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First claimed successful replication of LK-99 (twitter.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

51 comments fedilink hide all child comments

"Accomplished by a team at the Huazhong University of Science and Technology and posted 30 minutes ago.

Why this is evidence: The LK-99 flake slightly levitates for both orientations of the magnetic field, meaning it is not simply a magnetized piece of iron or similar 'magnetic material'. A simple magnetic flake would be attracted to one polarity of the strong magnet, and repelled by the other. A diamagnet would be repelled under either orientation, since it resists and expels all fields regardless of the polarity.

Caveats There is no way to verify the orientation of the strong magnet in this video, also, there are yet to be published experimental measured values of this sample. Diamagnetism is a property of superconductors but without measured and verified data, this is just suggestive of a result.

Take-away If this synthesis was indeed successful, then this material is easy enough to be made by labs other than the original research team. I would watch carefully for results out of Argonne National Lab, who are reported to be working on their own synthesis of a sample.

This overall corroborates two independent simulation studies that investigated the original Korean authors claim about material and crystal structure, and both studies supported the claims.

Lawrence Berkeley National Lab: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2307.16892.pdf Shenyang National Lab: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2307.16040.pdf "

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (2 children)

"There exists one sample of a material that is a room temperature superconductor" would be a statement worthverifying, regardless of any details about how the fabrication was done or even what the material is made of. The replication would be the experiments. The cageiness about showing off samples, when they already put the preprints out there, is baffling.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Sure, but that isn't the scientific process. Typically a first team publishes what they did and the result they obtained, then others will try to replicate and improve on those results.

What you describe is interesting, but more of a closed/proprietary approach. A team says they have something and invite others to take a look, and then the second team will need to make sure they aren't being bamboozled somehow. But until the second team can actually recreate the entire situation, it isn't very useful to them. They just get to be onlookers, and will remain sceptical that there is some bamboozling being done.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Nah, it's no more or less scientific than anything else. The scientific method doesn't insist that scientists fabricate their samples from scratch, any more than they need to build their own microscopes or mine their own raw materials from the earth. People who make new materials send samples to other labs to characterise all the time; when Geim and Novoselov first synthesized graphene, they were mailing packets of the stuff to practically anyone who asked.

And in this case, a room temperature superconductor would be so striking that sending one small sample off to another lab, or even inviting someone in to check (which can be done extremely quickly) would quickly resolve a lot of issues.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Well, if the managed to replicate LK99 independently, then this won't be necessary.