Secondly, this all happened two days ago! If the methodology was perfect, I still wouldn't expect good replication results back within two (part non-business!) days.
I don't know if this material is legit. I really hope it is. But the process of figuring that out could potentially take months (or more), and a two-day-later failed to replicate is not a death sentence.
As much as it sucks, this is really just going to take time to prove it's not a superconductor. If it is a superconductor, we may not know for a while either, unless one of the influencers/"makers" attempting to reproduce the material succeeds and posts some good convincing video of flux pinning or other Meissner effect stuff (that person is going to go insanely viral, if it happens).
I can't imagine how frustrating that can be. And then you have to do it with something you don't even know works. Kind of like dealing with obscure retro computers. Does it still work? No one knows. What does it do if it works? No one knows. Can it even function or are parts missing? That's right - no one knows.
It is why I quit experimental physics.
Filament is too wet, the air is too cold, a batch of filament might behave wrong. Or everything goes 99% right and the axis of the moon and the constellations are off and it ruins your entire print after 57 hours. Then you start again and it breaks at 59.5 hours. I’m sure it’s not as hardcore as synthesizing superconductors but the real world is incredibly messy and imprecise.
Everything from humidity and altitude to undocumented "magic tricks" (eg baking something in an oven under vaccuum for a week to get.rid.of.all.the.water.)
I heard anecdotes that experiments were sometimes literally only reproducible in one exact lab because reasons.
Turns out there's just as much art as there is science in experimentation...
If a prerequisite of publication in a top tier journal was someone having replicated the work… anyone at all… then the quality of write up would improve dramatically because all the stuff that never gets written up would be written up so that the second lab costs them less money to do the replication work, so the second lab doesn’t spent a month failing because they didn’t bake the powder in a vacuum for a week before performing the entire synthesis under dry nitrogen purge when the methodology just said the powder had been dried and the synthesis was performed at ambient pressure in a zero humidity atmosphere…
It's rare for researchers to get the budget to replicate someone else's work - this case might be one of the few exceptions given that everyone and their dog want to be the first one to show the world a successful replication. Hell, there are Youtube and Tiktok streamers on the task as well, that way you know just how nuts everyone is going.
The super power of modern technology is the ability to perform precise steps on a massive scale and basically forever.
Obviously it takes a lot of effort to keep the machinery running but still, the mere fact that it's running in the first place blows your mind if you think about it.
Modern Machinery multiplies the impact on the world of any human who operates it.
vacuum oven also works great for drying 3d printer filament!
Usually they understand directly because this is something they can easily relate to.
That wasn't my experience, in either high school physics or undergrad electronics. I hated keeping a lab book (just wanted to 'do' & see results I suppose) but the emphasis was always on recording as much as possible to understand what's important and what happened etc. when you review later.
I suppose looking through another lens you can call that an expectation of repeatability, but it's just a matter of emphasis isn't it? You know it might be hard to repeat, so you record as much as possible about the setup & process to remove variables and control what needs to be controlled (especially if you don't yet understand what that is, or the full scope).
It might be naive, but I would love an environment where everyone self published or arxiv papers/reviews/datasets/models. Then journals could publish the best papers/review preprints.
I imagine a world where journals beg researchers for the rights to publish their paper after seeing an excellent preprint. Or a journal finds an interesting comment on PubPeer and pays for the author to expand it into a more detailed review.
Science is generally dealing with more data than any one person can look at. Anyone with a laptop can provide unique analyses of the data which can fuel new hypotheses, which can be explored with simulations and further analysis.
the big machines represent a bottleneck only in the physical experiments that they enable, but a lot of science can be done around that.
Tighten the feedback loops by all means I say
Especially for public science, but that’s another story
Creating a dish, replicating the dish, writing a recipe, getting competent cooks to follow the recipe, getting non-competant cooks to follow it, and so on. [1]
It all leads to multiple revisions and takes a lot of time.
And this is for -food-. Imagine doing it for something a lot less tolerant of variation.
[1] old recipes start with "pluck 2 chickens" because, you know, someone followed the recipe and didn't pluck the chickens...
As I understand it, the 99 in the name is because they first discovered it in 1999.
