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

[tikker]

On 8/10/2023 at 9:57 PM, LAwLz said:

It's a good thing people were skeptical (as in, the actual definition of the word) and wanted to verify the claims without assuming it was true or false. Because as we know, in science you shouldn't assume something without any evidence. You gather evidence first, and then you make up your mind.

I feel this is a bit unfair to say, because the "actual definition" of the word in science is not being neutral or even claiming uncertainty as was argued on previous pages and more initially doubting claims that go against (well) established knowledge unless there is solid enough proof. That does not mean automatically rejecting it, but definitely doubting proportional to the extraordinarity of the claim. In an extraordinary case like this, where it would be a world first, that does basically boil down to "false unless proven true".

Quote

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_skepticism
Scientific skepticism or rational skepticism (also spelled scepticism), sometimes referred to as skeptical inquiry,[1] is a position in which one questions the veracity of claims lacking empirical evidence.
...
Scientific skeptics maintain that empirical investigation of reality leads to the most reliable empirical knowledge, and suggest that the scientific method is best suited to verifying results.[7] Scientific skeptics attempt to evaluate claims based on verifiability and falsifiability; they discourage accepting claims which rely on faith or anecdotal evidence.

Not believing the claim of a room temp superconductor being found when crucial behaviour was not unambiguously observed and there were other less exotic explanations was in line with being sceptical. I think disbelief played an important role in getting this as much attention as it did.

[Uttamattamakin]

43 minutes ago, tikker said:

I feel this is a bit unfair to say,

First I want to thank you and I want to say it's not necessary to defend me.  I'll just like as a scientist. Is trying to educate people.

 

Anton Petrov declaring the issue dead.  In his words nothing of importance was found at all. 

https://youtu.be/luVJ5IQH4Uo

 

 

 

[tikker]

17 minutes ago, Uttamattamakin said:

First I want to thank you and I want to say it's not necessary to defend me.  I'll just like as a scientist. Is trying to educate people.

 

Anton Petrov declaring the issue dead.  In his words nothing of importance was found at all. 

https://youtu.be/luVJ5IQH4Uo

 

 

 

I did also mean it in a more general sense. I'd feel pretty confident guessing that many experts in this field had a good bout of "hmmm" when seeing this first appear and that it was not resolved by luckily having a number of "real sceptics".

On 8/10/2023 at 11:42 PM, CarlBar said:

I think the biggest shock for me is how apparently not understood Cu2 electrical properties is before this. It doesn't sound like it was hard to make or test so it's really basic science that should have been done a long time ago.

I come from a more theoretical/observational (and unrelated) field, but often these kind of seemingly obvious or basic things that you think would have been done a long time ago aren't because they weren't interesting at the time. It takes time and money which scientists are always short of, so practically speaking one often wouldn't investigate the electrical properties of Cu2 (in this example) unless it would help them understand something that requires that knowledge.

[GarlicDeliverySystem]

11 hours ago, Beskamir said:

Thunderfoot finally made a video about this explaining in great detail why ceramic wires aren't are pretty much useless. If ceramic superconductors were functional then humanity wouldn't be using liquid helium temps but the cheaper liquid nitrogen temps for applications where a superconductor is necessary.

 

I don't really want to scrub through all of this, but the "ceramic" bit is a bit overplayed. Yes, it is hard to make them into wires or anything that resembles a wire, but it has been worked on for 30 years now with HTS making it to market now in NMR, MRI, and particle accelerators.

Why are we then still using LHe instead of LN2 magnets?

Obviously these new tapes are really expensive right now, so they are only used where they bring a tangible benefit for the extra costs:

• current leads in particle accelerators, which you can then cool with LN2 and save on LHe volume
• in magnets, HTS allow for potentially much, much stronger fields and more compact magnets. For this operation at 4K is beneficial due to the higher critical current and field.

In the latter case, they are often used in so-called hybrid magnets, where the inner coil is HTS (it experiences the strongest fields, so needs the highest critical current and field rating) but the outer layers, shim coils and active shielding are still LTS for costs and because we know they work.

