be skeptical are: 1) lot of videos floating
| around that are just at the threshold of convincing 2) poor
| results from other teams 3) there is a history of
| superconductivity discoveries like this that never pan out 4)
| skepticism of the original paper
| ramesh31 wrote:
| >At worst it seems to me like they discovered a cool new
| superconductor that may have commercial applications. At best,
| they may have a variant of this material that really is a room
| temperature superconductor. Either way, there is an important
| scientific discovery here.
|
| I feel like this whole thing is going to be graphene all over
| again. A massive initial hype around "world changing tech" that
| ends up being very difficult and costly to scale and produce
| commercially.
|
| Probably we'll see some niche applications in industry after a
| decade of further refinement, but I'm not holding my breath for
| hoverboards any time soon.
| EthanHeilman wrote:
| > I feel like this whole thing is going to be graphene all
| over again. A massive initial hype around "world changing
| tech" that ends up being very difficult and costly to scale
| and produce commercially.
|
| That's kinda how science goes. The first free-electron laser
| was built in 1971. It took decades to develop and
| commercialize free-electron lasers and we still in the early
| days.
|
| It is rare for a single discovery to revolutionize everything
| especially in the 21st century. Typically it is a series of
| discoveries in a row that taken together allow new processes
| and technologies. Each discovery on that road is important.
|
| The short term impacts of discoveries are overestimated, the
| long term impacts are underestimated.
|
| On a 50-100 year time scale, the perception of graphene may
| be very different from what it is now. We are looking at a
| tadpole and saying, I thought these eggs were suppose to
| hatch into frogs, not tadpoles.
| asdfman123 wrote:
| I think the rule of thumb, though, is that most things don't
| turn out to be viable, and then most viable things are only
| barely useful due to constraints. But occasionally they DO
| occasionally come up with world-changing technology.
|
| Dark example, but the atomic bomb for instance was a dramatic
| improvement in our capacity to destroy things: night and day
| difference.
| bilsbie wrote:
| Ok not sure how to phrase this:
|
| Could there be small pieces of RTSC inside the sample (causing
| the floating)
|
| But then enough impurities to not be able to complete a circuit
| through the sample?
|
| And cooling makes other parts of the sample super conducting?
| psychphysic wrote:
| Could be insulated RTP superconducting crystals, grains,
| islands with the bulk being a high temperature superconductor?
| bilsbie wrote:
| Yes exactly.
| overnight5349 wrote:
| It seems likely. Given that the copper atoms prefer to form
| a non-superconducting material, it makes sense that there
| would be regions where the energy is _just right_ to form
| the correct structure, and you get the incorrect structure
| everywhere else.
|
| Given the way crystals grow, it then would follow that
| you'd get discontinuous crystals or grains within the
| material.
|
| If we're taking bets, my money is on this exact thing
| happening. It'd explain the inconsistent results we've seen
| so far.
| klimt wrote:
| This is my first comment on this material, because I've been
| skeptical, but this result shouldn't be understated. It basically
| confirms the existence of a new family of high-temperature
| superconductors, the first of its kind since the cuprates in
| 1986. And for context, in the initial paper on the cuprates the
| critical temperature was measured to be 36 K. By synthesising
| other members of the cuprate family and optimising the growth, it
| was possible to raise it to 127 K in the subsequent few years.
| The 110 K seen today for LK-99 sets a baseline, and it's a very
| good baseline at that. Confirm me as excited.
| danpalmer wrote:
| > It basically confirms the existence of a new family of high-
| temperature superconductors, the first of its kind since the
| cuprates in 1986.
|
| Specifically, it seems, a family based on a novel
| superconductivity mechanism. If this a real effect, there's not
| only significant scope to improve LK-99 synthesis, but also
| scope to find new materials that could use the same mechanism
| that operate at even higher temperatures, are easier or cheaper
| to produce, or that can move more current.
| klimt wrote:
| The jump at 250K looks like bad contacts to me that fixed
| themselves during cooldown. Rewiring the sample and remeasuring
| should get rid of it. The field dependence is indeed a bit
| weird. One would expect the critical temperature to reduce with
| increasing magnetic field (magnetic field weakens
| superconductivity), but here you don't see that. It's expected
| that the superconductivity is very strong for such a high
| critical temperature and the fields applied are not strong
| enough, but with better measurements you should still see a
| small reduction in the critical temperature.
| 999ms wrote:
| TOTK Sky Islands effect is what we're looking for.