Seems to me that if you didn't manage to nail down the process in 24 years, it's probably time to publish and let someone else have a go.
But if I was an early-career researcher looking to establish myself, secure funding and maybe a tenure-track position, and I had a nobel-prize-winning discovery up my sleeve, I can't imagine many things that would take precedence.
I mean, obviously whatever happened happened. It just seems strange to simultaneously claim to have discovered something 24 years ago, and to have been rushed into publishing prematurely.
Humans really are selfish sometimes.
The first paper submitted is titled "The First Room-Temperature Ambient-Pressure Superconductor." It lists three authors: Sukbae Lee, Ji-Hoon Kim, and Young-Wan Kwon. Its timestamp is Saturday, July 22, 2023 at 07:51:19 UTC. [1]
The second paper submitted is titled "Superconductor Pb10−xCux(PO4)6O showing levitation at room temperature and atmospheric pressure and mechanism." This paper lists six authors: Sukbae Lee, Jihoon Kim, Hyun-Tak Kim, Sungyeon Im, SooMin An, Keun Ho Auh [2]. Its timestamp is Saturday, July 22nd, 2023 at 10:11:28 UTC, or two hours and twenty minutes after the first paper.
In both papers the first author is Sukbae Lee and the second author is Jihoon Kim, and in both their affiliation is given as "Quantum Energy Research center, Inc." in Seoul. The first paper posted has Young-Wan Kwon as third author. The second paper does not have Young-Wan Kwon as an author, and has four additional authors with various affiliations.
The second paper appears to have been was prepared in LaTeX, and the first paper appears to have been prepared in Word. The title and abstract of the first paper explicitly claim the creation of the world's first room temperature and pressure superconductor. The title and abstract of the second paper don't explicitly claim demonstration of the first superconductor, though they use some terminology that sounds like superconducting properties.
The accusation is that Young-Wan Kwon published the first paper without the consent of the rest of the LK-99 team, listed himself as third author, and left off the other four. Two hours later, the rest of the LK-99 team stuffed as much as they had into the second paper, and released it as soon as possible.
To me that totally seems like what happened. It explains why there are two different papers from the same group submitted on the same subject on the same day, and it explains why the author lists are different between the two. I haven't yet looked in detail, but I'm betting it also explains a lot of the oddities that people have noted in the first two papers.
This also makes me way more excited about the possibility these claims are legit. The information so far is consistent with a research group that was forced to publish early, and who produced a superconductor through a fabrication process that is a bit tricky. There's nowhere near enough evidence to conclude LK-99 is a room temperature superconductor. But one failed replication doesn't prove LK-99 isn't a superconductor - if the fabrication process is finicky we'd expect to see a few dozen failed reproductions and a few successful reproductions
Side note, the upvotes on the original comment have pushed me well past the 500 upvotes mark, so now I have a downvoted button on most comments. Which is actually kind of annoying on mobile because God, they are right beside each other and absolutely tiny, with no remaining visual indicator afterwards as to whether you upvoted or downvoted a comment.
A new link appears on that comment with text `undown` or `unvote` depending on which one you clicked.
TLDW it seems very unlikely that they have what they claim
Plenty of people who know the theory of superconductors are sceptical. They're not wrong about the theory. It's also worth pointing out that every previous time a new superconductor critical temp limit was broken in a major way, superconductor theory saying it shouldn't be possible was a cause for early scepticism amongst those who knew the theory. Sabine's gut reactions in a YouTube video doesn't make the result very unlikely. It doesn't make her wrong either, she's right that all existing superconductors, if pure and homogeneous, would not behave like that on a magnet. It is also the case that all existing superconductors do not superconduct at room temperature and ambient pressure. It is also the case that (absent fraud, which is on everyone's mind after Ranga Dias) we don't know of any material that could plausible behave the way that video shows something behaving. The only thing I can think of that could behave that way would be impure/heterogeneous diamagnetic material, but like 15x as diamagnetic as the next highest non-superconductor, which means if that material exists we don't know about it. If it was fraud, it would be with a magnetised sample on a magnet like that. The reason I think fraud is the only option if it was a magnetised sample is because that's a really, really obvious explanation for the effect and they have to have measured the sample for magnetism before putting it on a magnet. They would also literally feel it/see it/hear it while placing the sample on the magnet. Also it would almost certainly have to be composed of different elements than they describe, because lead apatite with copper definitely should not be ferromagnetic at all.
