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Science Hardware

'Data Have Spoken... LK-99 is Not a Superconductor,' Says US Research Center (theverge.com) 102

Posted by EditorDavid from the current-events dept.
The Verge writes that "LK-99 hasn't turned out to be the miraculous superconductor some people initially claimed it was..." [T]he results so far indicate that LK-99 is not a superconductor, at room temperature or otherwise. A slew of research groups have released studies that counter claims originally made about LK-99. "With a great deal of sadness, we now believe that the game is over. LK99 is NOT a superconductor, not even at room temperatures (or at very low temperatures). It is a very highly resistive poor quality material. Period. No point in fighting with the truth," the University of Maryland's Condensed Matter Theory Center (CMTC) posted on August 7th... [The last words of their tweet? "Data have spoken."]

Labs hurriedly published their own results on ArXiv, the same server for preprints (papers that haven't undergone peer review) where the original papers on LK-99 first appeared. Now, a body of evidence has piled up that disproves claims about LK-99. "There is no sign of superconductivity in LK-99 at room temperature," says one preprint from the CSIR-National Physical Laboratory in India. (That was one of the papers cited by the University of Maryland's Condensed Matter Theory Center this week when it posted that "the game is over....") [H]opes that levitation meant that LK-99 is a superconductor were dashed this week after another preprint posed another explanation for why the material might float. The International Center for Quantum Materials in China found evidence that the material is ferromagnetic. That means it can be magnetized and then attracted or repelled by other magnetic materials (iron, for example, is ferromagnetic)...

[T]here are already well over a dozen papers on ArXiv casting doubt on LK-99. "There may be room temperature superconductors to find, but this does not seem to be one," Chris Grovenor, professor of materials at the University of Oxford and director of the Centre for Applied Superconductivity, tells The Verge in an email.
The Washington Post reports that one of physicists who co-authored the discovery paper "countered in an email that other research groups' failure to replicate their results are probably because they lack 'know how' in developing the sample the same way."
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'Data Have Spoken... LK-99 is Not a Superconductor,' Says US Research Center More

'Data Have Spoken... LK-99 is Not a Superconductor,' Says US Research Center

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  • Gotta love the excuses (Score:5, Insightful)

    by quonset ( 4839537 ) on Saturday August 12, 2023 @11:45AM (#63762250)

    It's not that LK-99 isn't a superconductor, it's that all those other people trying to replicate the results didn't have the samples we have.

    So let us have a sample for testing.

    . . . . . .

    We're too busy to make new samples.

    Then let some of us visit your location to observe and test what you are doing.

    . . . . . .

    We're too busy to see people.

    This sounds an awful lot like Theranos. Never provided any testing data, never let anyone test their equipment, never did anything to show what they said was true.

    As Carl Sagan famously said, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by quantaman ( 517394 )

      It's not that LK-99 isn't a superconductor, it's that all those other people trying to replicate the results didn't have the samples we have.

      So let us have a sample for testing.

      . . . . . .

      We're too busy to make new samples.

      Then let some of us visit your location to observe and test what you are doing.

      . . . . . .

      We're too busy to see people.

      Maybe they've made these statements but I haven't seen them.

      But at this point they definitely need to give other groups some confirmed samples and/or invite them to the lab.

      This sounds an awful lot like Theranos. Never provided any testing data, never let anyone test their equipment, never did anything to show what they said was true.

      As Carl Sagan famously said, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."

      Not really. Theranos was involved in a fairly deliberate deception. By contrast this group published their methods which is exactly how other groups were able to try and replicate.

      Now, if it comes out they fundraised a bunch of money for a start up while the ambiguity was going on then the story might change, but at this point it looks l

      • Re:Gotta love the excuses (Score:5, Informative)

        by quonset ( 4839537 ) on Saturday August 12, 2023 @12:37PM (#63762354)

        Maybe they've made these statements but I haven't seen them.