 

Getting a fully LN2 operating magnet is a goal for the industry, but that will be very hard due to the homogeneity requirements in magnetic resonance (and by extension in MRI, although much less there). And by homogeneity I mean really, really homogeneous. A NMR magnet for high-resolution applications (general use case in all larger chem labs) needs to be homogeneous in the active volume on the order of 1 in 600 Billion, meaning the field can't change by more than 1/600B over the sample volume, preferably even less. This is achieved by both precisely winding the magnets and installing active compensation coils (shims), both superconducting and RT, to bend the field in shape.

Winding tape in the required shapes is not easy though.

 

Another issue is of course bonding wires, since at some point you'll need to solder them together and the solder might only work at 4K. There are concepts out there now for directly bonding tapes together though, so we might be able to see something here in the coming years. (Co

 

Yes, we obviously haven't replaced the LTS with HTS yet, but I strongly feel that "it's a ceramic, it'll never work" is far to simplistic and obfuscates the real engineering challenges.

 

[LAwLz]

11 hours ago, tikker said:

I feel this is a bit unfair to say, because the "actual definition" of the word in science is not being neutral or even claiming uncertainty as was argued on previous pages and more initially doubting claims that go against (well) established knowledge unless there is solid enough proof. That does not mean automatically rejecting it, but definitely doubting proportional to the extraordinarity of the claim. In an extraordinary case like this, where it would be a world first, that does basically boil down to "false unless proven true".

Not believing the claim of a room temp superconductor being found when crucial behaviour was not unambiguously observed and there were other less exotic explanations was in line with being sceptical. I think disbelief played an important role in getting this as much attention as it did.

Except that also agrees with what I said earlier.

Nowhere in that article does it suggest that a "scientific skeptic" always assumes everything is false until proven true. The Wikipedia article literally says the position is to question claims, not assume things are false. What Uttamattamakin did was not question the claim. What they did was say out loud that they took a strong and firm position with no evidence. That is not "questioning", that is deciding something.

 

"Questioning" = not taking a position for or against something

 

Here is a very relevant quote from your own link:

Quote

Scientific skeptics do not assert that unusual claims should be automatically rejected out of hand on a priori grounds—rather they argue that one should critically examine claims of paranormal or anomalous phenomena and that extraordinary claims would require extraordinary evidence in their favor before they could be accepted as having validity.

I am the skeptic here. Uttamattamakin was the exact opposite of a skeptic.

 

 

See how that article says that empirical research and reproducible tests are important things for scientific skeptics? Uttamattamakin took a strong position on this subject before any of those things had even been done. That is not being a skeptic.

 

 

 

I honestly find it astonishing that people claiming to work in the scientific field in this thread are saying that we should not question things but instead take strong positions on subjects we know nothing about yet (such as the properties of this newly discovered material).

It is NOT the scientific method to just go on your gut feeling and then cherry-pick whatever you find supports that gut feeling while ignoring everything else. That is not science, no matter how many times people want to pretend it is.

 

 

The Wikipedia article literally says:

Quote

Scientific skeptics attempt to evaluate claims based on verifiability and falsifiability; they discourage accepting claims which rely on faith or anecdotal evidence.

Remember, Uttamattamakin made the claims about this being false before it had been verified and falsified. They were 100% basing their assumption on faith and anecdotal evidence, because that was all we had in the beginning when those claims were made. That is not the situation we are in right now, but it was the situation we were in when this whole discussion started.

 

Assuming everything is false until proven true (regardless of evidence or a lack of evidence) is no more "scientific" or "skeptical" than assuming everything is true without evidence.

 

The entire point of skepticism is that we hold a questionable, unbiased position until things can be verified. Then, and only then, do we state that something is one way or another. 

Automatically assuming things are one way or another without any testing is the opposite of what a skeptic does. Skeptics are against that kind of thinking, just like it says in the article you linked. Skeptics question things (question does not mean reject) and then make up their mind when we have evidence.

