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

[ImorallySourcedElectrons]

On 7/26/2023 at 9:01 PM, HenrySalayne said:

This is quite interesting, but I see two problems:

- Lead is banned under the RoHS directive, so a lead-based superconductor might be a problem.

- The time between creating something in a lab and solving the technical issues to deploy and use it in everyday applications can be easily two decades.

On 7/27/2023 at 3:53 AM, StDragon said:

And for good reason; lead is toxic at any level. There is no safe amount. Also the absorption of lead is cumulative over one's lifetime.

 

That said however, it's found everywhere from spent bullets at the range or hunting to wheel balancing weights.

 

So the application of lead "depends". But I agree it should remain banned. It's not worth mass application of this material.

On 7/27/2023 at 5:26 AM, leadeater said:

Lead is as safe to use as you try to be safe with it i.e. lead paint = no attempt to be safe. I wouldn't say all lead usage is unsafe but I wouldn't say all lead usage is safe either.

Let me just say, RoHS isn't nearly as strict as you guys think it is. There's a whole list of exemptions to the RoHS directive: https://environment.ec.europa.eu/topics/waste-and-recycling/rohs-directive/implementation-rohs-directive_en And you can still apply for new exemptions if you have a valid reason. For example, the ban on mercury will only come into effect in the coming months (that's why there's a sudden rush for LED fluorescent lighting replacements). But, of the top of my head, you're still allowed to use lead for the following:

• Solder in aerospace (to inhibit dendrite formation in low pressure environments)
• Solder in military applications (due to lesser embrittlement of the joint)
• Solder for servers, NAS, routers, ... for professional use
• Solder for fluorescent tubes (for the coming days while they're still legal)
• Solder for PLCs in an industrial setting
• Pretty much anything regarding medical devices
• Flip-chip solder balls on dies larger than 300 mm² (aka AMD and Intel could still use lead if they really wanted to)
• Optical glass compositions
• For high voltage ceramic components
• PZT piezoelectrics
• As solder and contact plating for electronic test equipment
• ...

Heck, you're still allowed to use alodine (which is big on that entire hexavalent chromium thing that's massively carcinogenic) in a lot of industries until July 2024, and the aerospace industry can keep using it beyond that deadline even. But to get to the actual topic at hand, there's a specific exemption for lead in superconductors for MRI scanners with no expiration date: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32011L0065

11. Lead in alloys as a superconductor and thermal conductor in MRI.
12. Lead and cadmium in metallic bonds to superconducting materials in MRI and SQUID detectors.

 

That being said, having worked at Korean universities, this is quite typical for Korean research institutes: some unknown professor makes huge claims based on shoddy evidence to raise their status. When others can't replicate the results it's because "Koreans are better at lab work" or "Western science doesn't account for everything", etc. If anyone non-Korean criticizes it, they'll encounter a wave of angry Korean nationalists, even if everyone proves the science is shoddy. Meanwhile, said professor will then get glorified by the local media trying to make a quick buck of said nationalism. The professor in question will then receive a lot of research funding, and if they keep their mouth shut they have a cosy career ahead of them. But it's rare for this type of exploit to get picked up by international media, so it'll be interesting to see how this turns out.

 

As far as the science goes, could potentially work but I doubt it. My money is on either intentional fake or failure to understand what they're actually doing/measuring.

[CarlBar]

3 hours ago, Beskamir said:

I'm just going to dump this here:

Good luck making wires out of a ceramic!

 

Give me 13 minutes of my life back please. He just repeats "scientists make big claim, other scientists sceptical and awaiting replication" 20 different ways for most of it. Not a single useful comment made by him in the entire video. His attempted bustign at the end may or may not be good. I honestly can't tell because the angle is so bad. But that doesn't invalidate the research like the thinks. Even if his experiment shows what he says it shows. A single phenomenon can have multiple possibble explanations depending on the details. So his experiment and theirs can both be valid.

 

Like i said i think it's probably wrong. But at this point unless you've gone out and replicated their work and found it doesn't work you shouldn't be making any definitive statements, and even then wait to see if the same holds true for everyone else that tries to replicate. No procedure can be 100% replicated by 100% of groups that try to. And as others attempting to replicate it have noted, there's some unknowns to their procedure that haven't been specified in sufficient detail to be sure their replication attempt is doing exactly what they did. Which is sadly common in research papers these days.

