Absence of superconductivity in LK-99 at ambient conditions

by spekcular • 3 years ago

142 75 3 years ago

TillE• 3 years ago

This isn't a particularly meaningful paper because they failed to produce any kind of partial levitation.

This one which finds substantial ferromagnetism and minimal diamagnetism is a far better reason to doubt that LK-99 is a superconductor:

https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.03110

Still very inconclusive because the synthesis is difficult and messy and nobody knows precisely what materials they're analyzing, but I've adjusted from cautious optimism to mostly resigned pessimism.

soligern• 3 years ago

Now I don’t know what to believe.

sMarsIntruder• 3 years ago

Wait till tomorrow when there will be a new not peer reviewed paper stating the contrary. [edit:grammar]

coding123• 3 years ago

lol, and now it's not tomorrow, it's today

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37043447

loveparade• 3 years ago

Sure, but you really think peer review would solve any of that? It would only make things move 1000x slower and be worse.

The current "free-market" process of replication attempts is going to resolve the issue both quicker and with more statistical significance than peer-review ever could.

Perhaps this isn't what you're implying, but the peer-review word in your comment jumped out to me, as if that changes anything.

threeseed2• 3 years ago

The original scientists said that only 10% of their synthesis attempts were successful.

So at this point no one should be believing anything until we have a lot more evidence.

carabiner• 3 years ago

Superposition of it's over / we are so back.

vbezhenar• 3 years ago

I'd wait for Nobel prize.

jacquesm6• 3 years ago

Who is to say there will be one? And if there is one, then there is no need to wait for it. Typically those are awarded after we're all very much aware of what they are awarded for.

gizmo686• 3 years ago

Why do you need to believe anything at this point. Unless you regularly dance at the bleeding edge of material science, either sit back and enjoy the show, or change the channel and watch something else.

mtlmtlmtlmtl• 3 years ago

Yeah, with things like these, I prefer the watch something else option. It doesn't matter how many of these arxiv papers and dubious twitter videos I look at, I still won't know the answer until there's a scientific consensus. Until then, I see no point in investing any effort. I'm not a physicist. There's no way this information will materially affect my life in the next several years. And there's a pretty huge chance it will never affect my life at all(if it disappears).

It is fun to watch the absolute torrent of confirmation bias and people changing their minds all the time in the comments though. Must be exhausting to constantly wax and wane like that.

Zetice9• 3 years ago

Conversely, why wouldn't someone believe something if there are no consequences to being wrong?

As you say, unless you regularly dance at the bleeding edge of material science, nothing you believe really matters, so why not jump in with both feet?

jacquesm6• 3 years ago

Patience. Just that. It will come out, either positive, or negative, but as long as it is inconclusive there is only patience. No need to get jubilant, no need to be jaded or 'cool'. Just wait.

m3kw9• 3 years ago

You are believing and disbelieving something based on a title.

fnord77• 3 years ago

I think we'll eventually discover superconductivity isn't possible at STP

jacquesm6• 3 years ago

What part of physics is it that states this and how do you explain that 'room temperature' just happens to be the range that is related to us and our environment and not to anything particular in physics? Or is it that you suspect that there is an exclusive or relationship between the conditions that allow complex biological life to never have overlap with those that allow superconductivity?

colordrops• 3 years ago

I don't think they are talking about physics, but rather the law of "nothing ever happens".

KennyBlanken• 3 years ago

Well, except for the whole "research over the last decade or two has born superconductors that work at warmer and warmer temperatures" thing.

Superconductors look far more promising than the economics of nuclear power (which have gotten worse, not better) or fusion (still perpetually 20+ years out), and it's a critical field to work on because we desperately need stuff that superconducts at LN2 (or warmer) temperatures for things like medical imaging, because we're going to run out of helium completely in 100-200 years (and it will become wildly uneconomical well before then.)

zaebal• 3 years ago

It's half-truth, higher temperatures usually require high non-ambient pressure to achieve superconductivity.

roywiggins• 3 years ago

tbf there are nitrogen-temperature superconductors already, they just aren't easy to produce or work with.

miga• 3 years ago

Look for Yttrium-Barium-Copper oxide that superconducts when cooled with liquid nitrogen. This is "cheap" cooling that will never run out.

https://www.kjmagnetics.com/blog.asp?p=superconductors#:~:te....

postalrat2• 3 years ago

I think you will be proven wrong.

kappi2• 3 years ago

very detailed analysis of LK-99 https://twitter.com/TDebant/status/1688675638146727936

barbazoo2• 3 years ago

Saved you a click https://arxiv.org/pdf/2308.02469.pdf

lifthrasiir• 3 years ago

The linked formerly-known-as-Twitter thread is a survey and summary of DFT papers including that one.

8organicbits• 3 years ago

Thread for anyone not logged in: https://nitter.net/TDebant/status/1688675638146727936

kappi2• 3 years ago

https://twitter.com/floates0x/status/1688727233521979392 NEW and IMPORTANT : Study performed at Lanzhou University heavily indicate that successful synthesis of the LK-99 superconductor requires annealing in an oxygen atmosphere. They are suggesting that the final synthesis occurs in an oxygen atmosphere rather than in vacuum.

The original three author LK99 paper and nearly every subsequent attempt at replication involved annealing in the suggested vacuum of 10^-3 torr.

This paper indicates that the superconductivity aspects of the material are greatly enhanced if heated in normal atmosphere.

Authors are Kun Tao, Rongrong Chen, Lei Yang, Jin Gao, Desheng Xue and Chenglong Jia, all from aforementioned Lanzhou University

Paper is available here: https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.03218

lumost• 3 years ago

why would this be the case? (not a chemist, but was trained in physics)

kijin• 3 years ago

According to the screenshot attached to the tweet, it seems that the material needs to have oxygen atoms in exactly the right locations, too, not just copper. Annealing in an oxygen-deprived environment might not be conducive to that.