[Uttamattamakin]

11 hours ago, tikker said:

I did also mean it in a more general sense. I'd feel pretty confident guessing that many experts in this field had a good bout of "hmmm" when seeing this first appear and that it was not resolved by luckily having a number of "real sceptics".

 

That too.  At best all some public skepticism did was keep a lid on the media/public reaction to this news.    There are real consequences for letting the public be mislead about science. 

 

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

I honestly find it astonishing that people claiming to work in the scientific field in this thread are saying that we should not question things but instead take strong positions on subjects we know nothing about yet (such as the properties of this newly discovered material).

 

Never took a strong position.  Simply stated that the claim had not been proven and no independent observations backed up the claim. 

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

It is NOT the scientific method to just go on your gut feeling and then cherry-pick whatever you find supports that gut feeling while ignoring everything else. That is not science, no matter how many times people want to pretend it is.

 

Didn't go with my "gut" I went with my experience of having worked with superconductors as an undergraduate.  I"ve seen what the effects they were claiming were Meissner and flux locking look like.  I also learned with ferro magnetism and diamagnetism look like in the lab. 

Not to mention taking 2 semesters of E and M as an undergradeuate, 2 more in Graduate school, and 3 of Quantum field theory in graduate school.  I know how thee things work both practically and in theory.  LK99 just didn't look promising based on what I knew.  

IF it was some very non standard super conductor... then it is incumbent upon those who make that claim to prove it.  Just as the prosecution has to prove you guilty, not that you need to prove yourself innocent. 

 

They did not

 

At any rate it's time to give up the ghost on this. 

 

 

[tikker]

2 hours ago, Uttamattamakin said:

That too.  At best all some public skepticism did was keep a lid on the media/public reaction to this news.    There are real consequences for letting the public be mislead about science. 

I'm surprised this one took off so much compared to other claims, or maybe it is tunnel vision since this one happened to catch my eye. Even disregarding the current failed attempts at replication the draft itself seems hastily written and incomplete in discussing pitfalls.

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

Except that also agrees with what I said earlier.

Nowhere in that article does it suggest that a "scientific skeptic" always assumes everything is false until proven true. The Wikipedia article literally says the position is to question claims, not assume things are false. What Uttamattamakin did was not question the claim. What they did was say out loud that they took a strong and firm position with no evidence. That is not "questioning", that is deciding something.

 

"Questioning" = not taking a position for or against something

 

Here is a very relevant quote from your own link:

Quote

Scientific skeptics do not assert that unusual claims should be automatically rejected out of hand on a priori grounds—rather they argue that one should critically examine claims of paranormal or anomalous phenomena and that extraordinary claims would require extraordinary evidence in their favor before they could be accepted as having validity.

I am the skeptic here. Uttamattamakin was the exact opposite of a skeptic.

I honestly find it astonishing that people claiming to work in the scientific field in this thread are saying that we should not question things but instead take strong positions on subjects we know nothing about yet (such as the properties of this newly discovered material).

It is NOT the scientific method to just go on your gut feeling and then cherry-pick whatever you find supports that gut feeling while ignoring everything else. That is not science, no matter how many times people want to pretend it is.
 

Remember, Uttamattamakin made the claims about this being false before it had been verified and falsified. They were 100% basing their assumption on faith and anecdotal evidence, because that was all we had in the beginning when those claims were made. That is not the situation we are in right now, but it was the situation we were in when this whole discussion started.

Assuming everything is false until proven true (regardless of evidence or a lack of evidence) is no more "scientific" or "skeptical" than assuming everything is true without evidence.