 

40 minutes ago, GarlicDeliverySystem said:

They have:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_wire

https://www.fujikura.co.uk/products/fel2ghts_high-temperature-superconductors

https://www.bruker.com/zh/products-and-solutions/superconductors/superconductors/ybco-2g-hts-superconductor.html

https://www.bruker.com/en/products-and-solutions/superconductors/superconductors.html

https://spectrum.ieee.org/fusion-2662267312

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1359028607000344

 

The point stands though, having the material is one thing. Making a "wire" out of it and scaling up production are the difficult ones. As you can see from some of the links HTS wires/tapes are now becoming available on a commercial scale, but don't think it is a commodity. It just means someone is willing to make it for you, but the quantities are low and costs per meter are still incredible.

I remember reading somewhere that commonwealth fusion systems got into the supercon production business, simply because their estimated needs exceeded commercial world production capacity. Bruker is now offering supercon magnets with hybrid LTS/HTS coils, and I think other manufacturers of magnets/MRI machines might follow soon.

 

That claim comes from Thunderf00t, i've seen him make a whole bunch of confidently wrong assumptions in the past, (notably about the physics side of the Hyperloop concept). He's clearly relatively knowledgeable in some areas, but you have to understand how something applies in the real world in a variety of applications to even begin to make such broad claims, and even then you have to remember you might be wrong. it's why i allways try to phrase things that i'm not just repeating from elsewhere as a IMO thing. I can make some broad judgment calls on stuff, but thats not the same as being 100% right 100% of the time.

 

2 minutes ago, ImorallySourcedElectrons said:

That being said, having worked at Korean universities, this is quite typical for Korean research institutes: some unknown professor makes huge claims based on shoddy evidence to raise their status. When others can't replicate the results it's because "Koreans are better at lab work" or "Western science doesn't account for everything", etc. If anyone non-Korean criticizes it, they'll encounter a wave of angry Korean nationalists, even if everyone proves the science is shoddy. Meanwhile, said professor will then get glorified by the local media trying to make a quick buck of said nationalism. The professor in question will then receive a lot of research funding, and if they keep their mouth shut they have a cosy career ahead of them. But it's rare for this type of exploit to get picked up by international media, so it'll be interesting to see how this turns out.

 

As far as the science goes, could potentially work but I doubt it. My money is on either intentional fake or failure to understand what they're actually doing/measuring.

 

Based on some events that have transpired around the papers it appears one member of the group published without the permission of the rest of the team. The rest of the team then released their not entirely complete paper in response to this and have apparently booted the other person off the group in response.

 

The hot take i've been seeing in science articles and websites is everyone on the team buys the results, and the publishing mess, (and consequently not quite complete research before publishing), is down to an internal fight over the potentiol Noble Prize.

 

No idea how that fits in with your experiance of Korean Universities, but sounds very different from one individual over hyping a result.

[leadeater]

25 minutes ago, ImorallySourcedElectrons said:

Let me just say, RoHS isn't nearly as strict as you guys think it is. There's a whole list of exemptions to the RoHS

Well I'm not actually saying it's strict and for that matter you don't actually have to be RoHS compliant at all, you do if you want to have the mark to indicate that you are, basically the point. But overall Lead usage is as safe as it's outset to be used safely is based on known risks e.g. eating it is not a good idea 

[HenrySalayne]

13 minutes ago, ImorallySourcedElectrons said:

Let me just say, RoHS isn't nearly as strict as you guys think it is.

No, it is exactly as strict as I think it is.

Lead has almost been extinct* from consumer electronics. It's not about "this will not be used" it's about "will we see proliferation of lead based superconductors in commodity electronics?" and I highly doubt it.

 

 

*) I'm not counting sweatshops manufacturing e-waste for the European market ignoring any regulation

10 minutes ago, CarlBar said:

Give me 13 minutes of my life back please. He just repeats "scientists make big claim, other scientists sceptical and awaiting replication" 20 different ways for most of it. Not a single useful comment made by him in the entire video. His attempted bustign at the end may or may not be good. I honestly can't tell because the angle is so bad. But that doesn't invalidate the research like the thinks. Even if his experiment shows what he says it shows. A single phenomenon can have multiple possibble explanations depending on the details. So his experiment and theirs can both be valid.

+1

 

You know it's quality content, when

- "I'm not a physicist, but..."

- 'this guy on Twitter X said it's a ceramic and useless'

- 'they use copper so it must be Eddy current'

 

This person is probably patting himself on the back when it turns out room temperature superconductors are not real (yet), but for the completely wrong reasons...

