The First Room-Temperature Ambient-Pressure Superconductor has been found

[Bananasplit_00]

1 hour ago, jagdtigger said:

That thin material wont have much of a current carrying capacity even if it has very low resistance, my chemical knowledge is quite a bit tarnished but that thin alloy layer will get saturated with electrons at some point......

The link provided with the tape stackup you quoted says 600A at it's maximum operational temperature.

 

Also there isn't a "very low resistance", it's zero. Like none. 0 ohm. Meaning no resistive loss and therefore no self heating.

 

Superconductivity is pretty epic

[GarlicDeliverySystem]

1 hour ago, jagdtigger said:

That thin material wont have much of a current carrying capacity even if it has very low resistance, my chemical knowledge is quite a bit tarnished but that thin alloy layer will get saturated with electrons at some point......

The thin layer doesn't have just low resistance, it has virtually zero resistance apart from a few defects. Stated critical currents at 77K are specified to be between above 85A and in excess of 550A. At 20K and 5T critical currents are estimated between 257A and 1990A, depending on the exact version.

Considering the material is tens of microns thick and 12mm wide, this would mean at 50microns the area is ~0.6mm2. So between 140 and 900 A/mm2 at 77K (LN2 temperatures) or 3300A/mm2 at 20K and 5T (LHe would be 4K, but likely higher field). By comparison NbTi is also up to 3000A/mm2.

 

However, this is one of the reasons people are still sceptical: even if it is a superconductor at RT, it seems the critical current density is tiny for LK99. So we'd either need to cool it more, or it would need to be improved a lot. The latter is not out of the question, depending on further results, as things like grain boundaries and doping/stoichiometry can significantly affect performance (like oxygen content in the cuprates).

 

[HarryNyquist]

45 minutes ago, GarlicDeliverySystem said:

this is one of the reasons people are still sceptical

Skepticism in science is good, as is people trying to test the concept.

 

I'm glad so many people appear to be testing this out, it could be huge, or it could be another fraud publishing for clout, but either way it'd be good to see.

[CarlBar]

15 hours ago, Kisai said:

Doesn't change the fact that nearly the entirety of their produced content, on topics they know care nothing about just for rage clicks. A broken clock can be right twice a day.

 

In theory, everyone is a nice person. Person in question is definitely not one of them. He has a degree in chemistry but spends his time rage farming creationists. Any fool with an internet-connected device, can be a critic about anything.  Dunking on creationist blowhards, is a pretty tiny hurdle that only produces negative feedback loops and gives those people exactly what they want. 

 

 

 

I've avoided his stuff vis a vi creationists and instead ran into him via videos on a bunch of Space X/Elon Musk stuff. So actual science topics. I hear you on the clickbait aspects, but you can still present in an aggressive style and have good underlying science. And a lot of the theory he was quoting was rock solid. But theroy often has caveats to it's usage you have to be careful to remember, generally it's done in the classroom/theoretical physics with basic assumptions that never apply in reality, but are the norm in the classroom.

 

His entire spiel about what would happen to a hyperloop train car in the event of a tube breech is based on a whole bunch of common assumptions and what he outlines as his take is exactly what a theoretical physics teacher setting it as a problem for their students would expect to get as a result from said students. Unfortunately the assumptions he's using are bad, but he seems oblivious to the issue, which if he's unused to the differences between classroom theory and real world use case is perfectly reasonable.

 

Doesn't make his conclusions any less bad, but he's not wrong because he's deliberately trying to be wrong to produce outrage.

 

47 minutes ago, GarlicDeliverySystem said:

The thin layer doesn't have just low resistance, it has virtually zero resistance apart from a few defects. Stated critical currents at 77K are specified to be between above 85A and in excess of 550A. At 20K and 5T critical currents are estimated between 257A and 1990A, depending on the exact version.

Considering the material is tens of microns thick and 12mm wide, this would mean at 50microns the area is ~0.6mm2. So between 140 and 900 A/mm2 at 77K (LN2 temperatures) or 3300A/mm2 at 20K and 5T (LHe would be 4K, but likely higher field). By comparison NbTi is also up to 3000A/mm2.

 

However, this is one of the reasons people are still sceptical: even if it is a superconductor at RT, it seems the critical current density is tiny for LK99. So we'd either need to cool it more, or it would need to be improved a lot. The latter is not out of the question, depending on further results, as things like grain boundaries and doping/stoichiometry can significantly affect performance (like oxygen content in the cuprates).