 I think it is those "extraordinary claims would require extraordinary evidence in their favor" and "require extraordinary evidence in their favor before they could be accepted as having validity." bits that do it here. The scientific method doesn't stop us from leveraging prior research and knowledge we have indicating that this claim is at the very least extraordinary and should not be made lightly. Combined with the falsifiability paradigm the hypothesis to test here is "LK-99 is not a room temperature ambient pressure super conductor" which is falsified by reliably/repeatedly observing it being that and ruling out the alternatives. Reading back through this thread what I see in e.g. Uttamattamakin's response is just a strong need for exactly that falsification. At best we didn't have enough information from this single claim. In practise a combination of prior knowledge tipped the scales toward false, but still not rejecting it, just needing actual verification. So "false until proven true" in the sense of "let's operate on these things  not suddenly existing now, but let's see if they do".

The claim was in unpublished, not peer-reviewed piece of work claiming a revolutionary discovery in a bold writing style. I come from astronomy, not material science, so I can't speak for the usual approach in this field or if it is hard to publish there and comparatively my field is slow moving, but this is a ground-breaking result like this would be approached quite differently there. It doesn't even matter if it is true or false. If the evidence is not strong enough the journal would just ask you to rephrase to instead and/or publish in a normal journal (if you submitted to a high-impact one) until more conclusive results arrive. Seeing it on arXiv without any "submitted to XXX" or "accepted for publication in YYY" and the forward language contributed notably to my scepticism.

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

The entire point of skepticism is that we hold a questionable, unbiased position until things can be verified. Then, and only then, do we state that something is one way or another. 

Automatically assuming things are one way or another without any testing is the opposite of what a skeptic does. Skeptics are against that kind of thinking, just like it says in the article you linked. Skeptics question things (question does not mean reject) and then make up their mind when we have evidence.

Science as a construct may be unbiased, but scientists and scientific communites less and less the closer you approach frontiers in my experience. Not in an bad way, but just you operate in your paradigms, put priors in your studies and build on established knowledge. Someone who doesn't believe the claim will naturally present mainly their evidence for why they consider it false. Others will try and show evidence why they consider it true. On a smaller level this can get a bit polarising, but on average this has led us pretty far to that "unbiased" position we strive for.

[LAwLz]

6 hours ago, Uttamattamakin said:

Never took a strong position.  Simply stated that the claim had not been proven and no independent observations backed up the claim. 

Except you did. Don't try and downplay what you said.

You said that this was false before we had any evidence for or against it. You said you were being biased and would highlight the evidence that agreed with you. You also said that people who believed this was real didn't "live in the real world".

Those were just some of the things you said. If you say things like that then you have taken a "strong position".

 

 

 

6 hours ago, Uttamattamakin said:

IF it was some very non standard super conductor... then it is incumbent upon those who make that claim to prove it.  Just as the prosecution has to prove you guilty, not that you need to prove yourself innocent. 

EXCEPT THAT IS NOT HOW FUCKING SCIENCE IS CONDUCTED!

READ THE FUCKING DEFINITIONS POSTED OVER AND OVER IN THIS THREAD ALREADY.

 

 

 

2 hours ago, tikker said:

Reading back through this thread what I see in e.g. Uttamattamakin's response is just a strong need for exactly that falsification. At best we didn't have enough information from this single claim. In practise a combination of prior knowledge tipped the scales toward false, but still not rejecting it, just needing actual verification. So "false until proven true" in the sense of "let's operate on these things  not suddenly existing now, but let's see if they do".

I think you have missed the posts I took issue with in that case.

 

The posts I took issue with can not be interpreted as "let's wait and see if they do". Here are some examples:  

On 8/1/2023 at 9:46 PM, Uttamattamakin said:

Tomorrow EITHER we will be 10 years from having cheap easy superconducting mag lev and ... supercolliders that cost 1/2 the price  OR we will be living in the real world. 

On 8/5/2023 at 10:22 PM, Uttamattamakin said:

Being skeptical in science isn't' Looking at the evidence for and against a thing.  That is being neutral.  A scientist needs to be professionally convinced of a thing.  Everything is assumed to be false until it is PROVEN true.  Once the proof is solid, peer reviewed, replicated, and reliable then we believe it.   Then the onus is on any who deny it to PROVE that all the other data is wrong. 