| blkhp19 wrote:
| Shouldn't the title say "above 110 K" ?
| bigmattystyles wrote:
| Novice question - does a material behaving as a superconductor
| occur all the sudden like a step function if resistance is
| plotted against temp and pressure - or does it ease into super
| conductor behavior?
|
| (edit) Also is it resistance (aka if I remember my EE degree
| correctly), DC only or also impedance where frequency also
| matters?
| sema2 wrote:
| I do find that interesting... I found a graph of another HTSC's
| (YBCO) resistance vs temperature [1], and the function is much
| more discontinuous looking than the one shown in the article.
| That would lead me (someone not at all trained in the physics
| of superconductors) to believe that perhaps the purity of the
| sample is a factor here, with different parts of the sample
| having different critical temperatures, gradually decreasing
| resistance until an inflection point is reached at 110K.
|
| 1. https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-electrical-
| resistivi...
| [deleted]
| floxy wrote:
| The ResearchGate chart has a linearly scaled y-axis, the
| Southeast University chart has a logarithmic scaled y-axis.
| consilient wrote:
| > (edit) Also is it resistance (aka if I remember my EE degree
| correctly), DC only or also impedance where frequency also
| matters?
|
| Just resistance. Impedance in an ideal BCS superconductor goes
| roughly as the square of the AC frequency.
| weard_beard wrote:
| all at once. It instantaneously expels the magnetic field. You
| can observe experiments on youtube:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RS7gyZJg5nc#t=32m30s
| marcosdumay wrote:
| It's like freezing water.
|
| It happens at a single temperature. It doesn't happen at once,
| there is a small amount of heat you must take from the material
| before it becomes a superconductor. Regions of it become
| superconductors on the process, and those grow until the entire
| material change.
|
| After the change, it becomes a stronger (yes, there is such a
| thing) superconductor the cooler it gets.
|
| (Or, at least that's what happens to the kinds I know about.
| The thing is complex enough that I wouldn't be too surprised to
| learn about one that behaves differently.)
| _0ffh wrote:
| >After the change, it becomes a stronger (yes, there is such
| a thing) superconductor the cooler it gets
|
| Do you mean the tradeoff between temperature, field strength
| and current? Like, if you lower the temperature, the SC will
| be able to handle a stronger field or more current in return?
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Yes.
| guywithabowtie wrote:
| In the video, it says above 110K and not below, I got confused as
| well. I will add that a lot of people are deleting retweeting
| this. May be there is something more to it.
| threatripper wrote:
| It should say "up to 110K".
| WinstonSmith84 wrote:
| The first comment tells (from the professor talking in that
| video):
|
| > In order not to misunderstand everyone, let me say that it is
| below 110K, and 0 resistance is observed at normal pressure.
|
| Google translation, but I think it's clear that it's below and
| not above. At least normal pressure ... that's disappointing
| but still an improvement
| psychphysic wrote:
| I still don't understand what this is saying.
|
| There was 0 resistance below 110 Kelvin (-165celcius)?
|
| But not at room temperature?
| papercrane wrote:
| In their sample they measured no resistance below 110
| Kelvin. After 110 Kelvin resistance increased, although
| there was a weird dip in resistance around 225-250K that
| they can't explain (maybe instrument error.)
| TylerE wrote:
| Yes.
|
| At 110 the resistance is 0.0001 ohms. At the highest point
| on the chart, 200k (Still 100 below 0 F) the resistance is
| up to 0.1 ohm.
| thecopy wrote:
| In the Resistance-Temperature graph (https://twitter.com/Lipez4
| 00/status/1686793608626663441/phot...) the resistance starts
| increasing from 110K
| valine wrote:
| What's the explanation for the sudden drop between 230K and
| 250K? It's not dropping to zero but something is happening
| there.
| BasedAnon wrote:
| perhaps it's an imperfect synthesis?
| jacquesm wrote:
| Or perhaps the _other_ sample was an imperfect
| synthesis...
| tigershark wrote:
| It was exactly one of the point that were criticised in the
| original paper. I think that the supposed Reddit "expert"
| that ridiculed it should really be shamed to apologise to
| the authors. And together with him a lot of other people in
| various other places on the net.
| [deleted]
| jacquesm wrote:
| Yes, very odd. This may be why the original team believes
| they have a superconductor on their hands, but it doesn't
| quite get there and _yet_ it does show the Meissner effect
| so something doesn 't quite add up yet.
| valine wrote:
| Original team had 20 years to play the synthesis lottery.