[ImorallySourcedElectrons]

15 minutes ago, CarlBar said:

That claim comes from Thunderf00t, i've seen him make a whole bunch of confidently wrong assumptions in the past, (notably about the physics side of the Hyperloop concept). He's clearly relatively knowledgeable in some areas, but you have to understand how something applies in the real world in a variety of applications to even begin to make such broad claims, and even then you have to remember you might be wrong. it's why i allways try to phrase things that i'm not just repeating from elsewhere as a IMO thing. I can make some broad judgment calls on stuff, but thats not the same as being 100% right 100% of the time.

Thunderf00t is a typical example of a physicist, I have to deal with folks like that at work on a daily basis and they're quite exhausting... They argue about everything from a theoretical framework and they don't necessarily understand what engineering actually entails. This frequently leads to idiotic statements like Freeman Dyson's "A good engineer is a person who makes a design that works with as few original ideas as possible. There are no prima donnas in engineering." 

 

I recently had one claim to me that you couldn't send a high bandwidth signal for more than a hundred meters on a single twisted pair, and I had to point out dial-up, ISDN, ADSL, ethernet, ... exist, at which point he just kept resorting to abstract concepts and repeating himself. As an interesting bonus, he was just using the volume resistivity of copper and failing to account for the skin effect - which made the actual transmission line characteristics at the operating frequency far worse. Needless to say, we're using twisted pair copper cables and his concerns were kindly buried under a layer of adaptive modulation schemes. For added fun, I'm now also transmitting power over said pair and using the cheapest and crappiest SMPS you can find for it, the amount of noise it blasts out is hilarious. Meanwhile, his proposed solution was to go wireless in the 2.4 GHz band, which most definitely never leads to issues...

 

23 minutes ago, CarlBar said:

Based on some events that have transpired around the papers it appears one member of the group published without the permission of the rest of the team. The rest of the team then released their not entirely complete paper in response to this and have apparently booted the other person off the group in response.

 

The hot take i've been seeing in science articles and websites is everyone on the team buys the results, and the publishing mess, (and consequently not quite complete research before publishing), is down to an internal fight over the potentiol Noble Prize.

 

No idea how that fits in with your experiance of Korean Universities, but sounds very different from one individual over hyping a result.

Them believing in it doesn't really mean much to me, I saw people believe their own bullshit results all the time at any university - and I'm sure I fell for it a few times as well during my career in academia. Tunnel vision is very much a thing, and that's why talking to your colleagues and getting input is so important.

 

But there are a few oddities, the author list order especially. But my gut feeling tells me this is also normally the thing that you would send to the likes of Nature or Science and that would get fast-tracked, but the paper structure and figure quality would suggest otherwise. The materials and methods section is also a bit odd to me, the electrical measurement smells a bit iffy, etc. My thoughts on it at the moment are: great if it's true, but it probably isn't.

 

27 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Well I'm not actually saying it's strict and for that matter you don't actually have to be RoHS compliant at all, you do if you want to have the mark to indicate that you are, basically the point. But overall Lead usage is as safe as it's outset to be used safely is based on known risks.

RoHS compliance is part of CE compliance, which you require to sell on the European market though. 

 

22 minutes ago, HenrySalayne said:

No, it is exactly as strict as I think it is.

Lead has almost been extinct* from consumer electronics. It's not about "this will not be used" it's about "will we see proliferation of lead based superconductors in commodity electronics?" and I highly doubt it.

You seem to think it's pretty strict, but RoHS ain't a blanket ban on heavy metals, it's actually quite reasonable as far as legislation goes. As a result, you'd be quite surprised in how many components it's still used. For example, if you have something with piezoelectrics in it (e.g. camera auto-focus and movement compensation systems) you'll often find PZT, which keeps getting its exemption because there's no real substitute at the moment, see one of the last exemption request: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?qid=1545362346506&uri=PI_COM:C(2018)7509 Yet, you'll still happily find the RoHS symbol on those devices. It's also frequently used in ceramic parts for specific high voltage components, and we still add a dash of lead to the solder for particular applications due to the mechanical and chemical properties gained by alloying. Unleaded solder tends to be quite brittle, leeches the copper out of circuit boards - which can cause voids underneath the nickel plating on contacts in some instances, and has quite bad dendrite formation in some conditions. The main effect RoHS has had is that we try to avoid lead, because using components with lead in them leads to an administrative headache.

 

Also what really surprises me is that they still allow beryllium ceramic packages in consumer applications, I'd personally be more worried about those at this point.

