Researchers claim to achieve room temperature/ambient pressure superconductivity

[cytg111]

I like the quote from the Science blog post @KMFJD posted:

As for the other, it does occur to me that this formulation feels like it could have fallen fully-formed out of the sky.

ALIENS… I KNEW IT… This belongs in my “we gonna talk about it?” thread.

 

[cytg111]

And a perpetual-motion machine.

I gather there are some theoretical possibilities for FTL travel (or a warp drive), but they have minor technical drawbacks like requiring more energy than exists in the universe, little things like that. Edit - ah, that's more-or-less what @Vic said.

So what you are saying is to make friends with a 5th dimensional creature and convince it to uber me?

 

[KMFJD]

I was reading a bit more a found this tweet about what this could mean

https://twitter.com/x/status/1686527228165963779

Nitter re-direct - https://nitter.net/andercot/status/1686527228165963779?s=46&t=1639UU2UY1G3_6T19UWPhQ

Scenario 1: Low-field, low-current ~$1.5 trn: LK-99 saturates at relatively low fields, like 0.3T, and relatively low current densities, of ~1 amp / mm^2. It works in delicate electronics, small packages, at high efficiencies, with extremely high sensitivity.

It revolutionizes the following industries:- Telecom hardware $650 bn; Cellphones $450 bn; Electronic Sensors $200bn; Satellites $70bn; GPUs $40bn; CPUs $20bn; Antennas $20bn.

Scenario 2: Low-field, high-current ~ $2 trn: LK-99 can carry large current densities, on the order of >1000 amps / mm^2, but can't stand strong magnetic fields. It gains relevance in power transmission, switches, relays, and larger electrical equipment.

It revolutionizes the following industries Power transmission $320 bn; Wires + cables $200bn; Switches & Relays ~$ 25 bn and many others.

Scenario 3: High-field, high-current ~ $4.5 trn:LK-99 can operate in high fields of several Tesla and high currents of >1000 amps / mm^2. It revolutionizes fundamental industries by replacing motors, generators, transportation equipment, and unlocks new energy sources like fusion.

It revolutionizes the following industries Power generation $1.8 trn; Electric Motors $300 bn; Rail freight $250 bn; Energy Storage $200 bn

 

[Paratus]

Some things are genuinely impossible. Such as FTL/warp drive, time travel, teleportation, and electrons overcoming their self-repulsive effect at STP.

Akshully
FTL: Inflationary Epoch of the Big Bang was FTL and the edge of the Universe is receding FTL today
Time Travel: can go into the future at varying rates thanks to time dilation.
Teleportation: Effectively happens at the quantum scale - see quantum tunneling

(I get what you are saying. Just being a pedantic twit)

Edit: and i should have read more of the thread. Apparently Im not the only one.

 

[Ken g6]

Scenario 1: Low-field, low-current ~$1.5 trn: LK-99 saturates at relatively low fields, like 0.3T, and relatively low current densities, of ~1 amp / mm^2. It works in delicate electronics, small packages, at high efficiencies, with extremely high sensitivity.

The bad news is, from the original paper, this looks optimistic. They were talking about ~.01 amp.

Then again, there are suggestions LK-99 crystals are a superconductor along only one axis. So all the samples so far, which are random mixtures of many crystals, many of which may be the wrong composition, may be very sub-par. It's like asking how many amps/mm^2 does this "solid wire" carry?

 

[UNCjigga]

Wired has a good writeup of why we should remain skeptical even as qualified engineers are rushing to replicate the LK-99 material and validate superconductivity experiments.

Inside the DIY Race to Replicate LK-99

Experts doubt claims that LK-99 is a room-temperature superconductor set to open up a future of levitating trains and quantum tech. Andrew McCalip wants to see for himself.

www.wired.com

Edit: Apparently the global market for copper phosphide and precursor red phosphorus (already a controlled substance) has exploded, and supplies have disappeared overnight.

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

The bad news is, from the original paper, this looks optimistic. They were talking about ~.01 amp.