 

 

Also if it pans out we can't be sure how much of the low current density is down to small scale flaws in the material.

[starsmine]

talking about wires just seems premature all together as if the 16 gauge wire format is the only thing we need conductivity for. There are dozens of other use cases a ceramic can be used for. And the concept of how this ceramic was made opens the door to other possible chemistries not yet tried. 

[LAwLz]

I decided to look into this again today since it's been a few days. So far, the results aren't looking that promising.

I've only been able to find two people/universities that claim to have partially been able to replicate the results, although even then it's only a very small part that was replicated.

 

Someone posted some WeChat screenshots and the claim is that they are from someone at the Huazhong University. The screenshots claim that they have done two tests so far and are currently doing their third test. The first two tests showed some magnetizing properties but they were not able to get the Meissner effect (floating rock). They are doing their tests again because they suspect that their samples might not be pure enough. Here is a blog post about the screenshots and claims.

 

The other source is some random Twitter user that claims to have been able to create a small speck of it pure enough to properly show the Meissner effect. They also posted a picture of it here. But that is easy to fake so who knows if it's real or not.

 

 

So those are the two that claim to have partially been successful in replicating it.

Here are the ones who claims to have failed in trying to replicate it:

 

The national physical laboratory of India has made two attempts and failed. Although they used an altered recipe which should in theory have the same results. 

 

Someone else from the Huazhong university have done 4 attempts and all of them failed, according to some screenshots I saw on Twitter. 

 

Some professor at the southeast university made 8 samples that seems to match the x-ray data shown in the paper, but they are not superconductive.

 

 

 

There seem to be at least 7 more organizations/people trying to replicate the results right now. It will probably be a few more days before we get the results from those.

Here is the page I used to find these tests.

 

 

Edit:

Here is a very similar list to the one posted above. A list of currently running experiments.

Regardless of the outcome, this seems like an interesting material. Judging by all the failures so far and supposed successes (the speck from the Twitter user and the small piece in the original video), it seems like it's fairly safe to say that it is currently hard to produce in larger pieces. The part in the video was somewhat big but showed clear signs of having non-superconductive parts. So chances are only a fairly small piece of it was pure enough to be superconductive.

Since the paper seemed to have been published prematurely and fairly sloppily (maybe as an attempt to steal one of the three Nobel price spots) the "real" paper might contain a lot more details.

 

In any case, a few (or even many) failures to replicate this might not mean that it's fake. It might just mean that we (may or may not include the Korean team) don't understand how the material is created, and thus ends up with many failed attempts to create it. If 100 different people try and bake a cake according to a recipe, but none of the measurements and ratios were included, then most cakes would turn out to be terrible. Someone might accidentally get the measurements somewhat correct though.

 

I've read that the piece they showed in the video (which might be the only working piece) was created when they accidentally dropped and cracked a tube during the heating process. So it might be a combination of vibrations (from the drop), with the oxidation (the cracked tube) at a specific temperature (the heating process) that resulted in the material being created. That might be extremely hard to replicate, but with enough attempts and studying we might figure it out.

The Korean team is open to having third parties examine the piece they got. Hopefully, that happens soon.

 

 

In other news, another team called Taj Quantum was recently granted a patent for their room-temperature superconductor. They are making a lot of bold claims on Twitter about it. However, this seems extremely sketchy to me. Their website is full of buzzwords and I wouldn't be surprised if they are full of BS. Hopefully I am wrong, but if I had to bet I'd bet on the Korean team being legit and Taj being bogus. But who knows, maybe both are legit.

[jagdtigger]

9 hours ago, Bananasplit_00 said:

The link provided with the tape stackup you quoted says 600A at it's maximum operational temperature.

Yeah, marketing at its finest i reckon. Will see, we had so many breakthroughs so many times on so many fields and none of them ever materialized as a viable product. In the meantime ill keep pressing the doubt button.

[bcredeur97]

5 hours ago, LAwLz said:

-snip-

 

In any case, a few (or even many) failures to replicate this might not mean that it's fake. It might just mean that we (may or may not include the Korean team) don't understand how the material is created, and thus ends up with many failed attempts to create it. If 100 different people try and bake a cake according to a recipe, but none of the measurements and ratios were included, then most cakes would turn out to be terrible. Someone might accidentally get the measurements somewhat correct though.