[GarlicDeliverySystem]

1 hour ago, CarlBar said:

Give me 13 minutes of my life back please. He just repeats "scientists make big claim, other scientists sceptical and awaiting replication" 20 different ways for most of it. Not a single useful comment made by him in the entire video.

What I dislike about these videos is the tone. Very loud, very definitive and highly sure.

The copper eddy-current things is somewhat valid, but as you said the same phenomenon can have different explanations. In this case there could be some movements from eddy currents, but also some from the Meissner effect. Who knows, so let's wait until someone else tries this, hopefully with a control.

1 hour ago, ImorallySourcedElectrons said:

That being said, having worked at Korean universities, this is quite typical for Korean research institutes: some unknown professor makes huge claims based on shoddy evidence to raise their status. When others can't replicate the results it's because "Koreans are better at lab work" or "Western science doesn't account for everything", etc. If anyone non-Korean criticizes it, they'll encounter a wave of angry Korean nationalists, even if everyone proves the science is shoddy. Meanwhile, said professor will then get glorified by the local media trying to make a quick buck of said nationalism. The professor in question will then receive a lot of research funding, and if they keep their mouth shut they have a cosy career ahead of them. But it's rare for this type of exploit to get picked up by international media, so it'll be interesting to see how this turns out.

I don't have first-hand experience with Korean Universities, but I do remember the stem cell research claims several years back. It would fit the pattern, plus there seems to be some infighting about potential credit and results in the group(s) who published it.

 

1 hour ago, CarlBar said:

That claim comes from Thunderf00t, i've seen him make a whole bunch of confidently wrong assumptions in the past, (notably about the physics side of the Hyperloop concept). He's clearly relatively knowledgeable in some areas, but you have to understand how something applies in the real world in a variety of applications to even begin to make such broad claims, and even then you have to remember you might be wrong.

I watched quite a few videos by him in the past and also read some of the research papers (mostly the ones about the coloumb explosion of alkali metals in water). Seems to me that he is competent as a scientist, at least in his field, but I've met a lot of competent and legit scientists in my career so far who clearly overestimated their knowledge in other fields (I would argue I might have been one of them in the past, who knows). A lot of times things change in fields over time and what you learned 10, 20 years back in university might no longer be the state of the art/knowledge. Especially when it comes to material science and engineering.

[ImorallySourcedElectrons]

7 minutes ago, GarlicDeliverySystem said:

I don't have first-hand experience with Korean Universities, but I do remember the stem cell research claims several years back. It would fit the pattern, plus there seems to be some infighting about potential credit and results in the group(s) who published it.

It's very common in electronics for Korean universities to publish atrocious garbage, there are a few topics I can think of:

• The entire biological stretchable electronics thing at various Korean universities, which is associated with the Bell Labs Rogers/Bao/Schön triumvirate from back in the day. 
• The microscopic on-die vacuum tubes they claimed were going to completely displace all other technologies, which were actually parasitic JFETs they were measuring "accidentally". This one died quite slowly.
• Various memristor schemes (though memristors in general are a crappy forced mathematical concept that doesn't make much sense to be honest) 
• The "DNA bio sensors" that smelled a lot like Theranos-style things.
• Amplifier topologies that were in reality injection-locked oscillators and didn't work for actual signals.

They also have a very active domestic conference scene going, which also has a lot of oddities to it. A lot of it doesn't make sense if you go outside of Korea.

[GarlicDeliverySystem]

3 minutes ago, ImorallySourcedElectrons said:

They also have a very active domestic conference scene going, which also has a lot of oddities to it. A lot of it doesn't make sense if you go outside of Korea.

Fascinating, never realized this. Coming from western/european academics I always wondered how different things were going in different parts of asia. All the weird conference spam, invitations to review stuff for journals barely related to my field, etc. coming in made me wonder how much is just malicious spam/phishing versus some weird but somewhat legit academia stuff I never understood.

 

Though even here I saw various groups, connections etc. pushing some concepts with others having a harder time to fit in unless they followed. But at least the science was usually good, so there is that.

[ImorallySourcedElectrons]

1 hour ago, GarlicDeliverySystem said:

Fascinating, never realized this. Coming from western/european academics I always wondered how different things were going in different parts of asia. All the weird conference spam, invitations to review stuff for journals barely related to my field, etc. coming in made me wonder how much is just malicious spam/phishing versus some weird but somewhat legit academia stuff I never understood.

