Research paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.12008
Just a word of caution: Non-peer reviewed, non-replicated, rushed-looking preprint, on a topic with a long history of controversy and retractions. So don't get too excited yet.
Okay so I agree that it needs to be peer reviewed and independently verified before we can trust it. But how exactly does the preprint look rushed?
It's visibly made in word. That's enough to be rushed.
Exactly. Most papers I’ve seen out there use LaTeX. This is clearly Microsoft Word.
Depends on the discipline, but yeah, engineering would usually be LaTeX
And it definitely looks it. That is, shitty.
I would also like to know. Apparently there were some proofreading errors etc. Someone in reddit explained that rushing the publish might be explained by wanting to stake the claim and get the ball rolling on reproducing the results as fast as possible.
Honestly as someone who is also in research, that is pretty understandable. Preprint papers are all subject to peer review and editing after the fact, but are a good opportunity to stake your claim on a big discovery before someone else can. Preprints are inherently not final versions and I guarantee that the mistakes will be caught before publication.
Have you.. seen the.. figures?!! Also, the Arxiv listing had a spelling mistake. "First" was spelled as "firs".
Reposting my comment from another thread to add a bit of context in case anyone’s curious.
So I read the paper, and here’s a tldr about how their material apparently gains its properties.
It is hypothesized that superconductivity properties emerge from very specific strains induced in the material. Hence why most of the discovered superconductors require either to be cooled down to very low temperatures, or to be under high pressures. Both shrink the material.
What this paper claims is that they have achieved a similar effect chemically by replacing some lead ions with copper ions, which are a bit smaller (87 pm for Cu vs 133 pm for Pb). This shrinks the material by 0.48%, and that added strain induces superconductivity. This is why it apparently works at room temperature — you no longer need high pressures or extreme cold to create the needed deformation.
Can’t really comment on how actually feasible or long-lasting this effect is, but it looks surprisingly promising. At least as a starting point for future experiments. Can’t wait for other labs’ reproduction attempts. If it turns out to be true, this is an extremely important and world-changing discovery.
Interesting and it wouldn't be a ceramic. Downside is that it is lead based. Not exactly good for the environment or very flexible without breaking. Lead doesn't make good wire.
I would be very skeptical of this paper's claims.
It hasnt been peer reviewed
The data hasn't been replicated
The clains being made are extraordinary. i.e a cheap material that has a superconduction transition temperature 200 degrees kelvin above the cuprates at standard pressure
The fragility of this superconductive state makes me wonder if what theyre claiming to observe is an artifact (pathological science) rather than a real effect
The paper is "rough around the edges" i.e multiple proofreading mistakes and has undergone little apparent editing for quality
There's no room for pathological science
https://sciencecast.org/casts/suc384jly50n
The only way to do something like that with diamagnetism or ferromagnetism is to deliberately fake the arrangement of magnets.
Sceptical because "revolutionary" discoveries like this always end up either being bogus or have some massive caveat that makes them effectively useless outside of very specific scenarios.
Thought I will be pleasantly surprised if proven wrong
This is huge, is it not? No loss in potential energy means that I could have an infinitely floating coffee cup without the use of power, no?
It is absolutely huge
It means that you can make supercapacitors which have larger energy storage density than our current batteries by who knows how many times
If it were real maybe. But having read the paper, I am very skeptical that it is.
What's the purpose of posting these results before they have been peer reviewed and reproduced?
Because this is how they get peer reviewed and reproduced? Publishing is how science works?
No you should put the paper in a filing cabinet somewhere and see what happens
I think the question was "what's the purpose of posting this on Lemmy?" (not arXiv) because that does nothing for peer review but a lot for stirring laypeople's wild imagination.
I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that until this is peer-reviewed and replicated, this is worthless.
I'll also gladly eat my shorts if it turns out they actually did it but ATM I'm very skeptical.
If they take too long the room temperature won't be enough due the increase in temperatures 😅 /s
Tc is allegedly 120C, so we,ve got a couple of years if it's not a scam.
anyone with a better understanding able to articulate potential trade-offs/complications to using this in practical applications?
*edited:
more discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36864624
the critical field and critical current seem very low … This means you can't actually push big current through this thing (yet). You can't make a powerful magnet, and you can't make viable power lines
The method to produce this material as described in the related paper [1] is fairly simple and could be done at home with a $200 home metal melting furnace from amazon and the precursors (which also seem to be fairly standard easy to obtain metals)
Read this comment thread from SC researchers: <reddit link removed>
Lots of problems with the paper, they claim. It is not up to the standards of current SC research. One of them says Dias's work shows more merit than this.
Insane capacity batteries
Lossless power transmission via wires
Better magnetically levitating trains
Much more power efficient computers, electronics
The list is huge
The only drawback is that LK-99 is polycristalline... Levitating trains and computers, electronics, are a stretch as long as the material is not monocristalline.
It is huge nethertheless.
That "levitation" video is worthless: One edge of it is still resting on the magnet, and plain old steel screws will do that if you put them on a plain old speaker magnet. If they can't even manage to show actual levitation after claiming it, then I highly suspect the rest of the claims are just as invalid.
Here we go again...
Maybe it's me misunderstanding, but 127 is considered room temp?
127c is the maximum operating temperature. If it goes above that, it looses superconductivity.
This material below 127c (which is insanely hot for superconductors) will be superconductive.
Operating range is -273c to 127c
To be honest, this seems very sus to me. A big paper with only three authors?! I went down the rabbit hole of trying to find the lab from which it has been published. It's almost there is no online presence. In another paper they put out along with it, they say that they show Meissner effect (levitating effect of a superconductor) and that a video is attached. I looked for the video but I wasn't able to find it. :/
This... this is literally revolutionary if true. Has it been corroborated by other experiments? How certain are the results? How hard is it to mass produce this? This could literally be the breakthrough of the century in materials science here.
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