this post was submitted on 02 Aug 2023
273 points (97.2% liked)
Technology
59436 readers
3552 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
From reading through the article and it's sources, here's what seems to be the case:
a simulation at Berkely National Labs with their supercomputing capabilities has verified that LK-99 theoretically has superconducting properties
Argonne National Labs also seems to be involved and doing stuff, but nothing official from them yet, besides maybe helping with simulation stuff
a Russian scientist is working on improving the synthesis process and has made some low purity samples that produce the Messnier effect, but higher purity than the original I think. It's all from Twitter (x) threads and a little hard to follow. Her handle is @iris_IGB
China National Lab (Shenyang) first principles analysis suggest gold and silver doping LK-99 will make superconductors as well. [Directly copied from article]
Under the guidance of Professor Chang Haixin, postdoctoral Wu Hao and doctoral student Yang Li of the School of Materials Science and Technology of Huazhong University of Science and Technology they have successfully verified and synthesized the LK-99 crystal. It can be magnetically levitated for the first time and this is shown on a bilibili video. They expect to realize the true sense of non-contact superconducting magnetic levitation. [Also Directly copied from article]
Direct source for last 2 points and also more info in general
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2023/07/tracking-lk-99-superconductor-replication-efforts.html
I would say with 95 percent confidence that: it's real bois!
A few caveats however: according to the simulation, the conductive pathways only forms when the copper bonds to a specific higher-energy spot in the crystal, so getting higher purities will likely need a fair amount of innovation on the production process. There are some other complications with the synthesis, so even if it is fully and properly confirmed with more papers and such it will still likely be a while before it can start to be used effectively.
thank you!
this almost seems like it could be something ๐ฌ
No, not really. You can tell by his "95% confidence" quip where he tries to make his opinion sound scientific.
I hope this works, but there's more reason to be skeptical than positive. There have been an awful lot of replication failures.
Wait until it's reproduced somewhere outside of a simulation or China. People are working on it, because if one in a hundred of these seemingly bogus claims turns out to be true, the 99 wasted efforts will still have been worth it.