| Maybe you tweak the setting just enough and that low
| resistance drops to zero. Who knows, I'm still feeling
| optimistic.
|
| He said in the video that their sample was more pure than
| the original paper. Would be wild if some impurity is
| what pushes it over the edge to a full blown super
| conductor.
| jacquesm wrote:
| They weren't quite playing the lottery as much as they
| were taking stacks of tickets and scratching them all off
| one by one to find something that looks like it might be
| a winner. This was very hard work. 100's or even
| thousands of samples.
|
| > Would be wild if some impurity is what pushes it over
| the edge to a full blown super conductor.
|
| I already mentioned this in another comment, but x-rays
| and radioactivity were discovered in that precise way.
| rfoo wrote:
| Note that the team claiming a zero resistance replicate
| at 110K is the same team who said failed to replicate
| Meissner a few days ago. In the latest video they still
| don't think they have observed Meissner.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Yes, true, but other teams say they have so it's a bit of
| a mixed result.
|
| But given some time all of that will resolve. Fascinating
| to see science at work at this level out in the open.
| uj8efdjkfdshf wrote:
| The one interesting thing I should note is that synthesis of the
| copper phosphide intermediate tends to result in a copper
| deficient product, so I wonder if the presence of lattice defects
| in this might have an effect on where the copper atoms
| intercalate in the lattice.
| coryfklein wrote:
| Why are all these materials confirmations coming from Chinese
| speaking scientists? Do scientists in the US not do materials
| science so much?
| tigershark wrote:
| I guess that you can thank the DEA for this specific case...
| username332211 wrote:
| What about European or Japanese scientists? And about Korean
| scientists not part of the original team?
|
| The last should also be able to get their hands on a sample
| provided by the original team and won't have to do
| reproduction attempts, right?
| tigershark wrote:
| Who told you that they are not attempting the reproduction?
| Even US labs are attempting it, some of them explicitly in
| the open like the Argonne National Laboratory. Here you can
| find a non-comprehensive list of reproduction attempts:
| https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/claims-of-room-
| tempe...
| username332211 wrote:
| Oh, so there are finally Korean labs in that list! Last
| time there were 1 American, 1 Indian and 5 Chinese labs
| which I thought very weird. Hopefully the Korean labs can
| get an original sample.
| xdennis wrote:
| The Drug Enforcement Administration? What does that have to
| do with physics?
| anabab wrote:
| This is probably about the fact that red phosphorus
| (required for the original process) cannot be purchased
| without a license (https://nitter.net/andrewmccalip/status/
| 1684191067477004288#...), so kitchen chemists are out of
| the race. Established labs should have less problems
| though.
| norturnn wrote:
| [dead]
| carabiner wrote:
| 996 culture
| hiddencost wrote:
| US does fine; likely in less of a rush to be first-past-the-
| post on announcing results. When the big US labs announce, they
| will likely be more careful and vetted and authoritative.
| SamPatt wrote:
| As I understand it, this is strong evidence of this being a novel
| new superconductor, but not at room temperature.
|
| That's still TBD but hasn't been replicated by anyone reputable
| yet.
| ugh123 wrote:
| The linked video mentions something about "outer space islands"
| in the subtitles. Is that just bad auto-translation or did they
| seriously discover something amazing?
| coolspot wrote:
| They found "islands" of superconductivity on the resistivity
| graph.
| stonemetal12 wrote:
| In American dollars that is -261.67F, a little chilly for room
| temp.
| declan_roberts wrote:
| One point in favor of a novel superconductor material, one
| strike against it being a superconductor at room temperature.
| azernik wrote:
| But on the warm side for a superconductor, and displaying some
| weird behavior just below water ice temperatures.
| zevv wrote:
| https://nitter.net/lipez400/status/1686793608626663441
| QuadrupleA wrote:
| Can someone with field expertise explain the implications if this
| material were real / replicable / cheaply manufacturable? I see a
| lot of breathless excitement in these comments, as if free energy
| and perpetual motion machines are right around the corner, but
| from the few details I've delved into it's more like the electric
| grid might get 10% more efficient, MRIs might get a little
| cheaper, etc.
|
| What are the exciting and apparently obvious applications that
| have everyone so excited? Is it a fusion / tokamak containment
| thing, that the cost of cooling current superconducting magnets
| is one of the big barriers to net energy generation?