 

I've read that the piece they showed in the video (which might be the only working piece) was created when they accidentally dropped and cracked a tube during the heating process. So it might be a combination of vibrations (from the drop), with the oxidation (the cracked tube) at a specific temperature (the heating process) that resulted in the material being created. That might be extremely hard to replicate, but with enough attempts and studying we might figure it out.

The Korean team is open to having third parties examine the piece they got. Hopefully, that happens soon.

I've watched enough NileRed/NileBlue on youtube to understand this, lol. 

It's surprising how hard some of that stuff is to get right! Even when you have the paper

[Uttamattamakin]

Summary

Last week it was claimed that a material that would be superconducting at  normal room temperature and pressure has been found.  This substance known as LK-99 was alleged to be superconducting at normal atmospheric pressure and "room temperatures.  This would mean being able to say, make a superconducting power grid that could transport electricity without loss, or cheap superconducting magnets for maglev vehicles or particle accelerators etc. 

 

Two formal scientific efforts to reproduce the result have been reported on in formal papers submitted to the physics arXiv. (One of if not the oldest such archive of open access science on the internet.)   So far the results are negative.

 

Quotes

These are the abstracts of the papers

Kapil Kumar, N.K. Karn, V.P.S. Awana:

Quote

The quest for room-temperature superconductors has been teasing scientists and physicists, since its inception in 1911 itself. Several assertions have already been made about room temperature superconductivity but were never verified or reproduced across the labs. The cuprates were the earliest high transition temperature superconductors, and it seems that copper has done the magic once again. Last week, a Korean group synthesized a Lead Apatite-based compound LK-99, showing a Tc of above 400∘K. The signatures of superconductivity in the compound are very promising, in terms of resistivity (R = 0) and diamagnetism at Tc. Although, the heat capacity (Cp) did not show the obvious transition at Tc. Inspired by the interesting claims of above room temperature superconductivity in LK-99, in this article, we report the synthesis of polycrystalline samples of LK-99, by following the same heat treatment as reported in [1,2] by the two-step precursor method. The phase is confirmed through X-ray diffraction (XRD) measurements, performed after each heat treatment. The room temperature diamagnetism is not evidenced by the levitation of a permanent magnet over the sample or vice versa. Further measurements for the confirmation of bulk superconductivity on variously synthesized samples are underway. Our results on the present LK-99 sample, being synthesized at 925∘C, as of now do not approve the appearance of bulk superconductivity at room temperature. Further studies with different heat treatments are though, yet underway.

 

 

Li Liu, Ziang Meng, Xiaoning Wang, et al : 

Quote

The very recent claim on the discovery of ambient-pressure room-temperature superconductivity in modified lead-apatite has immediately excited sensational attention in the entire society, which is fabricated by sintering lanarkite (Pb2SO5) and copper(I) phosphide (Cu3P). To verify this exciting claim, we have successfully synthesized Pb2SO5, Cu3P, and finally the modified lead-apatite Pb10-xCux(PO4)6O. Detailed electrical transport and magnetic properties of these compounds were systematically analyzed. It turns out that Pb2SO5 is a highly insulating diamagnet with a room-temperature resistivity of ~7.18x10^9 this http URL and Cu3P is a paramagnetic metal with a room-temperature resistivity of ~5.22x10^-4 this http URL. In contrast to the claimed superconductivity, the resulting Pb10-xCux(PO4)6O compound sintered from Pb2SO5 and Cu3P exhibits semiconductor-like transport behavior with a large room-temperature resistivity of ~1.94x10^4 this http URL although our compound shows greatly consistent x-ray diffraction spectrum with the previously reported structure data. In addition, when a pressed Pb10-xCux(PO4)6O pellet is located on top of a commercial Nd2Fe14B magnet at room temperature, no repulsion could be felt and no magnetic levitation was observed either. These results imply that the claim of a room-temperature superconductor in modified lead-apatite may need more careful re-examination, especially for the electrical transport properties.

 

My thoughts

In writing a thread about an effort to stream most of the process and the final testing of this claim on Twitch I expressed my thoughts.   They are unchanged since the fundamental physics is not. 
 

Every time you hear a claim about a game changer like this, there is a 99.5% chance it is an overclaim and will never be reproduced.  From Cold fusion to super conductivity, to aliens.   All these things are within the laws of physics but observing them is unlikely. 