The original two papers were inconsistent with respect to the vacuum required in the process. Perhaps they were working with crappy equipment that can't maintain a vacuum and accidentally annealed their sample in normal atmosphere, giving rise to unusual properties. Kinda explains why even the original authors don't have enough good samples.

computerdork2• 3 years ago

This seems super interesting, waiting to see if this sparks another round of fabrication attempts!

function_seven3• 3 years ago

Oh man, “fabrication” isn’t a word I’d use :)

I had to reread that a couple times before I realized you meant “make” and not “fake” (…right?)

xqcgrek2• 3 years ago

At this point, profit off the morons still clinging to the hype in the betting markets and move on.

I guarantee some people will be clinging to claims that LK-99 was a superconductor even 5 years from now, just like the cold fusion crowd that still exists.

postalrat2• 3 years ago

I already predicted that there will always be a group of people who don't agree with the majority.

jtwaleson• 3 years ago

You are clearly wrong about that! ;)

I love the song “There is a War” by Leonard Cohen as it also shows the inherent binary conflict in many human things.

icapybara2• 3 years ago

A bit harsh don’t you think?

LK-99 was plausibly a high T superconductor candidate, and high T superconductors are a real thing that exist. It is worth attempting to replicate.

Cold fusion says “all of thermodynamics is wrong”. A much bigger claim…

phyzome• 3 years ago

This is the first time I've heard someone claim that cold fusion is flat-out impossible by the laws of thermodynamics, as opposed to just "very unlikely".

behnamoh• 3 years ago

There's no such thing as bad publicity; how about in science? If the original paper is proved wrong, how on earth could the original authors get any job and respect from their academic colleagues?

taylodl• 3 years ago

I'm suspecting it's fraud. In a few months they'll come out and admit they fudged the numbers. I honestly hope not, room temperature superconductors solve a lot of problems, but we've been down this road before.

iraqmtpizza• 3 years ago

still, one paper said it had near-zero resistance at 110K. Above the temperature of liquid nitrogen. so, uh... big if true

numbsafari• 3 years ago

More likely, if it doesn’t pan out, they’ll come out and say “this is why we didn’t originally publish, because we weren’t confident in our work, but _somebody_ just had to go and disclose our (suspect) preliminary results. This behavior is also why we were happy that person had left the lab. Our work continues…”

i-use-nixos-btw2• 3 years ago

Anyone who is afraid to be wrong shouldn’t entertain the notion of becoming a scientist.

If it turns out they’re wrong, then they will likely do a follow up paper that explains what their mistakes were. No biggy. It’s just a couple of preprints, after all, and it’s widely believed that it was pushed out without all of the authors’ consent in the first place. It won’t leave them with lasting reputational damage from their peers, though it may place slightly more scrutiny on their outputs at a later point.

They may get ridicule from the people who took their paper at face value without noting the informality of the format, the incomplete studies performed on the sample, the almost-clear methodology etc. But those people aren’t scientists - all of the scientists who have discussed this have assumed from day one that it is likely an error, and perhaps toyed around in case their assumption is wrong.

To have reputational damage, they’d need to refuse to retract their work, refuse to elaborate further, claim they invented room temperature superconductors without sufficient proof, then attack anyone who questions them.

i-use-nixos-btw2• 3 years ago

(To the other comment - yes, this being fraud would be an exception to the above. I am assuming it was done in good faith. If it turns out that it was intentionally designed to be misleading, then that changes things - and would be monumentally stupid of them, because publishing a method to a groundbreaking result on a preprint server is a sure-fire way of getting caught out)

threeseed2• 3 years ago

There is no evidence that there has been a conspiracy to commit fraud.

And even if the research is incorrect LK99 is still going to be a useful addition to science.

Everyone just needs to take a deep breath and put down the pitchforks.

hackerlight• 3 years ago

Because "wrong" isn't binary. "Wrong" covers a whole host of things from fraud all the way up to "not a superconductor but really interesting".

jacquesm6• 3 years ago

This is how science works. Sometimes you are right, sometimes you are wrong. Sometimes your 'wrongs' lead to the most amazing 'rights' (and not always by the same people) and sometimes they stay wrong. For example, Geoffrey Hinton was 'wrong' for years (though he didn't publish anything claiming he was right and had cracked something, but different field, but lots of people had already given up and he persisted) and look at him now.

Reputation matters, so don't commit fraud and don't try to trick others. That is the sort of thing you won't be recovering from. But being wrong is fine, even if you truly believe(d) that you are right. Note that this whole saga was not started on the timetable of the people that have the most at stake. I'm hoping they are right, I'm fearing they are wrong and if it turns out that they were wrong then I hope that they will not be dissuaded by that and that they and many others will continue the search. There are a lot of things that came out of materials science in the last two decades that we'd have never had if not for people searching for them. Not all of those searches will pan out, that's pretty much a given. Think of it as sifting for gold in a mountain of junk. For every piece of gold there are piles and piles of junk. And sometimes stuff that looks very much like gold, but ultimately isn't. That should not affect the reputation of the seekers. They are either going to try again, or maybe they'll give up. But what others think of them doesn't matter all that much.

nntwozz• 3 years ago

Asianometry recently released a video on the history of superconductors:

https://youtu.be/wUczYHyOhLM

The research field is apparently fraught with failures.

The video is a great primer on the subject and tones down all the hype when looking back at previous breakthroughs.

Absence of superconductivity in LK-99 at ambient conditions

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