| saulrh wrote:
| The BIG change is if this supports high magnetic flux
| densities, in which case literally everything that depends on
| magnetism or magnets or electromagnets gets an order of
| magnitude better - ten times as much power per unit of heat
| disappeared and ten times as much power per unit of mass or
| volume or just ten times more powerful. Remember how battery
| energy density increased by a factor of five (nicads ->
| lithium-ion) and we suddenly had quadcopters and flashlights
| that could burn paper at ten paces and handheld vacuum cleaners
| the size of a soda can that could suck pet hair out of shag
| carpets and cars running off batteries? Imagine that happening
| _again_.
| codedokode wrote:
| Transporting solar energy from deserts.
| ijustlovemath wrote:
| Transmission loss is a real and important reason why you can't,
| say, cover the Sahara with solar panels to get unlimited free
| energy for mainland Europe and Africa (barring all the
| logistical challenges of actually pulling something like that
| off). This is because you lose a significant amount of energy
| just by moving it from one place to another.
|
| With RTP superconductors, you get near perfect transmission
| from the site of energy production to the site of consumption.
| You could put wind turbine in remote sections of Montana and
| power up Chicago, something which previously would have been
| impossible.
| nazgulnarsil wrote:
| Sahara solar panels were economically viable according to
| multiple studies, and there have been some limited plans
| made, but it has turned out politically non viable so far.
| Transmission losses are smaller than often assumed.
| Havoc wrote:
| The fact that result seem to be all over the place has me
| hopeful.
|
| If it was just straight up wrong/fraud it wouldn't be playing out
| like this.
|
| Perhaps with some finetuning we'll nail it down.
| chaimanmeow wrote:
| credibility of LK99 claims is very very high. What are the medium
| term practical implications for all these potential applications?
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| What do you mean? If it's only a superconductor below 110K,
| that's not nearly as significant.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Yes, that's what one team now says: that they have observed
| super conductivity and that this happens at a much lower
| temperature than the one claimed by the other team. But it is
| at ambient pressure and more importantly there are already
| multiple confirmations of the Meissner effect at room
| temperature. Besides that this experiment shows some really
| weird stuff happening at higher temperatures that needs to be
| explained.
|
| So this race is far from run yet.
| Q6T46nT668w6i3m wrote:
| What confirmations?
| ralfd wrote:
| Very informal "leaked" confirmations, but that is the
| current state:
|
| https://twitter.com/elsa17z/status/1686763798294593536?s=
| 20
| ReptileMan wrote:
| 0 applications out of the door but huge leap for material
| science. And some of the best and brightest people will look
| for something deep there.
| BasedAnon wrote:
| increased geopolitical tension
| jacquesm wrote:
| That is an interesting observation and puts words to some
| thoughts that I've had: if it turns out that this is 'the
| real thing' and the patent holds up South Korea is suddenly a
| superpower.
| roboror wrote:
| IP laws--should any even apply--won't prevent any state
| from using this material should the claims be proven true.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Of course it won't. But then I predict that there will be
| a massive impact on IP laws as a construct. Because this
| is the one that counts, if they don't work here they're
| doomed.
| dralley wrote:
| Depends. This feels a bit like the Wright Brothers
| patenting wing warping. It's possible that innovation will
| happen so quickly that the original patents become
| worthless.
|
| Frankly there is also zero chance that the patents are
| respected by all parties (i.e. China), regardless.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Yes, that is a definite possibility.
| brookst wrote:
| I don't think you can patent a material, just the methods
| you use to produce it. And if this is the real thing, there
| are probably dramatically more efficient ways to produce
| than this first step.
| jacquesm wrote:
| I don't think you should be able to, but there is this
| story that I read a while ago that makes it seem like you
| can:
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/35003008
| mjh2539 wrote:
| That doesn't follow at all. Lead and copper aren't
| exclusive to South Korea. The authors get prestige and the
| owners of whatever patents are granted get some money.
| montecarl wrote:
| Carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, phosphorus and sulfur
| make up the bulk of organic molecules and plenty of those
| are covered by world wide patents (drugs).
| jacquesm wrote:
| Of course they aren't. But patent owners get to set the
| terms under which their patents are licensed. It's not
| like the record business where there is a fixed deal and
| if you use someone's lyrics you know up front what it is
| going to cost you. Someone might not even want to do
| business with you at all...