 

Though even here I saw various groups, connections etc. pushing some concepts with others having a harder time to fit in unless they followed. But at least the science was usually good, so there is that.

It was also a bit of a culture shock for me, I think a large part of it is the language barrier, but it's also caused by the differences in the academic system over there. Being a master and Ph.D. student in South Korea is nothing like you'd find in the US or Europe, which does kind of explain how that local conference and workshop scene can exist. But we'd never consider such events valuable over here, the scientific value and networking opportunities are very limited, it feels more like they're trying to check something off on a to-do list. I kind of wonder how it'll evolve as Korea opens up.

[CarlBar]

@ImorallySourcedElectrons Oh like i said very sceptical, i just think the infight, (as western scientists have noted as well), suggest genuine error over malfance for points on the part of the majority of the team. Which is very different to the typical scenario your describing.

 

Also the infighting seems to have prompted the rest of the team to publish early, which may explain why someone like Nature didn't get it. They just weren't really ready to publish when someone jumped the gun and forced them to rush something out. Again doesn't mean they're right but sounds very different to the typical points scoring deliberate fakery you mention encountering.

 

 

I also agree with you on Thunderf00t. I never get the impression he's deliberately screwing up or that he's not very smart. But understanding theory, and understanding how that theory is applied is a very different beast, and i was absolutely guilty of it at times in internet discussions in my youth too. So i get how it can happen, which makes it extra frustrating.

 

 

@GarlicDeliverySystem The super confident delivery is definitely my biggest gripe. Everything i've seen suggests several of these people involved in such videos are really knowledgeable and intelligent, but they seem completely oblivious to their own limits. As i noted above i was prone to the same in my younger days to a large degree, (i'd like to think i didn't come off as quite so certain of myself, but memory can be self serving so not 100% sure), so i get it, but it's still frustrating to see. You can be annoyed at someone's errors whilst being understanding of why they're making them.

 

I think for myself a big factor is i've allways been interested not just in the theory, but in how that theory is applied IRL.

 

As an aside, In The Pipeline has had a number of articles over the years on chemistry papers not proving replicable or being downright bad in other ways, China, India, Korea, and Iran are the 4 most prolific source of such bad papers, (with China leading the pack by a mile).

[GarlicDeliverySystem]

1 hour ago, CarlBar said:

As an aside, In The Pipeline has had a number of articles over the years on chemistry papers not proving replicable or being downright bad in other ways, China, India, Korea, and Iran are the 4 most prolific source of such bad papers, (with China leading the pack by a mile).

That sounds interesting, I need to look that up.

Chemistry papers always had this issue with being technically correct in fully describing all the relevant steps in a synthesis, but providing a description that ensures reproducibility is hard and often not even desired. After all, it might cut into a labs competitive advantage when it comes to funding.

I experienced this first hand when trying to reproduce some synthesis for a polymer, where it became obvious that a lot of tacit knowledge went into the whole process. And that is before you factor in outside pressure or even malevolence.

[leadeater]

This video is really good, worth a watch

 

 

Even if true it's not "that good" compared to other superconductors, but still super revolutionary and opens more research in this new area of superconductors.

[ImorallySourcedElectrons]

3 hours ago, CarlBar said:

@ImorallySourcedElectrons Oh like i said very sceptical, i just think the infight, (as western scientists have noted as well), suggest genuine error over malfance for points on the part of the majority of the team. Which is very different to the typical scenario your describing.

 

Also the infighting seems to have prompted the rest of the team to publish early, which may explain why someone like Nature didn't get it. They just weren't really ready to publish when someone jumped the gun and forced them to rush something out. Again doesn't mean they're right but sounds very different to the typical points scoring deliberate fakery you mention encountering.

 

I also agree with you on Thunderf00t. I never get the impression he's deliberately screwing up or that he's not very smart. But understanding theory, and understanding how that theory is applied is a very different beast, and i was absolutely guilty of it at times in internet discussions in my youth too. So i get how it can happen, which makes it extra frustrating.

I think only time well tell, my money is honestly on measurement error. Measuring resistance is something a lot of people have a lot of problems with because they don't really understand what the measurement equipment is actually doing to measure said resistance, I skimmed over it and the paper doesn't seem to contain any clear indication of how their setup was put together and only a list of equipment used. I can think of a few ways they could have screwed up, especially when using a Keithley 182 in combination with a Keithley 228A, it's the correct combination of instruments for measuring very low resistances (to give you an idea, we used the more modern versions for solder joint resistance measurements). but getting those two to work together to measure very small resistances is no trivial matter.