Superconductivity has been seen at very low temperatures for a long time.  Super conductivity has also been shown to exist at high pressures.  The problem is this make it not especially useful outside of very specific applications.  i.e. the Superconducting magnets in a particle accelerator.   That and other very science tech things.   Not something that could transmit power to your house without loss. 

The reason it is so hard is that superconductivity relies on pairs of electrons forming.  When these electrons form pairs.  Electrons are Fermions, particles with a property called spin, that comes in quantities  of + ℏ/2 and -ℏ/2  (If ℏ is set =1 then +1/2 -1/2). As such these obey something called the Pauli Exclusion Principle.  They can't be in the same principal quantum state at the same time, in the same place ... They are what we think of as matter.  When these pair up their spins will cancel to 0.   Particles with a spin of 0,1, or 2 are what are called Bosons.  So, things like the Higgs field (spin 0), Photons (spin 1) and gravitons (spin 2 theoretically), which can be in the same state, at the same time, in the same place.  These are particles we think of as energy.   

When electrons form a Cooper pair, they can conduct through the super conductor with 0 resistance due in part to the spin of the pair being 0.  The pair will act as if it was a boson.  A similar effect has been observed in Helium 3 where pairs of atoms would form, and we'd see fluid flow with no internal viscosity. 

There is a lot of evidence for these things close to 0 Kelvin. 

There is some evidence for them at 10,000 atmospheres of pressure. 

 

This claim for 273 ish Kelvin and 1 atm of pressure ... is extraordinary.  If they are right they have Nobel prize.
SO far they do not seem to have been right. 

 

This video has video of that supposed superconductor being tested, and you can see why we are skeptical. 

A good point made by the ones trying to reproduce this and stream  the events on Twitch. 

 

 

Sources

Synthesis of possible room temperature superconductor LK-99:Pb9Cu(PO4)6O
Kapil Kumar, N.K. Karn, V.P.S. Awana (CSIR PL,INDIA)  https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.16402

 

Semiconducting transport in Pb10-xCux(PO4)6O sintered from Pb2SO5 and Cu3P
Li Liu, Ziang Meng, Xiaoning Wang, Hongyu Chen, Zhiyuan Duan, Xiaorong Zhou, Han Yan, Peixin Qin, Zhiqi Liu https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.16802

Edited August 1, 2023 by Uttamattamakin
Wanted to bold the key parts of the abstracts. Yeah that's the summary of the articles. They're long.

[CarlBar]

3 hours ago, jagdtigger said:

Yeah, marketing at its finest i reckon. Will see, we had so many breakthroughs so many times on so many fields and none of them ever materialized as a viable product. In the meantime ill keep pressing the doubt button.

 

You do realise that stuff is actually being used in various applications. This isn't some marketing claim. Thats the technical specification it's actually being used at.

 

6 hours ago, LAwLz said:

In any case, a few (or even many) failures to replicate this might not mean that it's fake. It might just mean that we (may or may not include the Korean team) don't understand how the material is created, and thus ends up with many failed attempts to create it. If 100 different people try and bake a cake according to a recipe, but none of the measurements and ratios were included, then most cakes would turn out to be terrible. Someone might accidentally get the measurements somewhat correct though.

 

I've read that the piece they showed in the video (which might be the only working piece) was created when they accidentally dropped and cracked a tube during the heating process. So it might be a combination of vibrations (from the drop), with the oxidation (the cracked tube) at a specific temperature (the heating process) that resulted in the material being created. That might be extremely hard to replicate, but with enough attempts and studying we might figure it out.

The Korean team is open to having third parties examine the piece they got. Hopefully, that happens soon.

 

I've heard they, (the Korean team), have gotten good pieces before, but even they only get an effet about 1 time in 10. The big piece is just the biggest they got so far.

 

Also the timeline i've seen on events indicates that two of the researchers came across/up with the concept, (quite some time ago as Undergrads, but the death of their professor brought an end to the work before they were really able to investigate), but didn't have the clout in the scientific community to get the funding and lab space they needed so they partnered with some more well known University professor. They've then been working on this for a few years now and as soon as they got this big chunk the Professor has gone out and published about it without permission of the other two, he's since been kicked off the team.

 

But it really sounds like they were only about halfway through their research phase on this stuff and would probably have held off on publishing until they had a more definitive set of results and a better procedure at some future date if the professor hadn't done his thing.