        Then you didn't read the previous article on here when that is exactly what they said [slashdot.org]:

        In response to questions about why the Quantum Energy Research Centre hasn't provided the materials to other scientists, Kim said that it doesn't have enough inventory of the LK-99 compound nor time to recreate it, and that the researchers have been distracted by the number of journalists trying to contact them. "You know that the office is extremely small and in a poor state." he said. "It's so small, and you need the money to make the compounds. That's why they cannot mass-produce it."

        • Maybe they've made these statements but I haven't seen them.

          Then you didn't read the previous article on here when that is exactly what they said [slashdot.org]:

          In response to questions about why the Quantum Energy Research Centre hasn't provided the materials to other scientists, Kim said that it doesn't have enough inventory of the LK-99 compound nor time to recreate it, and that the researchers have been distracted by the number of journalists trying to contact them. "You know that the office is extremely small and in a poor state." he said. "It's so small, and you need the money to make the compounds. That's why they cannot mass-produce it."

          That was right after the announcement. Saying you're too busy then isn't the same as too busy now.

          The implied appeal for money however is a bit of a red flag.

      • Not really. Theranos was involved in a fairly deliberate deception. By contrast this group published their methods which is exactly how other groups were able to try and replicate.

        Now, if it comes out they fundraised a bunch of money for a start up while the ambiguity was going on then the story might change, but at this point it looks like good faith researchers who screwed up.

        Of course, it really could be that making the samples is damn tricky and they can actually make superconductors, but that's seeming less likely.

        While I don't equate these folk to Theranos, I do see them attempting to influence belief in their product via public opinion.

        Another ceramic superconductor, not really very exciting even if it was, which it isn't, which is no surprise at all. Well, it might have a great purpose if there was a pressing need to levitate tiny pieces of ceramic.

        A real breakthrough in superconducting materials would be a wire product that is a superconductor at "room" temperature. Not a brittle material useful in makin

        • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

          by Anonymous Coward

          one breakthrough at a time, first it has to be proven that room temperature superconductors actually exist in the first place, no matter what form they take

          this is like complaining that anti-gravity cars don't have nice interiors

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

          Don't hold your breath for non-ceramic high temperature superconductors, unless someone manages to do something really spectacular with graphene or nanotubes. It's gonna be ceramic.

          However, we've gotten pretty good at making tape out of BSCCO. Unfortunately it's not a great superconductor. Excitingly, we're starting to get good at making tape out of YBCO.

      • or B they are just fucking idiots (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        For whatever reason, South Korea is the country that publishes more "big-if-true" findings than anywhere else. It's to the point where if news of some Nobel-worthy breakthrough comes out of South Korea I just assume it's fake. Whether it's human cloning or superconductors it's all bullshit. I don't know why that is.

        I'm not saying South Koreans are incapable of doing science and engineering, obviously we've gotten fine incremental work like the foldable phone out of South Korea. But it's at least once a year

    • I'm not surprised, the videos always looked like iron filings sticking to a magnet. That's not "levitation."

    • But then again, sometimes it's down to one specific, amount, ingredient or the way to cook it, that makes a difference. They never actually released how they made the sample. But then again, if they did create it, they sure as hell will try to commercialize/patent it very soon and we'll see the real results. It wouldn't be the first time others mock scientists because they could not recreate/believe it, but later it turned out to be true.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by sfcat ( 872532 )

        later it turned out to be true.

        Sure and those are interesting and rare circumstances that often merit a story. What you don't hear about is the many times more scientists who just fudge some evidence and get caught. Science has some real problems right now. Denying them isn't the right way to handle this. At this point, there needs to start being some serious repercussions to this behavior. That's why it keeps happening, there are rarely any consequences to it. And before you respond, remember that 80% of academic medical papers ar

      • Oh, for sure. I use a cold fusion generator to power my EmDrive.

    • Re:Gotta love the excuses (Score:4, Interesting)

      by physicsphairy ( 720718 ) on Saturday August 12, 2023 @07:29PM (#63763006)

      This sounds an awful lot like Theranos. Never provided any testing data, never let anyone test their equipment, never did anything to show what they said was true.