 

You got to consider the thermal EMFs, triboelectric effects, piezeoelectric effects, the dielectric absorption, the humidity in the room versus when the instrument and cables were calibrated, etc. The end result is that you should be using very expensive triaxial cables with a hybrid PTFE/PE and a carbon-paste like material lining the conductors. You also need to apply guarding strategies to eliminate leakage currents and then preferably put everything on PTFE or ceramic stand-offs, keep everything ultra clean etc. And only then you are ready to do repeatable nanovolt, nanoampere, or microohm measurements - assuming you get the cable layout right, keep the lab climate controlled, have a good calibration standard, etc. Skip any of those things and you're out of the absolute measurement game. And don't get me wrong, you can measure nanovolts with something like a regular Keithley 2001/2002, I've frequently done so, but you must understand that what you're doing at that point is only an indicatory or relative measurement over a short time period. Anyhow, I doubt any of them have an actual electronics background, so the odds of them making these sort of mistakes are quite large. I've also made this mistake many times in the past, and back when I worked in academia I even got into a massive fight over this type of measurement with my PhD supervisor. I managed to prove that an effect he was measuring didn't actually exist, and that what he was actually measuring was the increasing oxidation of the copper on his circuit board.

 

And about thunderf00t, part of this is also really what defines the difference between engineering and other scientific fields. A lot of theories don't survive an encounter with reality, and then it usually takes quite a bit of creativity to find work arounds. (e.g., think of all the crazy lithography tricks we're using to manufacture semiconductors at wavelengths less than the light source we use to expose the photoresist) So when physicists say things are impossible I have a really hard time believing them.

 

1 hour ago, GarlicDeliverySystem said:

That sounds interesting, I need to look that up.

Chemistry papers always had this issue with being technically correct in fully describing all the relevant steps in a synthesis, but providing a description that ensures reproducibility is hard and often not even desired. After all, it might cut into a labs competitive advantage when it comes to funding.

I experienced this first hand when trying to reproduce some synthesis for a polymer, where it became obvious that a lot of tacit knowledge went into the whole process. And that is before you factor in outside pressure or even malevolence.

 

You have a similar issue in electronics manufacturing, and whenever you try to add the practical considerations you often even get reviewers telling you to remove them. It's quite ridiculous how academic publishing intentionally makes replication more difficult.

[CarlBar]

7 hours ago, ImorallySourcedElectrons said:

And about thunderf00t, part of this is also really what defines the difference between engineering and other scientific fields. A lot of theories don't survive an encounter with reality, and then it usually takes quite a bit of creativity to find work arounds. (e.g., think of all the crazy lithography tricks we're using to manufacture semiconductors at wavelengths less than the light source we use to expose the photoresist) So when physicists say things are impossible I have a really hard time believing them.

 

The old saw about “When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.” probably applies here.

 

And yeah now you've explained some of the details behind how to do measurements i can really see how it could screw up, even if i only understood bits and pieces, (thank you though this is the kind of stuff i love to read about even if i only partially understand it). I figured that was the most likely explanation anyway. 

 

9 hours ago, GarlicDeliverySystem said:

That sounds interesting, I need to look that up.

Chemistry papers always had this issue with being technically correct in fully describing all the relevant steps in a synthesis, but providing a description that ensures reproducibility is hard and often not even desired. After all, it might cut into a labs competitive advantage when it comes to funding.

I experienced this first hand when trying to reproduce some synthesis for a polymer, where it became obvious that a lot of tacit knowledge went into the whole process. And that is before you factor in outside pressure or even malevolence.

 

Whilst this is about data irregularities here's an article from the last week or so:

 

https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/too-many-bad-clinical-trials

 

Finding more is awkward now they've moved to a new system at science a couple of years back or so, completely wrecked organising and categorising of articles. But he links to a few past articles on the issue in that one.

[CarlBar]

Minor update as i'm keeping an eye on this as it's either going to be huge good or huge bad news. (Also i'm just bored and looking around is somthing to do).

 

Chinese lab has produced a sample of the material and are measuring weird stuff with it, they think it might be superconducting but that their sample is very impure, (i.e. most of it is non-superconducting):

 

https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2023/07/reports-of-a-chinese-lk-99-superconductor-replication-effort.html

 

It's not remotely confirmation yet, (especially given the measuring issues @ImorallySourcedElectrons outlined previously), but the fact that an attempt to replicate didn't immidietlly throw it out is worth noting. 

