South Korean Experts Seek To Verify Room-Temperature Superconductor Claim 75
South Korean experts said on Thursday they would set up a committee to verify claims that a room temperature superconductor has been discovered, which has driven investor frenzy as well as peer skepticism since. From a report: The Korean Society of Superconductivity and Cryogenics, a group of experts, said in a statement on Thursday it had asked Quantum Energy Research Centre to submit samples in order to verify its researchers' findings of a room-temperature superconductor material, made public last month on a website showing research before formal publication. "There has been a lot of controversy over the authenticity of the reported results at home and abroad, and other claims are being added without being peer-reviewed," the group said.
"Based on data from the two archived papers and the video made public, the materials ... cannot be called room temperature superconductors at this point," it added. Superconductors, substances with no electrical resistance, are considered valuable as they can allow electrical currents to pass through without losing energy. But the handful of materials discovered so far only exhibit superconductivity at extremely high temperatures and pressures, making them impractical for widespread use.
"Based on data from the two archived papers and the video made public, the materials ... cannot be called room temperature superconductors at this point," it added. Superconductors, substances with no electrical resistance, are considered valuable as they can allow electrical currents to pass through without losing energy. But the handful of materials discovered so far only exhibit superconductivity at extremely high temperatures and pressures, making them impractical for widespread use.
High Temperatures (Score:5, Funny)
materials discovered so far only exhibit superconductivity at extremely high temperatures and pressures, making them impractical for widespread use.
That's what happens when you send a fashion editor to cover a science story.
Re:High Temperatures (Score:5, Insightful)
I know we are suffering from DejaMoo here, but I've looked over some reports from this. They may have something here. It looks promising. So far nobody has call outright bullshit on this, but it still needs to be reproduced.
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You'll have to admit that the "extremely high temperatures" part is funny though.
Re:High Temperatures (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe temperature wraps around, like signed integers.
Re:High Temperatures (Score:4, Funny)
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So far nobody has call outright bullshit on this, but it still needs to be reproduced.
Sabine Hossenfelder [youtube.com] has a rather reasonable critique up already. I agree with her, one side of the sample clearly is attracted while the other repelled and therefore does not look like a weak meissner effect.
Re: High Temperatures (Score:2)
Presumably they cover low fashion.
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Presumably they cover low fashion.
Super-Cool Fashion, in fact!
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Superconductors are so hot right now
Re:Jail time if proven to have lied (Score:5, Informative)
Nothing in the 6 person paper would lead someone to believe they "lied", especially when they are publishing a paper with a process and the formula and specifically asked for it to be reproduced. They may have been mistaken, or had a flaw in their process but I think you might be ascribing malice where there rally doesn't appear to be any here.
Wikipedia has a table of current replication attempts and their progess and this is only "professional" efforts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
There's a number of "hobbyist" efforts as well most notably by aerospace engineer Andrew McCalip and an anonymous Russian chemist who showed video of Meissner effect using just modified equipment and their kitchen. Wild stuff.
https://twitter.com/andrewmcca... [twitter.com]
https://twitter.com/iris_IGB [twitter.com]
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There is a significant difference between lying and being wrong. As it so happens, there's about to be a trial about that very distinction in the U.S. Ironically, neither is illegal in the U.S.
Re:Jail time if proven to have lied (Score:4, Informative)
Very much so and we've had a lot of crackpot liars with regards to thing like coldfusion, superconductivity and other very big claims.
Something distinct about the liars though is they tend to keep results, formulas and processes close to their chest because they know they're lying or don't quite have it.
In this case we have some fariyl respected researchers and they did the right thing by essentially saying "heres what we found, see if it works or if we fucked it up"
The line between mistakes and lies is 100% about the persons intent (mens rea) and in this case I can't see any intent from their actions.
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The line between mistakes and lies is 100% about the persons intent (mens rea) and in this case I can't see any intent from their actions.
I think you might be too rational in your approach to predicting peoples behavior. I’ve found getting a large cast iron pan and repeatedly hitting the base of my skull helps in getting more accurate results.
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I would try that but I don't want to ruin my seasoning. Think a nonstick would still do the job?
