Room temperature super conductor possibly discovered

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

Let's catch up a bit, shall we?

 

What’s going on with the reports of a room-temperature superconductor?

ARSTECHNICA.COM

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Rumors are flying of confirmation, but the situation is still frustratingly vague.

 

Quote

 

Has anyone reproduced this?

 

Maybe? Ish? While the original draft manuscript contains detailed synthesis instructions, there's a lot of potential for lab-to-lab variation in little things like glassware composition, water pH, and so on that could make reproducing LK-99 difficult. The huge potential for variation in LK-99 described above obviously increases the challenge of making the right version of the chemical. It's also possible for materials to have some partial aspects of a superconductor but not the full suite of expected behaviors.

 

Given all this, it's plausible to expect that we'd see a mix of confirmation of some reported results and failures to replicate, regardless of whether LK-99 was a superconductor or not. And social media has been filled with exactly that.

 

On the more compelling side, we have a video reportedly from a research group that synthesized some LK-99 (it appears to be from the people who posted this report) and showed that it rejects magnetic fields strongly enough to levitate away from them—a hallmark of the Meissner effect. With a strong enough magnet, it's possible to get nearly anything to levitate (including, apparently, mice), but this is done with not especially strong magnets, and clearly at room temperature. And the small chunk of material isn't lifted evenly, consistent with only a small crystal within the sample actually superconducting.

 

On the less compelling side, a different group has apparently synthesized the material but only finds that it superconducts up to about 110 K—nowhere near room temperature. Whatever was made here also doesn't seem to have a critical temperature, instead seeing a gradual increase in resistance above that point, and the Meissner effect tests came up negative. That's pretty inconsistent with the original results and suggests that what they have isn't a typical superconductor at all.

 

Meanwhile, there has been some support on the theory side, as Lawrence Berkeley Lab's Sinéad Griffin ran some density functional theory calculations to probe what the material might be up to. These calculations confirmed that swapping copper into a specific position in the crystal should cause a conformational change in the crystal itself. More significantly, this change causes the appearance of a set of conduction bands that are largely "flat," meaning the energy involved in getting electrons into them hovers around zero.

 

And that's consistent with existing ideas on superconductivity. "If previous assumptions about band flatness driving superconductivity are correct," Griffin writes, "then this result would suggest a much more robust (higher temperature) superconducting phase exists in this system, even compared to well-established high-TC systems." Again, that's a calculation, not experimental evidence. But it at least provides a reason to think the reported results might be valid.

 

 

[Chris-]

It’s not frustratingly vague, it’s science. Breakthroughs are almost always piecemeal. 

[legend]

7 minutes ago, Chris- said:

It’s not frustratingly vague, it’s science. Breakthroughs are almost always piecemeal. 

 

My understanding is the quality of the initial report leaves much to be desired  But yes, this will be slow even if it's true.

 

(Well, slow on the normal human tiemscale. In terms of science the community effort is moving very fast)

[stepee]

Actually I just discovered this too in my BUTT

[mclumber1]

Pretty cool video in that link.  Check it out - looks pretty convincing.

[CitizenVectron]

It does seem certain that LK-99 is diamagnetic, but it should be noted that this is a separate property from superconductivity.

[stepee]

So this would be clean energy right? Can we put in a bill to ban it yet or do we have to wait until there it’s proven?

[GeneticBlueprint]

5 hours ago, stepee said:

So this would be clean energy right? Can we put in a bill to ban it yet or do we have to wait until there it’s proven?

We write bills way too early or way too late. So expect Texas to ban this on their grid Monday morning. 

[ThreePi]

1 hour ago, GeneticBlueprint said:

We write bills way too early or way too late. So expect Texas to ban this on their grid Monday morning. 

 

It'll make you gay through your power outlets.

[legend]

7 hours ago, stepee said:

So this would be clean energy right? Can we put in a bill to ban it yet or do we have to wait until there it’s proven?

 

Not quite, but it helps in a couple important ways (if it is a room temperature super conductor). 

1. My understanding is this is *one* of the missing technological pieces for practical fusion, but there are others too, so we wouldn't get to build it instantly. Other things would need breakthroughs too.

2. It would, however, give us perfect efficiency batteries that never lose their change and last a very long time. That's great for lots of reasons, obviously, but one of the big problems with renewable energy is we need to be able to store for later which means batteries, but our battery tech sucks. So this would solve that issue.

[stepee]

5 minutes ago, legend said:

 

Not quite, but it helps in a couple important ways (if it is a room temperature super conductor). 

1. My understanding is this is *one* of the missing technological pieces for practical fusion, but there are others too, so we wouldn't get to build it instantly. Other things would need breakthroughs too.

2. It would, however, give us perfect efficiency batteries that never lose their change and last a very long time. That's great for lots of reasons, obviously, but one of the big problems with renewable energy is we need to be able to store for later which means batteries, but our battery tech sucks. So this would solve that issue.

 

yeah batteries is what I was thinking of as far as it being beneficial for the environment in several ways if we had long lasting infinitely reusable batteries that potentially could provide a lot more power so that’s why I think just in case we should act now to make sure this never sees the light of day 

[legend]

My understanding is deeper investigations are now strongly suggesting the levitation is from ferromagnetic, not superconductor.

 

This story has a tendency to keep coming back from each critique, but this one feels pretty strong. Guess we'll see if this roller coaster has any more peaks left or if we're finally coming to a stop.

[Kal-El814]

1 hour ago, legend said:

My understanding is deeper investigations are now strongly suggesting the levitation is from ferromagnetic, not superconductor.

 

This story has a tendency to keep coming back from each critique, but this one feels pretty strong. Guess we'll see if this roller coaster has any more peaks left or if we're finally coming to a stop.

 

Magnets how the fuck do they work