https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.12008 One of the authors reportedly has 1500 citations in other papers (epistemically status: unverified), so this is not a rando. The experimental setup looks correct (ie, they looked for 4 effects, not just 1, unlike some “superconductors” “discovered” recently). The graphs are just what you’d expect from a superconductor, to the point where I’d be inclined to believe they left their data collection software in a simulation mode if they had a less plausible method of action for the superconductivity. Either this reproduces quickly and this is historic, or it’ll be the new cold fusion or faster-than-light neutrinos.
Anyone with the equipment to pull a 10^-5 Torr vacuum should be able to reproduce this. For context, you can get a 10^-4 vacuum pump for about $3k. So it’s probably not more than $60k for a pump to get one more order of magnitude lower. Should get confirmation within a week or two. This stuff looks shockingly easy to make: bake a mixture of copper and phosphorus powder at 550° C under vacuum for 48 hours, bake a 1:1 molar mixture of lead oxide and lead sulfate powders at 725° C for 24 hours (not in a vacuum), then pulverize both results, mix in a 1:1 molar ratio, and bake under vacuum at 925° C for 10 hours. I don’t have the equipment to do that, but I know there are several chemistry YouTubers who do, or close. The vacuum is definitely the most expensive part. And who knows, maybe the reaction won’t turn out to require such a low vacuum and people will be able to do it with a $3000 (10^-4), or even $60 (10^-3) pump.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.12037 Second paper, same group, with a picture of diamagnetic levitation of it. Still not proof (could just be ordinary magnetic levitation without quantum locking, especially in a still image, or a picture of some other material entirely), but this is some effort if it’s a fake.
I stumbled across a similar story to this not too long ago and lost the article before I had a chance to run down the details. The story I read indicated that there were reasons (based on previous papers by members of the team) that one should give the story the ol' side-eye, but not enough to completely discredit it. May not be the same group, but it was a story about superconductors working at around room temps.
There was a completely different group that claimed to find RTP superconductors in 2020. Turned out to be fraud.
It does echo the fuss over “cold fusion” doesn’t it? Of course we know that “hot” fusion is real and achievable…someday. I wonder if this one of those technologies that could eventually sabe the world, if we don't destroy it first. I wonder if the pessimists’ ultimate solution to the Germi Paradox is that every civilization gets into the same doomsday race and always loses
https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/ro...e-superconductivity-this-time-for-real/3512/3 replication attempts are underway.
Maybe it’s nothing, maybe it’s a red flag, but the second paper lists a different vacuum pressure than the first, 10^-3 torr instead of 10^-5. That’s a 100x difference.
By happenstance, I stumbled across this article about how some new superconducting material might help us crack fusion, and it can't even get anywhere close to as warm as the stuff in the OP. A special new tape could make small, efficient nuclear fusion reactors possible Be pretty wild if all of this works out and we wind up with practical fusion power in a very short period of time.
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/superconductor-breakthrough-replicated-twice Headline is sensational, but the LBNL results are pretty important. They predict that the copper substitutions in the lead apatite can happen in one of two ways, and while the higher-energy state should be superconducting, the lower-energy state (which is favored, something like 90-10) will not be. This means it'll be hard to synthesize, but if the theory is right it might turn out that there are other similar materials that are easier.
Another thought about this: bulk synthesis might end up producing polycrystalline LK-99, where each individual grain is either superconducting or not (it’s looking like the common version is maybe a paramagnetic semiconductor). With the high Tc, it might be possible to mechanically separate the grains and maybe sinter (or even glue) the superconductors together.
Follow up: https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/room-temperature-superconductor-new-developments
https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.01192 reproduction with a Tc of around 100K, but stable under large magnetic fields (tested up to 9T) , which indicates low a superconducting volume of the bulk material, but that a Tc for a fully superconducting bulk should be much higher. In contrast, large magnetic fields typically reduce the Tc of the superconductor.
I expect this to fall apart under further scrutiny, but come on science please give us this one. Room temperature super conductors just sound like one of those "oh, we are living in the future/technology is advancing beyond just having faster phones" things that are disappointingly rare nowadays.
A video of something that looks an awful lot like flux pinning, the hallmark of the Meissner Effect. https://twitter.com/andercot/status/1687740396691185664 This looks how I’d expect (more so than the first video), but there’s also nothing shown that couldn’t be done with it on wires (eg, run a ring around it and between the sample and the magnet, remove it and put it back, etc.) Cautiously hopeful that this is not a hoax. It’s definitely not simple diamagnetic levitation.
Apparently, there's been more than a few people who've posted videos of them replicating the superconductor. Of course, there were a lot of people claiming that they'd duplicated cold fusion, and we saw how that turned out.
Alex Kaplan: "It's as close to official as we'll probably get: LK-99 is likely simply a ferromagnetic material, which explains its levitating properties, according to new research from Peking University. The room temperature superconductivity revolution will have to wait another day."
Well, Seems Like LK-99 Isn’t a Room Temperature Superconductor After All Copper is a better conductor than this.
South Korean University Investigating Author of Those Viral Superconductor Claims You remember when a stem cell researcher got busted for faking data and committed suicide? It's not an uncommon thing in that part of the world, it seems.
A room-temperature superconductivity scandal, this one in Rochester "Data reliability concerns" meaning "he probably fudged most of the first paper and most of the second paper, and manipulated his grad students so they kept their mouths shut about it".