Take a video of you producing and testing it, with a mobile phone.
It only works 10% of the time? Not an issue, post 10 videos. Whatever.
Would it be perfect? No, of course it could be faked.
But i guaranteed people would be a ton less skeptical and willing to push hard on this if the original authors had done this sort of thing.
It's honestly not that hard to set up a tripod and a mobile phone, and even in the circumstances here, where they apparently got pushed to publish quickly, it could still show that it works.
It also would help those trying to reproduce see exactly what you did, in detail.
What percent of the cost of running these experiments do you think that is to buy a nest or a unifi camera? Heck, Do you believe the university doesn’t already have a surveillance system almost certainly in the hallway to the lab. Plenty of them even have cameras in every lab already. In the past two weeks, I was in three material science labs in Georgia, and South Carolina and all of them had cameras in every lab.
This is not that hard. If you wanna argue that it’s not helpful, that’s one thing. But arguing that it is difficult seems very silly.
Worse yet, I can with a bit of trick photography and standard liquid nitrogen cooled super conductors make a video that looks like success even though I'm working with colored wax for materials in the production process. (liquid nitrogen is hard to disguise, but with some trick photography and multiple takes I can do it). Or I can skip all that and spend some time in blender to do the above via CGI. (well I don't know blender that well, and most blender animations are obvious, but someone with a few months could pull this off)
It is not that hard or expensive to record footage for a few days at a time having a continuous overwrite.
You likely don't even need to go that far -Most universities have cameras everywhere, anyway, including plenty of universities that have cameras in every lab of this kind.
It is also done by millions of home users all the time.
As I said, yes, things can be faked, but who cares that’s not the point
As others have pointed out the idea of using video as strong evidence is underbaked.
I didn’t say strong evidence, I said evidence.I was, in fact, quite clear that it is not strong evidence. you seem to have added that so that you could be more dismissive.
They write that: " As shown in Figure 9, the x-ray diffraction spectrum of the ground powder of the finally sintered product is highly consistent with the x-ray diffraction spectrum reported by Lee et al.[3] and coincides well with the diffraction pattern of the apatite. This proves that we have successfully synthesized the modified lead-apatite as Lee et al.[3.4] "
(First off, you need to pay to the spectrum swear jar. an XRD pattern is a pattern, not a spectrum, it resolves space, not energy.)
But looking at figure 9 shows that the material is not the same. They are missing a peak at ~17.5 degrees, and have an extra one around 25 degrees.
Further, all the peaks seem to be shifted about the same amount from the LK-99 structure, as the LK-99 is from pure lead-apatite. This indicates that they have an even smaller unit cell. So if the .5% compression in the original LK-99 paper is correct, there could easily be an overcompression present in this article.
All the XRD pattern tells you is that they produced something wrong, an that it did not superconduct.
It makes it impressive how pure the phase was in the original LK-99 paper.
I will however say that there are some problems with the XRD pattern in the original paper too: They did not write which energy the XRD was measured at, one would then guess that it is Cu-Ka, but who knows. Under any circumstances, a peak should not be missing completely from a powder measurement (if it was a pellet, it could be missing due to orientation effects)
There are strong similarities between the XRD patterns, but considering the theoretical paper yesterday about selective site substitution being necessary to achieve superconductivity, it's reasonable to suspect that these "minor" differences may be critical.
Recently[1], there was an exciting claim that a new type of material could conduct electricity perfectly at room temperature (this is what is meant by "superconductivity")[4]. This material was a version of lead-apatite [2], a type of mineral, that was altered with certain additions and made by combining two other materials, lanarkite and copper phosphide.
The researchers writing this report wanted to check if this claim was true. So, they made the same types of materials (lanarkite, copper phosphide, and the altered lead-apatite) and tested how they conducted electricity and reacted to magnets.