  

Here Uttamattamakin said here that they'd "love to be wrong", which implies that they had taken a stance already:  

On 8/5/2023 at 10:22 PM, Uttamattamakin said:

I'd love LOOVE to be wrong. 

 

 

There is also this exchange between us two:

  

On 8/6/2023 at 6:09 AM, Uttamattamakin said:

On 8/6/2023 at 12:06 AM, LAwLz said:

A skeptic does not say "This is false until proven true", which is what you are doing.

A skeptic says "This might be true or it might be false. I'll listen to both sides and remain neutral until strong evidence is presented in either direction".

 NO again you are describing being unbiased. 

IF anything scientific skepticism is being biased against a new claim until it brings the evidence to prove it is true.  

It is like the presumption of innocence until proven guilty.  One is to be skeptical of the claim until proof is shown.  

In case there is still any doubt, let me refer to the Wikipedia article you linked earlier:

Quote

Scientific skeptics do not assert that unusual claims should be automatically rejected out of hand on a priori grounds—rather they argue that one should critically examine claims of paranormal or anomalous phenomena and that extraordinary claims would require extraordinary evidence in their favor before they could be accepted as having validity.

 

 

I don't get why we are still having this discussion. Repeat after me.

SKEPTICS
DO
NOT
ASSERT
THAT
UNUSUAL
CLAIMS
SHOULD
BE
AUTOMATICALLY
REJECTED
OUT
OF
HAND
ON
A
PRIORI
GROUNDS

 

 

Now let's look at what Uttamattamakin said:  

On 8/5/2023 at 10:22 PM, Uttamattamakin said:

Everything is assumed to be false until it is PROVEN true. 

 

 

Like... Holy shit... I am speechless right now.

I am quoting page after page of claims and then quoting dictionary after dictionary that directly contradicts what has been said, and people are still somehow trying to do mental gymnastics into making prior claims correct, when they clearly were not.

A skeptic does not automatically assume something is wrong. They wait until the evidence is gathered and then make their minds up. That is not what happened here, which is why I am so pissed.

[Uttamattamakin]

7 hours ago, LAwLz said:

Except you did. Don't try and downplay what you said.

You said that this was false before we had any evidence for or against it. You said you were being biased and would highlight the evidence that agreed with you.

Snip

 

Reported Failure To Reproduce Superconductivity, But Replication Of Apparent Diamagnetism, At Room Temperature In LK-99

By  Uttamattamakin | July 31st 2023 08:07 PM |

 

That the headline from the blog post I wrote.    It was based on 

 

 

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 Cu3PLi Liu, Ziang Meng, Xiaoning Wang, Hongyu Chen, Zhiyuan Duan, Xiaorong Zhou, Han Yan, Peixin Qin, Zhiqi Liu https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.16802

 

Which did not show any sign that it was supercondctive.  Every science finding since has backed up those first two replication attempts.   That taken with my own knowledge and experience of superconductors brought me to that conclusion.  

It should not be surprising that someone with some expertise would know things before others.  Just as James Cameron knew that the OceanGate sub probably imploded a week before anyone else. 

 

 

7 hours ago, LAwLz said:

That is not what happened here, which is why I am so pissed.

 

Please relax none of this is that serious.  You like many wanted this to be real.  It just wasn't.  IT's not your fault but the media is a BIG hype machine.  Anything scientific or technical gets this.  I hope you get to see something like LK99 but real someday.  Just not today.  OK?  

[Avocado Diaboli]

1 hour ago, Uttamattamakin said:

Please relax none of this is that serious.  You like many wanted this to be real.  It just wasn't.  IT's not your fault but the media is a BIG hype machine.  Anything scientific or technical gets this.  I hope you get to see something like LK99 but real someday.  Just not today.  OK?  