 

On the other hand if it gets confirmed it looks like getting high purity is more difficult than first thought.

[PocketNerd]

I may me misunderstanding something here. But last I checked 127C != ambient room temperature.

[GarlicDeliverySystem]

6 minutes ago, PocketNerd said:

I may me misunderstanding something here. But last I checked 127C != ambient room temperature.

That is the supposed critical temperature above which superconductivity stops working in this material, so at RT it supposedly still works.

[HenrySalayne]

5 minutes ago, PocketNerd said:

I may me misunderstanding something here. But last I checked 127C != ambient room temperature.

If it's still a superconductor at 400 K, it is also a superconductor at 300 K. It The previous "high temperature" superconductors had to be around 100 K to be superconducting (the term "high temperature superconductor" already tells you how this was thought to be out of the ordinary).

[ImorallySourcedElectrons]

5 hours ago, CarlBar said:

And yeah now you've explained some of the details behind how to do measurements i can really see how it could screw up, even if i only understood bits and pieces, (thank you though this is the kind of stuff i love to read about even if i only partially understand it). I figured that was the most likely explanation anyway. 

If you're really interested in the topic: https://www.tek.com/en/documents/product-article/keithley-low-level-measurements-handbook---7th-edition  Keithley back in the day was a precision measurement powerhouse (before Fortive/Tektronix bought them and started ruining the brand), and they wrote lots of documentation on how to actually do those measurements properly. Sadly, they haven't really released any new instruments or manuals ever since they got bought.

 

5 hours ago, CarlBar said:

Whilst this is about data irregularities here's an article from the last week or so:

 

https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/too-many-bad-clinical-trials

 

Finding more is awkward now they've moved to a new system at science a couple of years back or so, completely wrecked organising and categorising of articles. But he links to a few past articles on the issue in that one.

It's a massive issue, and until reproducibility guidelines are implemented everywhere and the publish or perish culture remains the same, we'll keep seeing crappy science.

 

2 hours ago, CarlBar said:

Minor update as i'm keeping an eye on this as it's either going to be huge good or huge bad news. (Also i'm just bored and looking around is somthing to do).

 

Chinese lab has produced a sample of the material and are measuring weird stuff with it, they think it might be superconducting but that their sample is very impure, (i.e. most of it is non-superconducting):

 

https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2023/07/reports-of-a-chinese-lk-99-superconductor-replication-effort.html

 

It's not remotely confirmation yet, (especially given the measuring issues @ImorallySourcedElectrons outlined previously), but the fact that an attempt to replicate didn't immidietlly throw it out is worth noting. 

 

On the other hand if it gets confirmed it looks like getting high purity is more difficult than first thought.

And there's also the question of the critical current density, even if you have a high temperature superconductor, it'd be quite worthless for practical uses if J_C is kind of crap. And there's a few other possible ways in which it can be problematic, and I'm not talking about the ceramic thing, because that's fixable by making thin strands and making a cable. Cross-fingers that it is real, because an easy to manufacture superconductor made out of a material we don't really have much use for (lead) could dramatically impact the world in so many ways. 

 

1 hour ago, HenrySalayne said:

If it's still a superconductor at 400 K, it is also a superconductor at 300 K. It The previous "high temperature" superconductors had to be around 100 K to be superconducting (the term "high temperature superconductor" already tells you how this was thought to be out of the ordinary).

Yeah, anything that flew with liquid nitrogen was considered high temperature, which is kind of hilarious if you think about it.   Especially funny if you read up on the life/history of Heike Kamerlingh Onnes, he and his team were doing absolutely crazy experiments in the late 19th/early 20th century when trying to establish absolute zero and how to measure it. Just that mental image of someone sitting there trying to make a wire out of mercury and measuring its electric resistance while it's at 2-3 K and going "mhhh, that's funny", meanwhile outside they're still putting up the wires to electrify the city. It's kind of funny if you think about it.

[Kisai]

On 7/29/2023 at 1:40 AM, CarlBar said:

 

That claim comes from Thunderf00t, i've seen him make a whole bunch of confidently wrong assumptions in the past, (notably about the physics side of the Hyperloop concept). He's clearly relatively knowledgeable in some areas,

Nah, that guy is a total fool. Pretty much everyone that got canceled in 2014, is still making the same drama bait content.