What they found was that lanarkite (Pb2SO5) didn't conduct electricity well at all, and copper phosphide Cu3P) conducted electricity similar to a semiconductor [3]. The altered lead-apatite, which was supposed to be the superconductor, behaved more like a semiconductor (a type of material that can sometimes conduct electricity, depending on conditions).
Also, a key property of superconductors is that they repel magnets. But when the researchers put a magnet near their lead-apatite, there was no repulsion.
Because of these tests, they're suggesting that the original claim about this room-temperature superconductor should be re-examined more carefully. It doesn't seem to behave like a superconductor in their tests.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36864624
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apatite
There are basically two repeating crystal cells. Her theoretical calculation shows superconducting properties when you substitute one cell for copper, but not the other. The "bad" substitution is a lower energy substitution that occurs more easily.
"Finally, the calculations presented here suggest that Cu substitution on the appropriate (Pb(1)) site displays many key characteristics for high-TC superconductivity, namely a particularly flat isolated d-manifold, and the potential presence of fluctuating magnetism, charge and phonons. However, substitution on the other Pb(2) does not appear to have such sought-after properties, despite being the lower-energy substitution site. This result hints to the synthesis challenge in obtaining Cu substituted on the appropriate site for obtaining a bulk superconducting sample."
> Finally, the calculations presented here suggest that Cu substitution on the appropriate (Pb(1)) site displays many key characteristics for high-TC superconductivity, namely a particularly flat isolated d-manifold, and the potential presence of fluctuating magnetism, charge and phonons. However, substitution on the other Pb(2) does not appear to have such sought-after properties, despite being the lower-energy substitution site. This result hints to the synthesis challenge in obtaining Cu substituted on the appropriate site for obtaining a bulk superconducting sample.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.16892
Edit: Layperson summary from https://twitter.com/Andercot/status/1686215574177841152. It's crazy for the sim to not only be favorable towards SC, but also showing results that align with what the researchers proposed and what the replicators are experiencing (difficulty in synthesis).
> The simulations modeled what the original Korean authors proposed was happening to their material - where copper atoms were percolating into a crystal structure and replacing lead atoms, causing the crystal to strain slightly and contract by 0.5%. This unique structure was proposed to allow this amazing property.
> Lastly, these interesting conduction pathways only form when the copper atom percolates into the less likely location in the crystal lattice, or the 'higher energy' binding site. This means the material would be difficult to synthesize since only a small fraction of crystal gets its copper in just the right location.
Absolutely incredible that she was able to get this paper out so quickly, and with such a critical insight to the problem at that!
The paper also has this absolute gold statement:
>I briefly note that achieving such a crystal field environment should also be possible in intercalated twisted
>heterogeneous bilayers where selection of different hetero bilayers can provide the mirror symmetry breaking, while
>moir ́e twist can provide an arbitrary rotation of the upper and lower triangles
I wonder if you could troll theorists into doing simulations of just about any substance by publishing convincing-looking papers in arxiv. Scratch that: we know it's possible.
The patent system in its current form isn't going to survive the next few decades, on this I agree. First step is probably going to be chopping down the patent length from its current 15 year term.
So what about the video[1] that shows magnetic levitation occurring?
Since the linked article was unable to reproduce this effect, it seems there are two possibilities:
1. The video is fake (which is really, really hard to imagine since that would predictably end the authors' careers).
2. The sample synthesized for the linked article doesn't match the original one for whatever reason.
It's a shame that these papers were published before they were polished by the authors.
[0] https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/claims-of-room-tempe...
Sounds like that’s the plan once they’ve secured the Nature paper.
[1]: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2384782-room-temperatur...
The above can be managed, but it can't be done over a weekend. The lab has stated they are willing to send their working samples out to other labs. However to ensure it arrives safely (avoiding issues like the above) means that you shouldn't even be concerned until two months have passed, and accept reassurance for a few months after that.
Saying nothing about these specific papers, in general I disagree strongly.
I find the peer review process to be extremely flawed. If you get a bunch of interest from experts in the field on the internet who comment and do work to understand, replicate and analyse (and without hiding behind fake-anonymity) that is a million times better in every dimension than anonymous "peer review." That is, it works better as a BS detector, it works better identifying issues in the data analysis, methodology and so on.