You seem to be taking it seriously enough where you have to reiterate that you're a serious big-brain scientist and talk from a presumed position of authority (typical fallacy to fall into). It's easy to look back and claim "I was right all along" after the dust has settled, but you never made any substantially meaningful observations here, you just parroted the same "It's false until proven otherwise" nonsense that any self-respecting person of science would never fall into, especially one that has no intention of doing actual research in that field. From all I've read from you here and in other threads, you like to talk a big game about your scientific background, but you only come off as a first semester uni student who thinks the things they've heard in their lectures puts them above everybody else who wasn't present and that their word automatically trumps anyone else. This behavior isn't in the spirit of science (adjusting your views according to the facts), because you assume facts where none have been confirmed. That's the issue I believe @LAwLz is continuously raising. As someone who ostensibly values science, you should be in a prime position to learn from the mistakes of literal millennia of research whenever people have claimed something to be impossible until proven otherwise, right until it was proven otherwise, because that's not a sensible position to take. Shutting your eyes on purpose has never led to any discovery. And you should seriously drop the smug, condescending tone if you really want to be taken seriously. It's a bad look when you want to present your opinions as superior while continously not understanding the point being raised for multiple pages.

[ImorallySourcedElectrons]

On 8/8/2023 at 4:02 AM, Uttamattamakin said:

It is about being driven by the evidence.  So far the evidence is neutral to negative on LK99 being anything other than an interesting diamagnetic material.  That is far from proof of being a superconductor at room temp.  Again, that is not my word, that is the word of those who have worked on it and other superconductors.  

 

Yeah, we really need a lot more details. Like just the resistance measurement, that's the sort of thing where you really really need to define the measurement setup extremely well, show pictures, give instrument configurations, etc. Basically, you got to configure and setup that gear correctly to get it to measure down in that range, otherwise the measurement is potentially meaningless due to things like thermal voltages, leakage currents, etc. I sincerely hope they edit the paper and include a lot more details, because the proposed method is definitely interesting and something that's been talked about frequently.

[Forbidden Wafer]

I think it is safe to assume it isn't a room temperature superconductor.
There has been enough time for the authors to sample out their material and get other labs to redo the measurements.

There is no reason to delve deep into understanding the material to proof or theorize anything to prove it works or not, so the results paper should be ready in a few days (2-3) after collecting all the experimental data, assuming that there are standardized methods to verify/measure the superconductivity.

[tikker]

6 hours ago, LAwLz said:

I don't get why we are still having this discussion. Repeat after me.

SKEPTICS
DO
NOT
ASSERT
THAT
UNUSUAL
CLAIMS
SHOULD
BE
AUTOMATICALLY
REJECTED
OUT
OF
HAND
ON
A
PRIORI
GROUNDS

 

Quote

—rather they argue that one should critically examine claims of paranormal or anomalous phenomena and that extraordinary claims would require extraordinary evidence in their favor before they could be accepted as having validity.

the second half of that quote. "Before being accepted as valid" implies the claim is invalid until the appropriate evidence is presented.

Quote

Skepticism in general may be deemed part of the scientific method; for instance an experimental result is not regarded as established until it can be shown to be repeatable independently.[19]

Two experiments failed to reproduce it shortly after, so we were quickly in the "not regarded as established" regime. Both of these sentences imbue a sense of "false until proven true".

 

6 hours ago, LAwLz said:

Like... Holy shit... I am speechless right now.

I am quoting page after page of claims and then quoting dictionary after dictionary that directly contradicts what has been said, and people are still somehow trying to do mental gymnastics into making prior claims correct, when they clearly were not.

A skeptic does not automatically assume something is wrong. They wait until the evidence is gathered and then make their minds up. That is not what happened here, which is why I am so pissed.

But it wasn't automatically rejected on a priori grounds as far as I can see? Their first reply in this thread was referencing two replication attempts that had failed as the basis for not accepting it yet. As you advocate for, minds were made up after (new) evidence was presented. Even your own first reply in this thread was

On 7/28/2023 at 11:32 AM, LAwLz said:

I'll believe it when I see it.

It's not that uncommon for someone to think they have discovered a breakthrough, only to realize their measurements were wrong, or that they overlooked something. I really hope it is true, but I won't be holding my breath.