 

6 hours ago, LAwLz said:

In other news, another team called Taj Quantum was recently granted a patent for their room-temperature superconductor. They are making a lot of bold claims on Twitter about it. However, this seems extremely sketchy to me. Their website is full of buzzwords and I wouldn't be surprised if they are full of BS. Hopefully I am wrong, but if I had to bet I'd bet on the Korean team being legit and Taj being bogus. But who knows, maybe both are legit.

 

They're BS'ing. They where a crypto firm until a few days ago with no sign of having done any research in the area before. Scammers trying to cash in on the current hype.

[Kisai]

52 minutes ago, bcredeur97 said:

It's surprising how hard some of that stuff is to get right! Even when you have the paper

Baking a cake is one part chemistry, one part engineering. Look at how many recipes assume you have certain appliances available. Like there is an assumption about baking a cake that everyone who has made a cake, learns, that you will never see in a recipie, and that is "Do not disturb the cake once put in the oven, it will collapse in on itself", which means telling the kids to go outside to play so they don't stomp around.

 

I will admit up front that Chemistry is not a subject I'm particularly good at, but that doesn't prevent me from following a recipe. You still need to know what the words mean before you start. You don't wanna confuse 1 Mole acid with a diluted one. That can be like the difference between a tablespoon and a teaspoon of a substance to get the result. If there is any inherent safety information, it has to be followed to the letter. 

 

Unlike baking a cake, a lot more bad can happen from winging it in chemistry. There are four ways to fail baking a cake:

1) Wrong temperature and you burn the cake or it fails to bake completely, making it inedible.

2) Cake is disturbed while baking and collapses into an inedible dense brick

3) Cake was made with the wrong leavening agent (eg baking powder or soda, or wrong ratios of agent to flour), and doesn't rise or changes the taste, making it inedible.

4) Cake was made with the wrong sweetening ingredients (typically, resulting in an inedible product)

 

Where as with chemistry you also have:

- Asphyxiation from invisible gases heavier than air

- Chemical Burns (can happen in cooking when handling spices)

- Acid/Base eating through the container or your safety equipment

- Explosions (eg hydrogen)

- Radioactivity exposure/release

 

To say nothing of environmental damage of either chemistry or cooking where a moment lapse in attention can set everything on fire.

 

[SorryBella]

58 minutes ago, Uttamattamakin said:

If they are right they have Nobel prize.

Or even better, a Christopher Nolan film of their work.

 

/satire

[Uttamattamakin]

9 minutes ago, SorryBella said:

Or even better, a Christopher Nolan film of their work.

 

/satire

IF they are right then the whole Avatar franchise (James Cameron not the Last Airbender) is gutted.   We'd get to have our cool Cyberpunk future without having to invade another planet. 

[CarlBar]

Another useful link tracking replication attempts.

 

https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/claims-of-room-temperature-and-ambient-pressure-superconductor.1106083/page-13

 

Found it interesting just because even the partial successes and outright failure are reporting weird behaviour. We've got reports of possibble superconductor, possibble diamagnetism, possibble paramagnetic insulator, possible semiconductor, (Both paramagnetic and diamagnetic reports). Weird, may turn out to be an interesting material even if it's not an SC just for all the weird electrical states that look like they might be possibble. 

 

EDIT: This simulation of the material has turned up:

 

 

It's not a confirmation in the slightest and i am not sure who national labs are, (i've learned not to trust official sounding titles alas). But the fact that they're apparently working with the US DoE makes me think this simulation report is legitimate, (DoE would be all over denying this otherwise).

 

Now that doesn't mean that the simulations are acurratte to reality, our understanding of superconducting concepts is very loose atm, so reality might not match the simulations. But it IS an indicator that this is somthing that deserves a thorough investigation.

 

A this point i'm still not very convinced it's as good as claimed or that they actually synthesized any, (i'd say 10% or less on being that good, probably more like 25% they synthesized any). But i'm much more confident, (70-80%), that the material may be a very good SC worth investigating if we can figure out how to produce it.

 

It's also sounding as if it's even more dependent on precise manufacturing than we previously thought.

[Uttamattamakin]

On 7/26/2023 at 11:57 AM, MrAeRoZz said:

 

SNIP

With all due respect to the OP and management the fact that this has not "been found" but that replication has failed, so far, means that this title should be changed to reflect that. 