 

When actual professionals, doctors, lawyers, and scientists put the content on youtube, they explain, and they do that at the risk of being wrong, and potentially even losing their license to practice if they make grossly inaccurate statements. When a hack on youtube decides to make a video for the clicks, but have nothing actually to say, it's pretty obvious. There is no risk for them to be wrong or right. 

 

Editorialized video content is for entertainment and for you to be offended at, not to be taken at face value.

[PocketNerd]

8 hours ago, HenrySalayne said:

If it's still a superconductor at 400 K, it is also a superconductor at 300 K. It The previous "high temperature" superconductors had to be around 100 K to be superconducting (the term "high temperature superconductor" already tells you how this was thought to be out of the ordinary).

Ah, so what’s being said is that it stops being a superconductor at 127C?

[Forbidden Wafer]

32 minutes ago, PocketNerd said:

Ah, so what’s being said is that it stops being a superconductor at 127C?

Yes. Which means that if it really works, its awesome.

[bcredeur97]

alright guys lets start a business mass producing this stuff before the scientists even finish /s 

[CarlBar]

3 hours ago, Kisai said:

Nah, that guy is a total fool. Pretty much everyone that got canceled in 2014, is still making the same drama bait content.

 

When actual professionals, doctors, lawyers, and scientists put the content on youtube, they explain, and they do that at the risk of being wrong, and potentially even losing their license to practice if they make grossly inaccurate statements. When a hack on youtube decides to make a video for the clicks, but have nothing actually to say, it's pretty obvious. There is no risk for them to be wrong or right. 

 

Editorialized video content is for entertainment and for you to be offended at, not to be taken at face value.

 

As @ImorallySourcedElectrons has noted he's an actual scientist with peer reviews works. And i can think of more than a few others on the internet with clear qualifications who do a good or bad job respectively of handling things.

 

And as someone with a fair education, (and i'd like to think have absorbed a fair amount more besides that), i can recognise his clear knowledge of many concepts. As noted the real issue is he's seemingly much more of a pure theory person than an "actually apply it in the real world" person. Nice neat theory is good, but allways remember it's limits, and be aware of your own limits in that regard.

 

7 hours ago, ImorallySourcedElectrons said:

If you're really interested in the topic: https://www.tek.com/en/documents/product-article/keithley-low-level-measurements-handbook---7th-edition  Keithley back in the day was a precision measurement powerhouse (before Fortive/Tektronix bought them and started ruining the brand), and they wrote lots of documentation on how to actually do those measurements properly. Sadly, they haven't really released any new instruments or manuals ever since they got bought.

 

It's a massive issue, and until reproducibility guidelines are implemented everywhere and the publish or perish culture remains the same, we'll keep seeing crappy science.

 

And there's also the question of the critical current density, even if you have a high temperature superconductor, it'd be quite worthless for practical uses if J_C is kind of crap. And there's a few other possible ways in which it can be problematic, and I'm not talking about the ceramic thing, because that's fixable by making thin strands and making a cable. Cross-fingers that it is real, because an easy to manufacture superconductor made out of a material we don't really have much use for (lead) could dramatically impact the world in so many ways. 

 

Yeah, anything that flew with liquid nitrogen was considered high temperature, which is kind of hilarious if you think about it.   Especially funny if you read up on the life/history of Heike Kamerlingh Onnes, he and his team were doing absolutely crazy experiments in the late 19th/early 20th century when trying to establish absolute zero and how to measure it. Just that mental image of someone sitting there trying to make a wire out of mercury and measuring its electric resistance while it's at 2-3 K and going "mhhh, that's funny", meanwhile outside they're still putting up the wires to electrify the city. It's kind of funny if you think about it.

 

I suspect that manual would still go over my head but i'll probably take a nosey at some point.

 

Also absolutely on it maybe turning out to having issues if it is a superconductor, but it's mere existence would likely have major positive implications for further research to produce one that is usable.

 

And yeah the first people to discover superconductors must have been mighty puzzled for a while. 

[jagdtigger]

On 7/29/2023 at 7:34 AM, GarlicDeliverySystem said:

hey have:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_wire

https://www.fujikura.co.uk/products/fel2ghts_high-temperature-superconductors

https://www.bruker.com/zh/products-and-solutions/superconductors/superconductors/ybco-2g-hts-superconductor.html

https://www.bruker.com/en/products-and-solutions/superconductors/superconductors.html

https://spectrum.ieee.org/fusion-2662267312

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1359028607000344

They havent, each of them talks about some sort of metallic alloy. Ceramics are rigid and you cant do anything with that property.....