Evidence of Near-Ambient Superconductivity

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-05742-0

by lxm • 3 years ago

32 36 3 years ago

nature.com

superb-owl• 3 years ago

There is some controversy here: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/will-controversy-...

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35070643

nl3• 3 years ago

There's a good discussion of this at Quanta[1]:

Yet Hamlin and other researchers insist that the group’s past requires that today’s historic claims be met with historic levels of scrutiny.

[snip]

Most recently, in 2020 Dias and his co-authors published a study of a carbonaceous sulfur hydride (CSH) that hit its critical transition at around 14 degrees Celsius (57.2 degrees Fahrenheit) and 267 gigapascals. Almost immediately, a handful of experts spotted unusual patterns in the data used to verify the material’s response to magnetic fields. When Dias and his frequent collaborator, Ashkan Salamat, a physicist at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas released their raw data a year later in the form of a 149-page document, they detailed an unusual and complicated method for eliminating background magnetic interference — one they said was necessary for them to detect the tiny magnetic field rejected by the small sample. This method was inconsistent with how they’d described the procedure in the original paper, which led Nature to issue a retraction last September.

[snip]

Dias defends his work vigorously. In the months since the retraction, Dias has conducted additional experiments on the CSH material at Argonne and Brookhaven National Laboratories. In these, he invited independent scientists to observe the material’s superconducting transition. He recently submitted a new manuscript to Nature that repeats the claim of high-temperature superconductivity in CSH with rigor he insists will dispel past allegations.

[1] https://www.quantamagazine.org/room-temperature-superconduct...

munchler• 3 years ago

This part also made me wonder:

“We have clear, detailed instructions on how to make our samples,” Dias said. “We are not going to distribute this material, considering the proprietary nature of our processes and the intellectual property rights that exist.”

How do the instructions work if the processes are proprietary? It seems self-contradictory.

lallysingh2• 3 years ago

They're saying that they can reproduce the process, but don't want anyone else to.

nl3• 3 years ago

How do the instructions work if the processes are proprietary? It seems self-contradictory.

This is pretty normal in materials science. You can produce a super amazing product you keep the recipe as secret as possible.

neuronexmachina2• 3 years ago

Oof:

In a 2021 talk organized by the Sri Lanka Association for the Advancement of Science and later posted to YouTube, Dias said “We recently raised $20 million just to, you know, focus on the science part of this. And these are the investors that we used for this kind of technology.” At that moment (43:25 in the video) a list of names appears on the screen. Under the category labeled “Investors (Series A),” the names include Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, and Daniel Ek, co-founder and CEO of Spotify. Following the publication of this article, a representative for Dias told Quanta that those were “aspirational statements,” that the company had not raised the money, and that the names listed were prospective investors.

physPop• 3 years ago

All these headlines of near room temperature superconductivity always fail to mention that its at astronomically large pressures. Yes its still interesting becuase such a finding (if verified) would provide new fodder for theorists, but we can try to report science in a less clickbaity fashion.

eloff• 3 years ago

This one is at 10kpa. Nearly ambient pressure. If it’s for real, it’d be an historic breakthrough.

bewaretheirs• 3 years ago

Abstract says 10kbar, which is I believe one gigapascal. It's near ambient only relative to prior work (at 267 Gpa).

fwlr2• 3 years ago

10kbar, not 10kpa (10kpa would be below sea level air pressure).

For reference, that’s about 150psi, which is well within conventional engineering range. You can pick up Schedule 40 PVC pipe at your local hardware store that will do 150psi comfortably.

semireg• 3 years ago

Another article stated that the large pressure requirements are already known/solved in current chip designs using some kind of chemistry-induced pressurization. I’m a fish out of water on this topic, but maybe an analogy is tempered glass existing in equilibrium at 10,000 PSI.

Wingman4l7• 3 years ago

Indeed -- very frustrating. It has been commonly understood that the holy grail, "room temperature superconductivity", always has also implied ambient pressures (or at the very least, pressures not requiring a diamond anvil).

tomohelix• 3 years ago

It is a big breakthrough regardless. 200-300GPa is basically the absolute limit of what we can achieve.

Reducing it 200 folds put it in the realm of possibility for a commercial application.

IncRnd3• 3 years ago

There are concerns about this. [1]

But for the past three years, the Rochester team—and Dias in particular—has been shrouded in allegations of scientific misconduct after other researchers raised questions about their 2020 claim of room-temperature superconductivity. In September, the Nature paper reporting that result was retracted, as documented in Science and For Better Science. Further misconduct allegations against Dias have recently emerged, with researchers alleging that Dias plagiarized substantial portions of someone else’s doctoral thesis when writing his own and that he misrepresented his thesis data in a 2021 paper in Physical Review Letters (PRL). Jessica Thomas, Executive Editor of the Physical Review journals, confirmed that PRL has launched an investigation into that accusation. “This is a pretty serious allegation,” she says. “We are not taking it lightly.”

To understand those allegations, Physics Magazine independently examined Dias’ thesis and spoke with more than a dozen experts in high-temperature superconductivity, including Dias. Although opinions differ, an overwhelming majority agree that some form of misconduct has likely occurred. Dias denies the accusations. “I really do see all this as a scientific debate,” he says. “So even though these are meaningless, baseless claims, I really do think that these are adding to advancing the science.” He insists that the data for both of his room-temperature-superconductivity claims are robust and valid.

and

On a hunch, he pulled up Dias’ 2013 thesis and fed both his thesis and Dias’ into a plagiarism checker. His computer screen lit up; the two documents contained numerous identical passages. Physics Magazine independently compared the two theses and found dozens of paragraphs that match word for word and two figures that have striking similarities.

[1] https://physics.aps.org/articles/v16/40

geoelectric3• 3 years ago

I’d recommend not using preformat for quoting, or using a very short line width if you do. Your comment is rather unreadable on the mobile version of the site for wrapping 4/5 of the way through each line, then hitting a hard EOL two words later.

Dylan16807• 3 years ago

That doesn't sound unreadable at all.

Even ignoring that it's better than what it used to do.

IncRnd3• 3 years ago

Thank you.

lostlogin• 3 years ago

This would have been trivial to avoid for the cheater. Just rephrase the copied bits.

Sloppy cheating is disappointing on so many levels.

IncRnd3• 3 years ago

It's also a path to near-ambient superconductivity, err sort of...

yeknoda• 3 years ago

Cynical and interesting commentary from academics in the comments of this blog post: http://nanoscale.blogspot.com/2023/03/aps-march-meeting-day-...

itcrowd• 3 years ago

The correct link is "Day 2", here: https://nanoscale.blogspot.com/2023/03/aps-march-meeting-202...

plaguepilled2• 3 years ago

Please stop posting stuff related to this specific superconductor research team. Its not replicated, its from a team that's made an awkward retraction directly relevant to this research, and its under scrutiny. This just feels like spam.

neuronexmachina2• 3 years ago

Based on your comment I assumed it was published in something like Nature Scientific Reports, but it seems like it's actually published in Nature Nature?

More context on the retraction: https://physics.aps.org/articles/v16/40

plaguepilled2• 3 years ago

Nature is a high profile journal and the expectation for quality is certainly earnt, but that doesn't immunise them from publishing things of questionable character. While I don't have links on hand, this sort of thing has happened before.

Evidence of Near-Ambient Superconductivity

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