[starsmine]

4 minutes ago, Uttamattamakin said:

With all due respect to the OP and management the fact that this has not "been found" but that replication has failed, so far, means that this title should be changed to reflect that. 

Uttamattamakin thinks you can bake a cake that takes 4 days to bake first try when the people who invented the cake have been trying to get it right since... 1999.

Just be like Sabine, assume they wont and forget about ti, no need to edit OP.

[Uttamattamakin]

14 minutes ago, starsmine said:

Uttamattamakin thinks you can bake a cake that takes 4 days to bake first try when the people who invented the cake have been trying to get it right since... 1999.

Just be like Sabine, assume they wont and forget about ti, no need to edit OP.

My friend that is how (experimental) science works. 

You discover something and document meticulously how you did it. 

Then you publish your data and a detailed description of what you did. 

Then others do exactly what you said you did and see if it works. 

In the meantime one does not claim to have certainly found something, one claims that they have "evidence for" or the "possibility of" finding something.  One awaits confirmation.  Peter Higgs did not get to say he'd found the Higgs boson until it was really found.  By that logic I can right now say I've found the Uttamattamakin solutions to the gravitational wave equations for F(R)=R=\beta R^2 gravity with a real ultra low mass scalar field (Axion) ... which I name the Uttamattamakin Boson.  We should speak of it as a fact before it is found.  LOL. 

I get that this is cool, and would be great, and I really hope it pans out someday.  Right now this looks like a false alarm.  I think if this post is to be the only one here on it then this should be reflected.   When I post a thread I come back to it, update it with new info, and try to reflect the most current state of knowledge.  At least for a while...until it becomes stale (like 1-2 weeks old or something.) 

[CarlBar]

24 minutes ago, Uttamattamakin said:

With all due respect to the OP and management the fact that this has not "been found" but that replication has failed, so far, means that this title should be changed to reflect that. 

 

Currently there are conflicting reports and it's not clear yet which way it's going to go. We've seen a couple of videos posted of the supposed meissner effect, but also some claims of failure to replicate.

[Uttamattamakin]

Just now, CarlBar said:

 

Currently there are conflicting reports and it's not clear yet which way it's going to go. We've seen a couple of videos posted of the supposed meissner effect, but also some claims of failure to replicate.

By the standards of science the claims to believe are the ones written up formally, published, and at least submitted to peer review.   As the arxiv papers are. ... as the claim that sparked this whole issue was. 

[starsmine]

5 minutes ago, Uttamattamakin said:

By the standards of science the claims to believe are the ones written up formally, published, and at least submitted to peer review.   As the arxiv papers are. ... as the claim that sparked this whole issue was. 

we.... know.

At what point has anyone anywhere been under the assumption this story is peer reviewed and confirmed?

We know its just a promising material that peers are all in a rush to review as its promising and big if true.

[Uttamattamakin]

7 hours ago, CarlBar said:

It's not a confirmation in the slightest and i am not sure who national labs are, (i've learned not to trust official sounding titles alas). But the fact that they're apparently working with the US DoE makes me think this simulation report is legitimate, (DoE would be all over denying this otherwise).

Simulations.  In simulations the super symmetric neutralino, the particle that would be both dark matter and the first hard evidence for String theory was going to be found at the Large Hadron Collider and the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search, independently.  In simulations single scalar field Slow roll inflation without modified gravity was going to solve the issue of inflation.   Simulations.  None of those things have stood up to the cruel mistress that is mother nature and her test.   Simulations and calculations are good but they are not nature. 

 

By the by LBNL is Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory,  "National Laboratories" refers to the US Department of energy.  The labs I'd keep a close eye on for this would be NREL and Argonne. 

 

Reading the actual paper it does not make any fabulous claims.  In short they did a computer simulation to see if the claims made were even plausible.   Quoting the paper. 

Quote

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. Nevertheless, I expect the identification of this new material class to spur on further investigations of doped apatite minerals given these tantalizing theoretical signatures and experimental reports of possible high-TC superconductivity.

 

 

7 hours ago, CarlBar said:

Now that doesn't mean that the simulations are acurratte to reality, our understanding of superconducting concepts is very loose atm, so reality might not match the simulations. But it IS an indicator that this is somthing that deserves a thorough investigation.

Exactly. 

