Studies, research findings, and interesting tidbits from the ever-expanding scientific world.
Subcommunities on Beehaw:
Be sure to also check out these other Fediverse science communities:
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
Big doubt. People have self-published shit like this a lot over the past decade or two. Usually it turns out to be a measurement error if it goes anywhere at all. Post again when this is peer-reviewed.
Edit: A month on, here's Nature's autopsy. The big question for me is why this one went viral when most USOs just fade into obscurity.
If would be one hell of an error, if so, to get measurements across several different properties and temperature ranges that were all consistent with superconductivity.
But even if true, we can make lots of things in very small quantities in laboratories that are far too expensive for practical manufacture. That's where engineering will come in.
If would be one hell of an error, if so, to get measurements across several different properties and temperature ranges that were all consistent with superconductivity.
You're right, maybe it's fraud, at least partly.
I understand it's very hard to measure the conductivity of a microscopic crystal attached to other different crystals, which is why a lot of less-than-solid claims about high-temperature superconductors get made.
Here's a video of a macroscopic piece of the material magnetically levitating.
Sure, it could be faked, but that would be a bit more than the usual "massaged the numbers a bit to discover a really small effect" stuff.
At first sight, it looks fake:
As I said, it could be faked. But that fakery would involve a very deliberate premeditated fraud and when it is found out (as it will be in short order with something this extreme) the three researchers involved in this would be completely ruined. What are they gaining out of this that would be worth it?
Also, if they're rigging up a complete fake, why would they half-ass it? If your first take has the fake superconductor fall down why not delete that one and do another take where it doesn't?
I'm not saying this video is proof, I'm saying that this is not some Em-drive situation where the results are so fine and fiddly that it's only barely peeking through the data and it could be a result of tiny errors and wishing really hard. The comment I was responding to was talking about how difficult it is to measure the properties of microscopic crystals and I was pointing out that this is a big ol' chunk of stuff being poked around with the tip of a finger and hovering millimeters over a magnet. This is going to be straightforward to verify.
Edit: Found the companion article that's specifically about the levitating sample.
I see.
Reading the article, it seems to be on one hand promising, but on the other the characteristics of the material seem to be somewhat flimsy, and they seem to have made a few different samples then modified them between tests.
The final result of becoming an ohmic metal at 127C, with at least a couple orders or magnitude jump, seems to be consistent, so that's something. The behavior below 127C though, looks kind of iffy. Maybe because they tried different manufacturing and processing methods, maybe because of the different breakdowns they describe in the article... which they don't fully describe reversing, so it gives the impression of being a borderline one-way only superconductor that starts conducting at about 25C, and in a real world application could lead to a cascade effect from there. There seem to be no recovery behavior tests either, which could be understood for an initial paper, but is a pity not to have them.
The measurements they show on the graphs, are for very low voltages and intensities, so that maybe could explain why the piece on video fell down (lost superconductivity due to overheating), then sprung back up (when it cooled down). Or maybe they just blew on it to cool it down enough (which would be interesting on itself). The material structure transitions are somewhat complex, and happen basically all over the range from -75C to about 50C, changing its characteristics.
You're right, this seems much more solid than the Em-drive case. It needs better reproducibility and better characterisation, but otherwise looks promising for at least some applications.
Welp, here's Nature delivering the verdict. Pretty much on the schedule I expected, and here's the update I'd promised myself I'd do.
LK-99's amazing properties are Cu2S's amazing properties. It's a chunk of stuff with embedded copper sulphide. Like I said, it's hard to verify the properties of one material mixed in with other materials, and in this case they didn't even try very hard.
Here the microscopic crystals were the impurities not the "superconductor", but it's the same issue.
Sadly, yeah, this appears to be a solid case against LK-99.
But this is all I ever wanted. This is not validation for all the negative-nellies who were instantly dumping all over the possibility that LK-99 could have been superconductive before these further tests were done. When these sorts of apparent breakthroughs are made the proper response is to do as these people publishing in Nature did - take it seriously enough to actually check it out. That's the only way to avoid missing out on the actual breakthroughs.
Oh yeah, replication is critical. If it had been real this would have changed everything, even more than reported. Higher temperature superconducters can carry more current and withstand stronger fields than lower temperature ones, so a RTSC might be able to replace Li-ion batteries as well. They probably should have done a more rigorous test if they thought they really had something; most of these USOs don't get replicated because nobody has the funding to spend time on them, they basically got lucky it went viral.
This is not validation for all the negative-nellies who were instantly dumping all over the possibility that LK-99 could have been superconductive before these further tests were done.
I'm in this picture. Like I said, it's far from the first time. It's pretty much the same as a guy claiming he saw bigfoot, you can't prove him wrong until you search the same patch of forest, but it's a lot of effort to do that after 1000 unsuccessful searches and I think it's entirely valid to just go "yeah right, give me more evidence before I bother".
If it's 1000 unsuccessful searches for the same thing, then sure, I wouldn't have much hope for search #1001. But LK-99 was a new material of a type that hadn't come up in this context before, and there's no reason to assume that room-temperature superconductivity is literally impossible.
Heck, the Em drive had plenty of reason to think it was literally impossible, and IMO it was still worth the effort that went into checking it out. We've been wrong about impossibilities before.
I think the main thing that bothered me is that for a lot of people it wasn't "give me more evidence before I bother”. It was "give me more evidence before anyone else should bother." They seemed outright hostile to the notion that we should be checking this out, often jumping straight to "it's a scam, they're trying to do a fraud." It doesn't sound like you were in that camp so you're probably not in that picture after all. Perhaps just a bit out of frame to the side, but that's okay. :)
That behaviour looks pretty normal for a Type-I superconductor, the "locking on" you are referencing is a property of Type-2 Superconductors. For more information search Meißner-Ochsenfeld Effect (ideal diamagnetism, type 1 SC) and flux pinning (type 2)
I have a fair bit of experience with superconductivity and the submitted manuscript on arXiv looks solid, I didnt notice anything suspicious
Edit: the falling down may be because the material is not superconductive throughout, it looks like it falls down, rotates because of the magnetic field (maybe the non superconductive phase is magnetic?) then pops back up because the magnetic field of the magnet is once again strong enough to lift the sample (the Meißner effect dispels the field inside the Superconducter by generating shielding currents just below the surface, thus "mirroring" the field of the permanent magnet)
I reserve my skepticism. Seriously, I've personally watched these papers roll in and then disappear for over a decade.
It's also not promising it's out of East Asia, judging by the Korean names, which has a bit of a problem with academic dishonesty right now.
What about the video?
I haven't watched it, but I'm not sure how you'd visually prove it's actually the material in question, so it could still be a hoax like all the others.
Replication is literally the only evidence I haven't hardened to after all the error and fraud that's come through.
Some commentary on the paper:
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/breaking-superconductor-news
It's interesting that so many are in a hurry to doubt. Give it a couple of weeks for tries at replication and you'll know for sure. I suppose the first to call BS wins the "I told you so" award. Whereas, if true, it's a Nobel.