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Nothing in the 6 person paper would lead someone to believe they "lied", especially when they are publishing a paper with a process and the formula and specifically asked for it to be reproduced.
There are a number of physicist, while they are stopping short of endorsing the claim, they are saying that they may be on to something here. The results need to be duplicated of course but right now the standing is positive.
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That isn't to weigh upon the work in question in the slightest, only that "physicists saying [x] may be on to something" is utterly worthless.
There are some facts we can look at.
The paper is garbage. It doesn't go anywhere close to demonstrating superconductivity, any more so than the scales used in the measurements would demonstrate superconductivity in room temperature copper as well.
The video is highly suspect. It
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Yes, absolutely, brah! Any of those nerdy guys ever get anything wrong we string 'em up! Cuz they got us excited! Yeah!
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It's a pretty sad indicator of where slashdot is these days.
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especially when its too good to be true
As I told a friend during the initial CNF hype, if it's too good to be true then it probably isn't.
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But they do.
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Psychologists should not base an entire "science" on non-replicated "research". But they do.
I found the scientologist!
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Just like psychology.
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Uh, no. Science will end if you set that possibility.
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We can’t help it if you jackasses don’t know how science works. It’s not the fault of scientists that dummies get worked up. Science has always been based on hypothesize, experiment, peer review, verify.
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When you read a preprint you're essentially reading a letter some guy sent to his buddy saying "hey, lookit what I did."
When you read a published paper you're reading a letter some guy sent to a couple of his buddies and maybe an acquaintance and they answered "cool."
That's pretty much how it used to be done. The difference between that and today is that now anybody who wants to gets to eavesdrop on the letters. And they usually cost a few thousand dollars in postage.
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EM Drive all over again (Score:3)
Reminds me of the EM drive a few years ago. I let a small part of myself be excited because itâ(TM)s fun to imagine an actual physics breakthrough suddenly enabling all kinds of sci-fi ideas. But alas most of me is a realist that just knows there must be some mistake. Pity.
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The difference between this and the EM drive is that the EM drive was obviously bullshit whereas this is only very, very probably bullshit.
Mostly because we still don't really know how superconductivity works, so any new idea that isn't complete babble sounds kind-of-plausible.
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It could lead to better magnets leading to better and possibly commercially viable nuclear fusion power. That would seem game-changing to me.
Provided, of course, that there really are materials that superconduct at something close to STP. That still has yet to be proven, although I hope it will be.
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Yes line losses for grid power is not much but being able to string lines thousands of miles is a big changes especially for renewables. Imagine being to economically move solar power from the American Southwest to Appalachia or the west coast.
A much bigger savings will be from generator efficiency which could be boosted by 30-40%, a test in Germany using HTSC saw those size gains. This affects gas, nuclear, hydropower and wind power.
Electric motors theoretically get more efficient as well. Plus this op
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Too soon to tell with this discovery but considering so far this has been prettye asily replicated without super-rare base materials and a couple of the replicators have already found room for improvements and a few different ways to manufacture it (oen was using pressed poweder type manufacturing, another was using vapor deposition)
It really just has to be worth it for an ROI for selling that power and the metric to beat right now is HVDC systems which are not on the cheap side either.
Or it could be a hug
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Re:significance ? (Score:5, Informative)
8-15% is huge. In most large industries, fortunes have been made (and lost) because of fractions of a percent improvements in efficiencies.
Also, think about all the secondary impacts. 8-15% of industrial scale power all comes out as heat. Large transformers have active cooling so they don't melt. This cooling takes energy to run. The cooling forces spacing in the coils which reduces efficiency.
Actual power over power lines is not always consistent. Therefore, the heat generated by losses is not consistent. Different heating rates will change the temperature of the wire which will cause thermal stresses over time. This leads to more maintenance.
Then think of non-industrial scale power uses. EV charging comes to mind. One of the major limiting factors in DC fast charging is a compromise between the size of the cable and heat generation. A large cable is difficult to manipulate. A small cable is easy to move around but generates a lot of heat. Current DC fast charges use active cooling in the cable to push more power through a smaller wire but this still puts an upper limit on the Amps you can push. A superconductor like this can allow for dramatically higher currents (not just 8-15%) through a similar sized cable.
