The First Room-Temperature Ambient-Pressure Superconductor?

[necrovore]

https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.12008

Looks like three researchers in South Korea have discovered the holy grail of superconductivity.

I saw this on Hacker News. People in the Hacker News comments seem to think it should be relatively simple to confirm or not, and might take a week or so. If it is independently confirmed, it will be big.

If it is not confirmed, it will be the next Cold Fusion.

I think it's exciting, but these days I worry that, if it works, it will fall into the wrong hands, like Project X (the one in Atlas Shrugged, not the Elon Musk one).

[StrictlyLogical]

interesting

Edited July 26, 2023 by StrictlyLogical

[Grames]

meh.  Sounds too good to be true.   But if it is a fraud it is too dumb to believe because synthesizing the material is relatively easy and the experiment will be performed by others very soon.   So something is there but perhaps it is just a large diamagnetic effect.   

 

[Boydstun]

Quote

 

Several details in the South Korean team’s preprint papers have raised concern. James Hamlin, a physicist at the University of Florida, points out oddities in a measurement of LK-99’s magnetic properties that gave him pause. “It doesn't really look much like my experience of measuring” these properties, he says.

Doug Natelson, a physicist at Rice University, spontaneously spotted something even stranger while going over the preprints during an interview for this story. Both papers include a data plot detailing LK-99’s magnetic properties. Both plots were sourced from the same dataset and should thus be identical—but the plot in one paper has a y-axis with a scale that is about 7,000 times larger than the other. This kind of inconsistency does not prove anything, but at minimum, it suggests a worrisome shortfall in proofreading. Scientific American reached out to the South Korean team for comment but did not receive a response by the time of this story’s publication.

Getting definitive answers about what’s really happening in LK-99 demands patience, as eager independent teams attempt to replicate the South Korean team’s work. Because the recipe for LK-99’s synthesis is straightforward, results could come in the next few days or weeks.

 

27 July 2023

[necrovore]

I've read reports that the paper was published to Arxiv without permission, which may explain why it has errors.

I've also read that Argonne National Laboratories is among those trying to reproduce the results.

[EC]

There's another way to do this but I won't go into the details here but it was discussed in an article in the 19fortyfive online magazine involving technology that is being "secretly" held by the Navy.

Edited July 30, 2023 by EC

[EC]

1 hour ago, EC said:

There's another way to do this but I won't go into the details here but it was discussed in an article in the 19fortyfive online magazine involving technology that is being "secretly" held by the Navy.

I point this out specifically because I had previously reached the same idea for the process for room temperature conductivity that was outlined in the Navy documents but had never spoke of it then read that a few years years back and learned they had a patent for both that and another technology I had independently already thought of in the same paper.

Edited July 31, 2023 by EC

[EC]

This: https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2019/02/if-these-us-navy-patents-are-made-then-we-are-in-a-star-trek-technology-world.html

The specific article I meant with all the Navy documents seems to have been deleted from the internet or at least a Google search. Doesn't surprise me lol 

[necrovore]

Another article summing up what has been discovered so far: https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/room-temperature-superconductor-new-developments

[necrovore]

So far it looks like it has not panned out. Lots of people made the material, some observed diamagnetism, none observed superconductivity (as far as I have heard).

When the liquid-nitrogen superconductors were discovered, they were much easier to replicate.

[StrictlyLogical]

How could it come to this?

 

Korean Air Flight 801

"Save face" of (and for) your superiors... don't speak up.

Publish anyway...

crash and burn.

[necrovore]

Research is still going on:

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/research-on-lk-99-continues-paper-says-superconductivity-could-be-possible

[necrovore]

Even more: https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.00999

[AlexL]

4 hours ago, necrovore said:

Even more: https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.00999

The previous hype about a new room temperature superconductor - LK99 - is only 5 months old. It was proven false only one month later.

As it was for the LK-99 claim, there is no report of an experiment showing that the resistivity of the new material drops to zero at a certain temperature.

But OK, the authors write, cautiously, "possible"...

[necrovore]

Thomas Edison made thousands of failed attempts before he got a working light bulb...