Anonymous peer review has been great compared to alternatives for hundreds of years, just now, our alternatives are frequently better than that.
But one of the main issues with the papers right now is their chemistry is deficient. The key chemical reactions don't balance, and there's also an unexpected and unexplained oxidation state change in the copper. This is the kind of issue that would be flagged quickly in peer review, and it's the sort of catastrophic paper issue that makes replication problematic--how can you be sure that you're comparing against what the original sample was?
While that's true, sometimes having some time pressure is useful to make sure a release even happens.
They've apparently been working on this for nearly a quarter of a century already... (!)
We've seen no evidence that they were.
Indeed. It's also a shame that they chose to use language like:
"We believe that our new development will be a brand-new historical event that opens a new era for humankind."
When you make grandiose boasts like these, you better be fucking certain you are correct.
Some benign description of why room temp atmospheric pressure superconductors are interesting becomes 'a brand-new historical event that opens a new era for humankind'.
disclaimer not a physicist or chemist
It's basically witchcraft-adjacent, with so many variables that getting everything right is an art. That's why we're only now getting practical high-TC superconducting tape, even though the original materials were discovered in 80-s.
The best way right now would be for the Korean team to send their sample to a reputable lab for testing. Once its properties are verified, labs can start deconstructing the process.
It's not quite like asking somebody with a hammer and chisel to produce a microchip, but depending on how many processes and sensitive variables affect your chemical processes, it ain't far off.
Maybes it's cooling rate. Maybe it's venting phosphorous gas. Maybe it's introducing ambient air. Maybe oxygen would be better. Maybe it should be faster. Maybe it should be introduced slower with faster cooling. Or slower cooling. Maybe the oven heats funny and placement matters given the distribution and the heating is the key.
Experimental chemistry can be a real pain, and it takes quite a lot to figure out what you've got.
"I lost hope for this discovery when I saw the video. This doesn't look like the Miessner effect to me."
Unfortunately not hard to imagine because of the prediction markets.
Smash the samples… see if any of the grains float… (it’s becoming a bit of a refrain on Twitter whenever a big chunky pressed pellet sample is published as a failed replication) … it won’t be hard to improve the process and try and get larger contiguous samples that show the effect once we know for sure that it’s actually happening even if it’s happening in smaller more obviously superconducting samples, be it the size of a sand grain or a grain of rice, as long as it’s clearly a room temperature superconductor… once we have more samples… the analysis experts can get stuck in, there’s a global army of analytical experts… crystallographers, spectrographers, and all the sub disciplines of analytical chemistry… with clearly superconducting samples these people can swing into action and work out what the magic is and what we have to do to make more and bigger floating rocks.
I was looking at the floating sample picture and it struck me as odd how the material levitates at an angle. [0] The broken part floating and the "pressed" part resting on the plate. To me, this suggests that a significant amount of the material is not the target material.
Further, if the target material was evenly distributed, I'd expect that levitation properties would correlate with the thickness of the piece and the piece would float, evenly. Right, if a 1mm piece has 1unit of levitation, a 5mm piece should have 5 units of levitation. If the 1mm piece levitates, then the 5mm portion should as well.
Since it's not levitating evenly, I suspect the target material is unevenly distributed. Further, I'd argue that the target material is actually consolidated to a single piece of that sample. Perhaps (conjecture) that little silver spec near the tip of the crack.
From what I've been reading, it seems like it's very, very hard to trick the copper into the right place. It seems possible that the process does work, but a lot of luck is needed to create a large enough piece to support the levitation effect.
It's almost like someone stuck a "super strong" helium balloon in the center of a half-eaten cake. The helium balloon lifts the cake, but the weight of the uneaten half of the cake causes tilt.
0 - https://www.newscientist.com/article/2384782-room-temperatur...