 

7 hours ago, CarlBar said:

 

A this point i'm still not very convinced it's as good as claimed or that they actually synthesized any, (i'd say 10% or less on being that good, probably more like 25% they synthesized any). But i'm much more confident, (70-80%), that the material may be a very good SC worth investigating if we can figure out how to produce it.

It's also sounding as if it's even more dependent on precise manufacturing than we previously thought.

Not even.  I've been down this road too many times to take seriously anything other than a true replication.  

Anyone remember the Faster Than Light Neutrino signal that CERN and Gran Sasso reported way back?  Turned out to just be a loose wire. https://www.livescience.com/18603-error-faster-light-neutrinos.html  YET dozens and dozens of papers were published trying to analyze the "groundbreaking new physics" they'd found.    

The only thing to get excited about is if this is replicated and seen to work by an independent lab.  Until this it is not correct to say that it has been found, but it is at best a possibility.  There is a reason a news hound like me didn't bother writing about it. 

[Uttamattamakin]

11 minutes ago, starsmine said:

we.... know.

At what point has anyone anywhere been under the assumption this story is peer reviewed and confirmed?

We know its just a promising material that peers are all in a rush to review as its promising and big if true.

You know, and perhaps a lot of people who actually engage and write here know.  I also know that on any forum like this something like 2x or even 10x as many people just lurk, read, and just sort of skim things.   

Plus I see a LOT of writing here as if this is true.  I see a lot of wanting it to be true so bad  that it will be a real big downer for the youngins when they learn Santa isn't real afterall. 

[CarlBar]

31 minutes ago, Uttamattamakin said:

By the standards of science the claims to believe are the ones written up formally, published, and at least submitted to peer review.   As the arxiv papers are. ... as the claim that sparked this whole issue was. 

 

Which is none of them. Arxiv is a preprint server for stuff, nothing posted there about this has been peer reviewed. Where not going to see peer reviewed data for probably several weeks at least.

 

Also cheers on clarifying who the national laboratories are. I'd printout however that simulations have worked out many times in the past. I wouldn;t dismiss a simulation, i just wouldn't automatically believe it either. But if it's from a major lab and they feel confident enough to put a pre-print out on it i'm going to treat them at least somewhat seriously since i expect they're better than me at figuring out weather the simulation results are worth reporting.

 

Also i seriously doubt LTT has any serious influence on the media storm aroudn this. personally i'm hoping for it to turn out true, but i'd say only modest chances of that happening, but I'd say there's high chances of interesting science happening either way and thats exciting regardless. Hell even if it doesn't pan out, if it advances our understanding of our flaws in our simulations more it may end up being just as significant long term. Too many major discoveries have been made whilst looking for somthing completely different for me to dismiss the effect entirely.

 

TLDR: Science = cool and i'm enjoying the buzz aroudn this more than anything.

[CarlBar]

"In the Pipeline" has a new article on the mess of stuff:

 

https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/room-temperature-superconductor-new-developments

 

i'll just quote his end paragraph as it sums my thoughts up so far much more eloquently than i can:

 

Quote

I am guardedly optimistic at this point. The Shenyang and Lawrence Berkeley calculations are very positive developments, and take this well out of the cold-fusion "we can offer no explanation" territory. Not that there's anything wrong with new physics (!), but it sets a much, much higher bar if you have to invoke something in that range. I await more replication data, and with more than just social media videos backing them up. This is by far the most believable shot at room-temperature-and-pressure superconductivity the world has seen so far, and the coming days and weeks are going to be extremely damned interesting.

 

[Uttamattamakin]

19 minutes ago, CarlBar said:

"In the Pipeline" has a new article on the mess of stuff:

 

https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/room-temperature-superconductor-new-developments

 

i'll just quote his end paragraph as it sums my thoughts up so far much more eloquently than i can:

 

 

A prof at the school where I got my BS way back in the day made a really good point I don't think anyone has made on facebook. 

 

THIS.. Why not just give a/the sample of what they created to another researcher to verify their findings?  Why if it is Sooooooo hard to replicate can they not just do that? 

The test for this is not destructive or difficult.  A superconductor will levitate over a magnet and show zero resistance to electric current.  Verifying superconductivity is not that hard.  I did it with a standard cryo cooled substance when I was a undergraduate student. (That's not special, pretty much all of us have learned about this since forever.  It's a cool experiment.  Literally.)