[AlexL]

23 minutes ago, necrovore said:

Thomas Edison made thousands of failed attempts before he got a working light bulb...

Yes, and so did the authors of this study and those of the LK99 study, but without finding the right substance.

But, obviously, it was not proved theoretically that superconductivity at normal temperatures and pressures is NOT possible, so that the quest continues.

[tadmjones]

Proof doesn't come from theories, and I don't think there are any normal temperatures or pressures.

Surface of the earth substances and enviros is a very specific and relatively minuscule range compared to a cosmic landscape.

It might be easier to train charge or electron flow to be agnostic to resistivity, than to produce a substance that instantiates the requisite properties in such a specific range.

Edited January 4 by tadmjones

[AlexL]

6 minutes ago, tadmjones said:

Proof doesn't come from [...]

Does this refer to something I wrote? If it does, what exactly do you dispute?

[tadmjones]

41 minutes ago, AlexL said:

Does this refer to something I wrote? If it does, what exactly do you dispute?

 

13 hours ago, AlexL said:

 

But, obviously, it was not proved theoretically that superconductivity at normal temperatures and pressures is NOT possible, so that the quest continues.

Do you mean that something can be 'proved' theoretically, or was 'obviously' meant as a double entendre so to speak ?

[AlexL]

2 hours ago, tadmjones said:

3 hours ago, AlexL said:

Does this refer to something I wrote? If it does, what exactly do you dispute?

15 hours ago, AlexL said:

But, obviously, it was not proved theoretically that superconductivity at normal temperatures and pressures is NOT possible, so that the quest continues.

Do you mean that something can be 'proved' theoretically, or was 'obviously' meant as a double entendre so to speak ?

1. First about "obviously"

The obviousness of the fact that "it was not proved theoretically that superconductivity at normal temperatures and pressures is NOT possible" results from:

- simply looking at the Wiki's article on Superconductivity and verifying that no such theory is mentioned,

- and also from the fact that the search for superconductive materials at normal temperatures and pressures is quite intense.

If there were an (established) theory claiming this is NOT possible, the search would have been only marginal, or inexistent.

Here is a parallel with another, a somewhat simpler domain in physics: the claim that the speed of light is the upper limit of possible velocities for physical entities.

This claim is both an observational fact and the result of a theory (the Special Theory of Relativity). SR is an extremely well established theory, in the sense that it, and its consequences, is/are confirmed by literally billions of experiments (millions per day from particle accelerators).

The fact that there is a very well established theory proving  the impossibility of superluminal objects is the reason that the search for superluminal objects is only marginal, extremely marginal. Before the SR and its confirmation the search was quite intense.

2. Now the second point, "Do you mean that something can be 'proved' theoretically?"

If the context is mathematics, than it is the case: something can be proved theoretically and is done all the time.

But our context is physics, a science about nature. The previous point suggests that it is also the case in physics, but only mutatis mutandis, that is taking into account that physics deals with real objects, whose properties have yet to be established (vs. artificial constructs with fully given a priory properties, as in math).

Do you have questions at this (intermediary) point?

(Note for me: theory vs hypothesis, scientific theory)

Edited January 4 by AlexL

[tadmjones]

Nope no questions.

[AlexL]

1 hour ago, tadmjones said:

Nope no questions.

But are you still interested? Should I continue?

PS: Please link your answer to my post (by quoting it) so that I am notified that you posted an answer.

Edited January 4 by AlexL

[necrovore]

The study of reality leads to theories. Theories lead to predictions (hopefully testable). If the predictions are tested and are accurate, the theory is validated in those instances. If the predictions are wrong, we need a new theory.

[tadmjones]

31 minutes ago, AlexL said:

But are you still interested? Should I continue?

I don’t think it is necessary. I think I understand how you are using the terms. As long as it is agreed theory is not proof and only identified aspects of the ‘really real’ are proof.

That we don’t mistake the map for the terrain , or try and pull the terrain ‘out of the map’.

That the science of physics is about building models in order to predict the behavior of nature, and that the theories are always only models of nature and the proof of a theory is how closely it apprehends nature(the really real, objective realit).

Edited January 4 by tadmjones
Added last paragrah