Then again, there are suggestions LK-99 crystals are a superconductor along only one axis. So all the samples so far, which are random mixtures of many crystals, many of which may be the wrong composition, may be very sub-par. It's like asking how many amps/mm^2 does this "solid wire" carry?

That also seems ripe for refinement, and all the marbles to whoever can mass produce a refined product

 

[Fenixgoon]

The bad news is, from the original paper, this looks optimistic. They were talking about ~.01 amp.

Then again, there are suggestions LK-99 crystals are a superconductor along only one axis. So all the samples so far, which are random mixtures of many crystals, many of which may be the wrong composition, may be very sub-par. It's like asking how many amps/mm^2 does this "solid wire" carry?

The fact that it's even achievable means it can eventually scaled to an engineering level. That just takes time.

Give it 10-20 years and there will be industrial deployments, I bet.

 

[Ken g6]

The fact that it's even achievable means it can eventually scaled to an engineering level.

Not many facts going around right now. One is that a Chinese team has confirmed LK-99 is a superconductor...at 110 Kelvin. (That's -163C.)

It's possible that LK-99 is a superconductor at higher temperatures along one axis only. But this research makes it significantly less likely.

 

[Pipeline 1010]

Requires negative mass which does not exist in our universe.

Yet.

 

[RnR_au]

The fact that Southeastern University in China have demonstrated superconductivity at 110K for LK-99 is a big deal. It means 3 major things;

• a new class of superconductive materials - I believe the last class that was discovered was back in 1986 and the classes we know have been explored extensively, so no great advances are expected with these older superconducting materials
• the South Korean researchers aren't frauds - frauds don't accidentally discover a superconductive material when they claim to have made a room temp one
• we possibly have a good explanation for this type of superconductor that doesn't require new physics, ie we already have tools and knowledge that can start the iteration process to leap towards commercial quality materials

One of the recent DFT papers also mentioned that using gold or silver instead of copper might enable a strong effect, so many labs will continue to iterate and learn. The cuprates started at 36K in 1986 and was eventually tweaked to 127 K.

I'm increasing bullish on this effort now.

FYI - Wikipedia has a nice overview and history of LK-99 as well as a table of replication attempts - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LK-99

 

[Ken g6]

a new class of superconductive materials - I believe the last class that was discovered was back in 1986 and the classes we know have been explored extensively, so no great advances are expected with these older superconducting materials

Is this really a new class? It includes copper oxide after all. 🤔

There have been other classes discovered since 1986. They just haven't been all that good.

The green circles at the top right may have all been fraudulent, but they're unrelated to LK-99.

 

[RnR_au]

Is this really a new class? It includes copper oxide after all. 🤔

I'm just a layman, but I believe it is a new class if I have understood the discussions of others around classes of superconductors and LK-99. I could be wrong. I have followed the news of LK99 across multiple threads over on Hacker News. Multiple folk there have claimed that this would be a new class of high temp superconductor (if other experiments pans out ofcause). Some examples of quotes;

As someone who has worked on superconductivity I'd say that all of these are all potentially HUGE, but meaningless individually because they require experimental replication. They point to at minimum a new class of high temperature superconductors at least as good as current industrial ones. To know if it's truly transformative or not though we'll need multiple confirmations from big name labs. That's going to take time, so this trickle is exciting but won't mean much until the dust settles.

Source

There’s some emerging evidence that it may be a new class of “1-d” superconducting material that only superconducts in certain places/directions. Will turn into big academic fight to redefine superconductivity if so, I think.

Source

On copper oxides / cuprates superconductors, they are ceramics. I don't believe LK99 as a apatite is classed as a ceramic.

