this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2023
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Technology

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[–] collegefurtrader@discuss.tchncs.de 106 points 1 year ago (2 children)

JUST HAPPENED!!1!11

I’ll believe it when its not just youtube clickbait.

[–] abbadon420@lemm.ee 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I mean, publishing on youtube gets more viewers than publishing in a scientific paper

[–] kjack@lemmy.ca 43 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I'm not sure that "number of eyeballs" is the metric by which a successful scientific discovery should be judged...

[–] Bipta@kbin.social 6 points 1 year ago

Nonsense; this is the future.

Everything is shit in the future!

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[–] FaceDeer@kbin.social 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's not just youtube clickbait, were you not aware of this news before this video?

[–] collegefurtrader@discuss.tchncs.de 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] FaceDeer@kbin.social 20 points 1 year ago (2 children)

If you do a Google search for LK-99 you'll see a whole pile of news articles from the past two days. A preprint was posted on arXiv and everything exploded. There are labs all over the world working on reproducing the material and testing it right now, and it's a pretty simple thing to make so we'll have a solid answer likely within a week.

[–] MJBrune@beehaw.org 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Looking at it, this paper was falsified in 2020, then they pulled it down, then another author was added to it and leaked to a publication and now the leaking party is claiming the paper is incomplete so you can't actually reproduce the results. Frankly, it sounds like someone ran out of grant money.

[–] FaceDeer@kbin.social 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

Everything I've seen says that the 2020 paper was rejected, not falsified. It had been submitted to Nature shortly after Diaz's now-likely-fraudulent superconductor research had been accepted and turned out to be controversial, so it's understandable that Nature was gun-shy of superconductor papers. Do you have any references to its falsification? A paper can be rejected for many reasons other than falsification, indeed I would think most rejections are not for that since peer review doesn't include independently replicating the results.

What it feels like to me is that the authors were panicking over the possibility of getting "scooped." They've been working on this stuff for decades and had often gone without funding so that seems like less of an urgent concern to me.

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[–] coffeekomrade@lemmy.ml 73 points 1 year ago

It would be cool if these YouTubers could wait til the paper was peer reviewed and its results replicated before shooting their mouth off

[–] OttoVonGoon@beehaw.org 61 points 1 year ago (2 children)

For people put off by the shitty title, the video is actually really good and comprehensive, and sets realistic expectations. It's a shame that these garbage clickbaity titles are a thing.

[–] wargreymon2023@sopuli.xyz 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Being a content creator these days is not easy! I forgive him for the clickbait.

[–] OttoVonGoon@beehaw.org 4 points 1 year ago

Agreed! If it lets people like this guy make videos like this, a little clickbait isn't so bad. I just wish they'd phrase titles slightly differently, like "THIS COULD CHANGE EVERYTHING" would still draw eyes without being a lie.

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[–] galilette@mander.xyz 39 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Not to be snobbish or anything, but at this juncture I wouldn't trust anyone who can't pronounce arXiv (or Schrieffer for that matter) correctly to explain room temperature superconductivity to me. Hell I barely believe anyone with a materials/physics degree...

[–] barsoap@lemm.ee 13 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Doing that cute "X is chi" thing TeX does is kinda obvious but I have to tell you that it's probably you who's pronouncing Schrieffer wrong. Because Americans can't pronounce German names, not even their own.

Also just wait until your hear the takes economists will have. They're going to set the record for how many fields a single statement can be simultaneously wrong in (including, of course, their own).

[–] galilette@mander.xyz 5 points 1 year ago

The point is there are established conventions among the practitioners on how these are pronounced, and not getting them right says something about the youtuber who may otherwise appear as an expert.

You might be right on how the name 'Schrieffer' should be pronounced in its original tongue, but I've heard multiple former students and colleagues of Bob Schrieffer pronounce it otherwise to conclude that theirs is probably how Schrieffer himself intended his name to be pronounced.

Yeah, can't wait to hear economists' take, or The Economist's..

