xpost from https://lemmy.world/post/2494271
Researchers have discovered a new compound called LK-99 that could enable the fabrication of room-temperature, ambient-pressure superconductors. Two separate sources have provided very preliminary confirmations of this breakthrough, including a simulation indicating it could be possible and a short video from Chinese researchers that seems to indicate some properties of superconductivity.
Holy fucking shit
Edit: Article was disappointing, unfortunately. A roundup of preliminary analyses, including a supercomputer simulation, a Russian amateur claiming to have synthesized it, and a Chinese lab confirming the study. Given the fact that others are having difficulty replicating this, and the other drama surrounding the discovery I’m going to need better proof than this before getting really excited.
Yep. This is one of those world changing tech advances.
Replication is a huge step.
But I temper the excitement with the memory that I read my first The Coming Room Temp Superconductor revolution 30 or so years ago. IIRC it was a cover story in Scientific American in the early 90s.
That said, fuck I hope they have cracked a scalable RTS.
First off, don’t refer to the 90’s as “30” years ago. That’s just rude dude…
Second, yeah this has been an ongoing theme for decades…
Wait, did I get old? What the fuck?!
Nah. No one every gets old… Old is always 10 years older than you are now.
Agreed, I want to believe so bad, but the Meisner effect is so easy to fake with cameras that even video proof doesn’t cut it for me. I guess at this point it’ll take a preprint from a National Lab . Thankfully that won’t take long apparently given how easy this is to synthesize.
The 90s were 30 years ago? Damn.
“The Matrix” was released closer in time to the French Revolution than to today.
Please. Spare me.
GenXer reading this… First time?
actually agree, I copied the summary but it’s more sensational than it should be… I’m excited but I’ve just gone from 1% believing it to 5%, it’s far from confirmed.
considering what it would mean I’m still super excited however… but I’ll edit the summary
the Lawrence Livermore researcher seeming to post a simulation that supports it pushes me toward the “it’s real” camp, but yeah someone needs to recreate this thing, if it can’t be replicated from the paper then it’s worthless, even if the original sample really is a rtsc
Admittedly this isn’t anywhere near my field of expertise, but I do have some background in computer-aided drug design. Supercomputers are incredible tools, but they’re no slam dunk. Lots of candidates they propose don’t pan out in testing.
There’s moderate consensus that there’s a theoretical basis that this material should be an interesting candidate for a high temperature superconductor but is not a favourable output of the recipe used to make it.
Additionally there are now 4 independent reports (including the original and a highly prestigious chinese university) of it exhibiting diamagnetic properties (with no theoretical basis for non-superconducting diamagnetism).
This is more than enough evidence to say that the most reasonable interpretation is a room temperature superconducting material that sucks and is hard to make.
Upgrading that to a high confidence claim that the original research is reproduced will take a few weeks at least, so no super excitent yet, but the claim is fairly solid.
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Cool edit, i came to read some comments in between reading the article cause I got bored, finished the article and saw your edit. Agreed.
Ars has a interesting article about it and from what it said it’s not as easy to fabricate as everyone claims. The process is simple but very random and imprecise. It’s possible that you can get a superconductor this way but only sometimes and in parts of the crystal. This will make confirmation difficult and makes it sound even more like BS (“it works for me, you’re doing it wrong…”).