Other electrical superconductors have also shown the property of thermal superconductivity. Basically, a change in temperature at one point is reflected in the whole mass at the speed of light. This would allow for VERY efficient cooling in a wide range of systems. You have one chiller and drop fine wires into different areas to draw out the heat.
I am reserving judgment on the merits of this specific paper but the benefits of a high temperature super conductor that is relatively cheap to make are hard to UNDER estimate.
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I think you mean (Score:2)
"hard to OVER estimate". It would be easy to UNDER estimate it's value.
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The review I've read said that this was a polycrystaline material and wouldn't carry much current, even if there *was* no resistance.
OTOH, if it works out, it might provide the BASIS for fabricating wires that would carry more current. My guess is that those wires would be pretty brittle, though, and not very flexible. So special purpose only.
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The review I've read said that this was a polycrystaline material and wouldn't carry much current, even if there *was* no resistance.
You know what doesn't need to carry much current? A microprocessor. The reason we are stick to around 4GZ is because of heat. Superconductors don't heat up. So maybe, 10Ghz+ processors?
Re: significance ? (Score:2)
It's not the conductors in your CPU that heat up. It's the semiconductors, and only while they are switching.
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Wherever current flows there is heat, period. An no, it's not only when they are switching. Semiconductors are tiny little switches. They are ether open or closed. If they are open, then no current flows. Well, a tiny amount still flows. When they are closed, then current flows, and then you have heat.
So once again, please stop spreading ignorance and not talk about thing you do not understand.
Re: significance ? (Score:4, Insightful)
Semiconductors are not "tiny little switches." The hint is right in the name: semiconductors.
A transistor, for perhaps the most relevant example, is fairly conductive when "on" and an okay insulator when "off," but in going from one to the other you have to pass through an in-between zone where they have intermediate resistance and dissipate a lot of power as heat. Here [ti.com] is the datasheet for a random MOSFET. Note The R_dson (resistance) vs V_gs (switching voltage) graph on the first page. Especially in the case of MOSFETs, you often use a specific driver chip that can swing the voltage as fast as possible to avoid that in-between bit. Even so, note that the "on" resistance is a few milliohms, orders of magnitude more than an equivalent piece of copper.
Re: significance ? (Score:3)
Thanks for knowing what you are talking about. It's people like you that make it worth it to keep coming here.
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It is amazing how confidently completely wrong some people can be. I suppose it's one of our society's great successes that a few trillion dollars of engineering R&D has created a world in which software developers can just go ahead and believe that transistors are "tiny little switches."
Re: significance ? (Score:2)
Lololol
If you want to be the smartest guy in the room, you'd better find a dumber room
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Yeah, Yeah. Switch is the wrong term. But anyway. I never said I wanted to be the smartest guy in the room. I'm just smarter than you. Of course that isn't saying much. A tree stump is smarter than you.
Re: significance ? (Score:2)
So far, the evidence runs in the other direction.
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You know what doesn't need to carry much current? A microprocessor.
This is bananas. More current gets pushed through the processor in my computer than the service entrance for most residential homes is rated to handle.
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Not much current, only ~100-300 Amps @ 1 Volt, the usual.
Not much at all.
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Power lines isn't the exciting application. Superconductors don't head up when you run current through them. That's why they're required to make very strong magnets: anything resistive would get too hot. High temperature superconductors that have nice properties make very strong electromagnets cheaper and smaller. Room temperature would make them ubiquitous.
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disagree, the ability to send electricity from solar, wind and wave power any arbitrarily large distance would destroy the need for any polluting power plants or even nuclear.
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and simple energy storage without batteries would be solved too.
And efficiently too. (Score:3)
South Korean Experts Seek To Verify Room-Temperature Superconductor Claim
They're using a big hotel for testing so they have access to a lot of rooms -- 'cause you know [slashdot.org] ... :-)
Debunked THEN dupe post? (Score:1)
"
Alex Kaplan
27 Jul
I have bad news. I am growing increasingly convinced that LK-99 is simply diamagnetic, rather than superconducting.
"
Still betting against it (Score:2)