| consilient wrote:
| > But patent owners get to set the terms under which
| their patents are licensed
|
| To private entities, sure. The US government can and will
| force you to grant them a license if necessary.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Yes, except that's the US government and the inventors
| here are in South Korea. I don't think the US would get
| away with declaring 'eminent domain' over something
| invented in a different country. They could choose to
| simply not honor the patent but that will open a massive
| can of worms, especially because a lot of this stuff
| depends on reciprocity: if your government doesn't honor
| our key patents, why should we do the reverse?
| distortionfield wrote:
| It seems more and more like it's credible, but that synthesis
| is going to prove to be the issue. All these repro attempts are
| having too much success for there to be nothing behind the
| team's claims.
| ianburrell wrote:
| We also don't know its critical field strength. The original
| measurement from Korea was low. That could improve as they
| improve synthesis, but could be problem with the material.
| There are lots of high temperature superconductors that
| aren't useful; YBCO is important because of high field
| strength and liquid nitrogen coooling.
|
| I'm sure there are lots of uses for low current room-
| temperature superconductor. But powerful magnets and long-
| distance power transmission require large currents and big
| magnetic fields.
| Q6T46nT668w6i3m wrote:
| Credible? Their claim was "room-temperature
| superconductivity."
| meepmorp wrote:
| It looks like they've at least discovered a novel high
| temperature (relatively speaking), low pressure
| superconductor. That does lend some credibility to the
| original claim, and perhaps reproduction of the result is
| trickier than originally thought.
| Q6T46nT668w6i3m wrote:
| There's a Grand Canyon sized chasm between creating a
| "low pressure superconductor" and creating a room-
| temperature superconductor and, unfortunately, Evel
| Knievel wasn't a co-author.
| monkeynotes wrote:
| Can you explain why -160c is a measure of success when the
| claim was room temperature? A super conductor functioning at
| -160c would make MRIs simpler, but it's not world changing.
| ianburrell wrote:
| I don't think -160C would change much since it would still
| need cryogenic cooling. Liquid nitrogen is the most common
| and cheapest cryogenic. YBCO is liquid nitrogen cooled and
| has the advantage that can make in large quantities and has
| high field strengths.
|
| But if it was slightly warmer, over -153C, then it could
| use non-cryogenic refrigerants.
| BasedAnon wrote:
| because it's a very unexpected result, it shouldn't be
| levitating at room temperature and the random drop in
| resistance at certain temperatures doesn't make sense
| floxy wrote:
| Does anyone know what S.R. Hadden has been up to lately?
| A new high-temperature superconductor seems like the
| perfect cover story for a fraud scheme around room
| temperature superconductors.
| meindnoch wrote:
| Start shorting power companies.
| kaibee wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
| NickM wrote:
| Hypothetically, if we did end up with a worldwide
| superconducting energy grid, this would smooth load, which I
| would expect would make generation cheaper (since we can get
| rid of the need for expensive peaker plants and/or stationary
| storage requirements to handle local demand spikes). This
| would therefore make power companies more profitable, no?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Probably depends on the power company.
|
| The ones with a lot of coal plans would suffer; the ones
| with a bunch of solar/wind farms in prime locations that
| can dramatically expand capacity (think things like giant
| solar farms in the Australian outback) would benefit.
| hadlock wrote:
| HVDC and HVAC transmission lines already only see single
| digit transmission losses over hundreds of miles
|
| This has bigger implications in reducing wiring (and
| weight) costs in things like electric vehicles. Instead
| of fat finger diameter 20' copper cables, you could
| replace them with tooth floss.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > HVDC and HVAC transmission lines already only see
| single digit transmission losses over hundreds of miles
|
| Quite a bit of the world is _thousands_ of miles from
| sunlight at any particular time. Being able to power
| Northern Europe off solar farms in the Sahara has the
| potential to fix a number of challenges with green
| energy.
| 1attice wrote:
| upvoted for the latent pun
| floxy wrote:
| Looks like it still goes superconducting at a magnetic field of 9
| Tesla. Does that seem like a really high critical field?
| klimt wrote:
| YBCO which has a critical temperature of around 90K has a
| critical field in excess of 250T. So 9T is not expected to
| weaken superconductivity much for a sample with a critical
| temperature of 110K.
| e63f67dd-065b wrote:
| The actual video is here:
| https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1pM4y1p7u5
|
| They synthesised 6 samples, only one of which exhibited zero
| resistance at below 110K. They had another sample which had
| almost zero resistance as temperature decreased, which led them
| to the final sample, which their XRD showed as even purer than
| the Korean sample (whatever that means).
|
| Basically, results are inconclusive, but it's promising.
| [deleted]
| manav wrote:
| good not great.
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