You as well were already biased and considering it false until strong(er) evidence would come along, understandably so.

 

 

1 hour ago, Forbidden Wafer said:

There is no reason to delve deep into understanding the material to proof or theorize anything to prove it works or not, so the results paper should be ready in a few days (2-3) after collecting all the experimental data, assuming that there are standardized methods to verify/measure the superconductivity.

From what I gather our incomplete understanding of both the material and the ways they propose drive the superconductivity are/were major limiting factors in, for example, simulating its properties. A deep delve could be useful in that case, but it may not be considered interestin enough anymore at this point given the multiple failed replication attempts.

[BachChain]

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/lk-99-patent-update-suggest-it-could-work

Round...how many are we up to now?

[Forbidden Wafer]

1 hour ago, BachChain said:

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/lk-99-patent-update-suggest-it-could-work

Round...how many are we up to now?

As a scientist, I would not be surprised if their picture was in the incorrect scale (C instead of K). 

[Uttamattamakin]

The scientific consensus is now that LK99 is not a superconductor.  Super pure samples of it have been grown they are not superconducting.  Furthermore, the samples from Korea were contaminated with particles that are ferromagnetic.  No Meissner effect, no flux pinning, no superconducting.  

 

For my part I have stated above why I was skeptical.  I am not a specialist in superconductors or materials physics,... but I am a physicist.  Part of my undergraduate education involved multiple laboratory courses and superconductors are a favorite.  So are magnets.  Having seen basically every kind of magnetism and conduction and superconductivity, and gotten to know the classical and quantum theories behind how these things work ... it just didn't add up.   That AND what Joe says in this video.  I'd love to have been wrong and have a great new world changing tech that would herald a new era for all mankind. 

 

I've just seen too many things so hailed fizzle out.  Where are our flying cars, hoverboards, solar powered cars, etc etc ad nauseum? 

[GarlicDeliverySystem]

11 hours ago, Forbidden Wafer said:

As a scientist, I would not be surprised if their picture was in the incorrect scale (C instead of K). 

I did not realize it at first when the news hit, but these graphs are really not telling a lot. Yes, you see a sharp decline to low resistivity at 105C, but it is hard to say whether that is zero or just low.

And by low, it could just be metallic or a better conductor.

 

To put this in perspective, if I read this graph correctly the y-axis is in Ohm cm, and the noise in the plot seems to be around ~1/25 of the last major tick? So, 1/25 of 0.005, which is 0.0002. Heck, let that be 0.0001. That is 0.000001 Ohm m, or 10^-6 Ohm m?

Metals are in the range of 10^-8 to 10^-6 Ohm m. Graphite is apparently in the same 10^-6 range.

 

So couldn't even distinguish regular metals from superconductors in this plot based off of the absolute value of the resistivity. The only interesting thing is the sharp drop, which could be explained also by things like a phase transition etc.

 

It is very easy to be fooled by your own data if you are hoping for something specific.

[Forbidden Wafer]

3 hours ago, GarlicDeliverySystem said:

I did not realize it at first when the news hit, but these graphs are really not telling a lot. Yes, you see a sharp decline to low resistivity at 105C, but it is hard to say whether that is zero or just low.

And by low, it could just be metallic or a better conductor.

What bothers me the most is the use of a linear Y-scale when you have such a wide range of values. They should have used a log scale. (But I want to believe they gave up on it since they couldn't plot Y=0. I've made this mistake when I started working, and I doubt I can be the only idiot to do that. )

[GarlicDeliverySystem]

6 minutes ago, Forbidden Wafer said:

But I want to believe they gave up on it since they couldn't plot Y=0. I've made this mistake when I started working, and I doubt I can be the only idiot to do that. )

Lol, or they have some negative values in there and tried to get that to show up. But yeah, been there, done that.

[PocketNerd]

Omg the “what is a word?” Circlejerk is spreading!

 

Quick, everyone get your hazmat suits!