[–] bermuda@beehaw.org 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't see where the person you're responding to said they're American

[–] barsoap@lemm.ee 5 points 1 year ago

John Robert Schrieffer, one of the original superconductivity guys, is American.

[–] Damage@feddit.it 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

juncture

at this junction, you mean! wink wink

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[–] anlumo@feddit.de 33 points 1 year ago (1 children)

We get one of those about once a year, and none of them have been replicated yet.

[–] VanillaGorilla@kbin.social 12 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Yes, see... it stops working when it leaves their lab.

[–] anlumo@feddit.de 4 points 1 year ago

Then we should build a huge battery right there in their lab and let it store energy for the whole world.

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[–] argv_minus_one@beehaw.org 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Will it turn out to be legit, or will it be this generation's cold fusion?

[–] ThemboMcBembo@beehaw.org 39 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I recommend looking at the summary on Wikipedia. See the "Response" and "Publication History" sections: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LK-99#Publication_history

Similar research has been falsified, the third author of this paper left the university months ago, some authors filed patents on the material years in advance, and the underlying mechanisms haven't been thoroughly explained.

However, they presented it in a way that is EXTREMELY straightforward to reproduce. There's even a live stream on Twitch of someone working on it: https://www.twitch.tv/andrewmccalip So I doubt they'd make a claim that large when it's so easy to disprove, and we'll know for sure in a matter of days, most likely.

[–] pemmykins@beehaw.org 9 points 1 year ago

Related to what you’ve posted, the Wikipedia article on room temperature superconductors has a decent history on other claims, which have all turned out to be false or only usable in very specific circumstances: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room-temperature_superconductor

[–] dandroid@dandroid.app 17 points 1 year ago (5 children)

If this gets peer reviewed and confirmed, what would that mean? What applications would this material have?

[–] SmoothSurfer@lemm.ee 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

what I can think of

No resistance => faster tech, less temp in tech

Hovering things, especially for public transportation

Cheaper mri

[–] aaronbieber@beehaw.org 3 points 1 year ago

Also conserve helium, which would be huge.

[–] Solemn@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 1 year ago

Remote power generation becomes much more useful since you can eliminate transmission losses. Things like covering the Sahara with solar panels to sell energy to Europe become possible to think about.

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[–] SpaceCowboy639@beehaw.org 10 points 1 year ago

Call me when its 5 sigma.

[–] Elbrond@feddit.nl 10 points 1 year ago

Yes, not so fast. Only if other teams can replicate LK-99 and they can confirm room temperature super conductivity will it be time to say that this changes something.

[–] Rentlar@beehaw.org 10 points 1 year ago

This discovery has potential. At least it's not a totally exotic process to make this LK-99. I bet more researchers are going to jump on it and explore how it will work and where its limitations are.

The click-baityness is a little off-putting about this video. This doesn't solve everything, but it's possibly a big leap in the field of superconductors.

[–] Rapidcreek@reddthat.com 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] Bipta@kbin.social 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

260° F?!

If that's true, this would be a huge fucking deal. But most room temperature superconductors don't operate anywhere near what laymen would call room temperature.

[–] TheYang@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

room temperature superconductors don't exist. (well... when/if this paper turns out to be bullshit)

High Temperature Superconductors do, and refer to the fact that they can be cooled with liquid nitrogen, and do not require liquid helium.

[–] meteorswarm@beehaw.org 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

"well actually" room temperature superconductors do exist, quite definitely! ... But only at 100 gigapascals of pressure. https://uspex-team.org/static/file/Troyan2022_ufn227g_High-temperature%20superconductivity%20in%20hydrides.pdf

Still really cool, but not useful for engineering.

I agree that this paper needs to be replicated before we get excited.

[–] TheYang@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago

damn, right.

i totally forgot about those, and assumend the mix-up of room temperature and "high-temperature", because "high" is very relative and confused me as well.

[–] Centurix@lemm.ee 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Turns out we were putting Lead into the wrong thing all along.

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[–] Twashe@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

So actual hover boards soon?

[–] wargreymon2023@sopuli.xyz 5 points 1 year ago

Superconducting skateboard looks like a reality.

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