this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2023
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science
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Im so ready for this. Going to change the world. Who is smart enough to tell me why this isn't really a room temperature super conductor?
This is published an ArXiv. That means it's a manuscript that hasn't passed peer review yet. There is a very real chance that the reviewers will find errors in the manuscript that change the interpretation of the data. In other words, I would take anything on ArXiv with a huge grain of salt
The authors say they have a video of it levitating. This is way beyond error territory. This is either a deliberate hoax or a real discovery. The authors realize the significance of what they have. When you commit academic fraud, you go for something boring, or at least something difficult verify, like Hwang Woo-suk or Elizabeth Holmes, not simple and easily reproducible and altering the course of history.
Being published in a journal isn't what makes something true. That's just the scientific concensus process, but true facts have been true for all time. I can totally imagine someone who has made a discovery of this magnitude simply dumping it on arxiv for everyone to see. If it's true, we'll see levitation videos all over the world tomorrow. Even if you try to keep it secret or patent it, it's impossible for something this simple yet important. More noble to release it for the benefit of mankind. If it's a hoax, we'll know - not next year but next week - and their careers will be ruined.
It's been hoaxed by like 4 different groups or more at this point
There was a recent 'discovery' that seems to have gone very quiet already this year, iirc the results couldn't be reproduced. So I guess we have to wait and see if another team can reproduce these results. A line I found interesting was:
"The superconductivity of LK-99 originates from minute structural distortion by a slight volume shrinkage (0.48 %), not by external factors such as temperature and pressure"
'A slight volume shrinkage' kinda sounds like the results of pressure to me? I'm not equipped to fully understand all the terms they use, but it sounds like they've found a way to apply pressure internally in the material, without using pressure in the environment.
They replaced some of the lead(II) ions with copper(II), which has a smaller ionic radius. That's why the structure would be smaller. Then they meander around other superconductor discoveries to make the argument that this volume change is the cause of the superconducting property here.