I also don't believe there are currently any other known paramagnetic insulator superconductors that LK-99 is currently tentatively classed as. There is some stuff here on the paramagnetic insulator classification;

Newly discovered material has properties that could be advantageous for superconductivity

LK-99 is the name of the material that is being hotly debated around the world these days: A Korean research group published results at the end of July 2023 on the preprint server arXiv suggesting that it could be a superconductor even at room temperature and normal atmospheric pressure...

phys.org

But again, I could be wrong and misunderstanding everything as I am way out of my depth here

 

[cytg111]

Wired has a good writeup of why we should remain skeptical even as qualified engineers are rushing to replicate the LK-99 material and validate superconductivity experiments.

Inside the DIY Race to Replicate LK-99

Experts doubt claims that LK-99 is a room-temperature superconductor set to open up a future of levitating trains and quantum tech. Andrew McCalip wants to see for himself.

www.wired.com

Edit: Apparently the global market for copper phosphide and precursor red phosphorus (already a controlled substance) has exploded, and supplies have disappeared overnight.

What the f...

 

[cytg111]

I've been disappointed so many times, dont want to get my hopes up... but fusion baby. Fusion.
If we survive the disruption of plentiful free energy anywhere, for everyone, perhaps we can have peace?

 

[Dave_5k]

I do like the article mention about physicists having a common reference to "USO" sightings ~ unidentified superconducting objects. Given spurious claims are so common in this area, vastly outnumbering verifiable claims...

Although superconductivity is still far better than over in cold fusion, which really does deserve the connotations with the moniker UFO, given the S/N ratio there is still batting a perfect 0.

 

[RnR_au]

perhaps we can have peace?

Is this even in the best interests of the world wide defense industries? Could lead to a massive global recession.

/s

 

[Ken g6]

@RnR_au, I followed your first "source" link and from there got to this very encouraging news:

Successful growth and room temperature ambient-pressure magnetic levitation of LK-99

Recently, Sukbae Lee et al. reported inspiring experimental findings on the atmospheric superconductivity of a modified lead apatite crystal (LK-99) at room temperature (10.6111/JKCGCT.2023.33.2.061, arXiv: 2307.12008, arXiv: 2307.12037). They claimed that the synthesized LK-99 materials exhibit...

arxiv.org

Whether or not it's a superconductor, it could create great magnetic bearings.

 

[Dave_5k]

I've been disappointed so many times, dont want to get my hopes up... but fusion baby. Fusion.
If we survive the disruption of plentiful free energy anywhere, for everyone, perhaps we can have peace?

Sorry, in my view, unlimited free energy (1) almost already exists, and (2) will almost certainly not bring peace.

The developed world has already figured out how to provide plentiful energy (and water) to its citizens, that is nearly free from a high level economic perspective (e.g. in US, 2.5% of CPI is electricity, and of that, even if wholesale electricity was given away for free - which it sometimes is - would still have nearly half that cost just to continue maintaining transmission infrastructure).

So completely "free" energy generation would directly save the average US citizen about 1.5% of their budget, offsetting a few months of inflation. (And over time, if you completely electrified the vehicle fleet, with the commodity electricity price set at 0 before transmission/distribution, saves everyone another 2% or so off of their budget).

And in practice, actual savings would be far less than the ~3.5% total above, as you'd still have capital costs for building the fusion reactors - likely resulting in negligible savings vs. what industrial scale solar/wind are already providing today on the margin. Although a good baseload option to displace coal is very helpful environmentally.

And wars were just as bad before there was any oil or energy to fight over, it just added another major economic sub-factor to the driving imperialism, nationalism, and religious factors which (unfortunately) haven't gone away.

 

[yottabit]

Sorry, in my view, unlimited free energy (1) almost already exists, and (2) will almost certainly not bring peace.

The developed world has already figured out how to provide plentiful energy (and water) to its citizens, that is nearly free from a high level economic perspective (e.g. in US, 2.5% of CPI is electricity, and of that, even if wholesale electricity was given away for free - which it sometimes is - would still have nearly half that cost just to continue maintaining transmission infrastructure).

So completely "free" energy generation would directly save the average US citizen about 1.5% of their budget, offsetting a few months of inflation. (And over time, if you completely electrified the vehicle fleet, with the commodity electricity price set at 0 before transmission/distribution, saves everyone another 2% or so off of their budget).