Metastable alloys (roughly, alloys that are only stable at room temperature because the atoms get frozen in place too quickly for them to reach the energetically favorable positions) are quite common in materials science, both for bulk metals and for semiconducting crystals. There are far more possible metastable alloys than stable alloys, so the range of material properties possible in metastable alloys is far wider than that in stable alloys. So, considering we have never discovered a room temperature superconductor, so far, it wouldn't be particularly surprising if it requires a metastable alloy.
https://twitter.com/Andercot/status/1686215574177841152
National Lab (LBNL) results support LK-99 as a room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductor.
Simulations published 1 hour ago on arxiv support LK-99 as the holy grail of modern material science and applied physics.
I do not believe the comments on that other thread are from other practitioners given how confident in this DFT results they seem, when DFT is notoriously unreliable especially when funky correlated things might be going on.
It might be useful (as jboggan mentioned in another thread) in explaining why reproduction could be difficult; it seems to be a finicky material to create.
Unless we assume the original paper's authors were straight up lying, it sounds like this paper's author didn't end up with exactly the same material?
Unfortunately, real science makes for a pretty lousy spectator sport :-). Given the context of the release, it was always a near-certainty that early replication attempts would be a random mix of "No" and "Maybe" results. I think our best chance for any meaningful near-term clarity rest with the team of scientists reportedly visiting the original authors in their lab to test the author's own samples. While a positive result from that won't be a definitive replication, it will at least be external validation of the original process and results.
I’ve found this whole thing incredibly entertaining and informative.
But yeah, the partial levitation is not a mistake. Their abstract suggests LK-99 is a "highly insulating diamagnet", but they are not even able to "detect any reliable diamagnetic signal" with their instruments.
I'd rank the possibilities as: fraud, a different material, or some comical series of bizarre mistakes and contamination from the original team.
It would be interesting to understand if they believe Pb2SO5 would exhibit levitation. I presume they would say so if they did.
My stance (did research in high-Tc superconductors in undergrad ages ago, but doing banal software dev nowadays): who knows. The "easy replication" idea has faded away, which isn't promising, but maybe? It's fun to put my faith in Twitter anime catgirl avatars, though, so I'm still rooting for it.
Maybe he’s worried it would fuck up his research pipeline?
But why? The base materials are cheap and easily available, and the synthesis process seems rather straightforward. Why don't they have kilograms of this stuff by now?
They’ve been working on this for years. To me it looks like whatever their process is, they don’t have something that’s repeatable. So maybe a couple of small samples are all there are after 1000s of attempts doing more or less the same thing.
You can't do superconducting experiments on powder.
[1] https://hackmd.io/@sanxiyn/S1hejVXo3 (Semi-automatically translated: https://hackmd.io/DMjYGOJFRheZw5XZU8kqKg). Disclosure: I wrote a draft for this report.
link?
The mechanism is plausible - if the reaction actually proceeds by driving off the sulfate and substituting in the copper at high temperature, it's entirely possible the vacuum synthesis of the authors is unnecessary (I have in fact had personal experience with trying to replicate a paper where it turned out that a pretty important step was acting as an oxygen-diffusion rate-limiter, and this just...wasn't identified at all by the papers authors).
@iris_IGB = Random Russian anime girl scientist who synth'd in her apartment kitchen.
And so we have one failed attempt based on limited information and then suddenly the authors are accused of fraud ?
I just think people need to take a deep breath before jumping to wild conclusions.
https://manifold.markets/QuantumObserver/will-the-lk99-room-...
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2012.9861
If you find something extremely rare that rewrites what we know you need to be damn sure that what you are saying is true. But some people rush to the media and trying to publish it before they’ve even made sure.
I understand I'm being naive here and ignoring "little" things like funding, profit motives, and basic human nature. But more what I'm suggesting is that there has to be a way to speed up scientific research and application while toning down the hyperbole. This really became apparent to me during Covid. There _have_ to be ways to rethink from first principles how we do and report on science.
There is so much content I would block if I actually could. Completely disable YouTube Shorts on mobile. All snarky/sarcastic/political/ad-hominem takes filtered.
Long story short, though the ingredients are easy to find we should expect reproduction to take longer than we first thought.
There is a chance that either the original measurements were wrong or that there remains some unrealized step in the process to make the superconductor superconduct.
https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/claims-of-room-tempe...
We'll see where we are in a couple weeks, but it's not looking good.