And in practice, actual savings would be far less than the ~3.5% total above, as you'd still have capital costs for building the fusion reactors - likely resulting in negligible savings vs. what industrial scale solar/wind are already providing today on the margin. Although a good baseload option to displace coal is very helpful environmentally.

And wars were just as bad before there was any oil or energy to fight over, it just added another major economic sub-factor to the driving imperialism, nationalism, and religious factors which (unfortunately) haven't gone away.

Yeah thanks for pouring some cold water on that, I’m not sure how people are so delusional. Same thing with AI is going to make it so that none of us have to work, uh huh. It’s basically just going to accelerate the concentration of wealth gap disparity that’s been accelerating for so long already. Short of government intervention, all some breakthrough energy technology is going to do is make better profit margins for the power companies since they’ve already shown the market can bear current prices.

That being said, I’m excited for any new advances in superconductors since I think they may result in some radical advances in both commercial and consumer electronics.

 

[cytg111]

Sorry, in my view, unlimited free energy (1) almost already exists, and (2) will almost certainly not bring peace.

The developed world has already figured out how to provide plentiful energy (and water) to its citizens, that is nearly free from a high level economic perspective (e.g. in US, 2.5% of CPI is electricity, and of that, even if wholesale electricity was given away for free - which it sometimes is - would still have nearly half that cost just to continue maintaining transmission infrastructure).

So completely "free" energy generation would directly save the average US citizen about 1.5% of their budget, offsetting a few months of inflation. (And over time, if you completely electrified the vehicle fleet, with the commodity electricity price set at 0 before transmission/distribution, saves everyone another 2% or so off of their budget).

And in practice, actual savings would be far less than the ~3.5% total above, as you'd still have capital costs for building the fusion reactors - likely resulting in negligible savings vs. what industrial scale solar/wind are already providing today on the margin. Although a good baseload option to displace coal is very helpful environmentally.

And wars were just as bad before there was any oil or energy to fight over, it just added another major economic sub-factor to the driving imperialism, nationalism, and religious factors which (unfortunately) haven't gone away.

My line of reasoning goes something like this

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/368875957_Desalination_for_Agriculture_Is_It_Affordable

Food security.
OPEC loses relevance.
A lot of other stuff that means we dont need wars over resources. Africa has oil? Good for Africa. We’d have a chance at stunting coming climate mass migration. Do a real dent in regards to climate mitigation.

Yes I see a lot of avoidable conflict.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

My line of reasoning goes something like this

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/368875957_Desalination_for_Agriculture_Is_It_Affordable

Food security.
OPEC loses relevance.
A lot of other stuff that means we dont need wars over resources. Africa has oil? Good for Africa. We’d have a chance at stunting coming climate mass migration. Do a real dent in regards to climate mitigation.

Yes I see a lot of avoidable conflict.

- A real cool change of pace would be a shadowy government cabal of do-gooders that have to fix the world from the shadows because people are too stupid and reactionary for their actions to be public.

"WHADYA MEAN FREE ENERGY FOR EVERYONE?! THAT SOUNDS LIKE COMMUNISM!"

"ENERGY EFFICIENT ELECTRONICS/EVERYTHING?! YOU SOME SORT OF HIPPIE GREENPEACE ******?!"

 

[Ken g6]

Digging through the comments here I found this:

This video is convincing:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1687458668814479360

That pellet was made by crushing up a lot of material and sorting out the grains that floated and then pressing them together. It’s polycrystalline and likely isn’t superconducting across any macroscopic dimension of the pellet at room temp… But enough of those disjointed grains are oriented in the proper direction for the thing to expel magnetic field like a bulk superconductor.

That looks like a superconductor. It spins freely without aligning any particular way.

 

[RnR_au]

This link might work...

https://twitter.com/x/status/1687405505604734978

 

[cytg111]

Holy Shit.

Now what stocks to buy?