      How are people disconfirming their results then? It can't simultaneously be that they never provided the information necessary to investigate their claims and that a bunch of labs have investigated and found their claims incorrect.

      They provided resistivity, heat capacity, and XRD data in their preprint [arxiv.org]. The latter is how labs are verifying if they have made a similar sample. They provided video of levitation.

      To say they "never did anything" to show their claims was true is preoposterous. A dozen national labs didn't jump on investigating something that could be dismissed out-of-hand.

      The leading explanation for disputing their results is that they had a multiphase sample with (a) iron contamination leading to a magnetic torque that looks like diamagnetism (b) Cu2S which can undergo a very low-resistance phase transition [arxiv.org] around their critical temperature. If that is correct, there was nothing fake or incorrect about their results, they simply saw two unusual features of their sample, both of which are hallmarks of a superconductor, and theorized accordingly.

      But it is not a requirement for them to give up in defending their conclusions as soon as anyone criticizes them or comes up with an alternate theory. It is also ridiculous to expect them to be outputting additional results including mass manufacturing of something they took years to produce. Or to suddenly have their lab overrun with people "testing their equipment." Is anyone even aware of a mobile materials research testing team that is prepared to be on site to validate an entire lab on short notice? Do they normally show up within a week or two of putting up a preprint?

      I think there is too much Hollywood expectation here. Scientific work, especially in small labs, is not paced to satisfy the internet news-entertainment cycle. It can take a week or more just to write a paper. That most of their time these past couple weeks has been spent dealing with the verbal criticism and trying to move their publication is not just believable, it's by far the most expected answer. It's also hardly their fault if the internet wants to turn their work into the topic-of-the-week and then be disappointed. Getting some decent evidence for their result, publishing, and later being proven wrong is fine. Most papers that get published would not stand up to this kind of scrutiny. And most academics would want to publish sooner with good evidence rather than later with perfect evidence and risk losing priority. Unless there is actual indication of fraud or misconduct it isn't right to turn it into some kind of moral judgment against them.

    • As Carl Sagan famously said, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."

      As the audience famously proves every day, who the hell wants to bore the piss out of the clickbaited seeking entertainment, with facts and evidence...

  • Irreproducible results are a very real problem (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 12, 2023 @11:59AM (#63762272)

    There have been plenty of scientific publications that were very difficult for others to replicate until, and unless, they included small factors that were not in the original paper. Dr. Faustman's work at MGH, curing Type 1 diabetes in lab animals with daily doses of the BCG vaccine for 30 days, was impossible to replicate until other labs also controlled the animals' blood sugars very tightly, which costs *money* in tightly controlling diet, insulin, and providing frequent glucose tests. The glucose tests alone are a few dollars each, after factoring all the technician time and effort and the $1/each raw price for the test strips. Dr. Faustman's lab had done so as a matter of course, other labs..... not so much. So her results were very difficult to replicate, for *years*, until she or her grad students visited the other labs and did a "laying on of hands", the transfer of the knowledge of Dr. Faustman's practices.

    A lot of science and engineering guidelines are guilty of ignoring just such details. Cleaning up the resulting mess, with my much broader experience, takes up a lot of my work day.

    • Communication is Essential (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Roger W Moore ( 538166 ) on Saturday August 12, 2023 @02:46PM (#63762612) Journal

      So her results were very difficult to replicate, for *years*, until she or her grad students visited the other labs and did a "laying on of hands", the transfer of the knowledge of Dr. Faustman's practices.

      This is why it is important to work with your fellow experts in a field once you publish a significant result. What you do not do (as these guys did) is release a bombshell result and then say that you are too busy to provide samples or to work with fellow experts to help them reproduce the results. Refusing to communicate and work with others is the behaviour typical of charlatans, not scientists.

      • Was it a matter of the process not being adequately described or not adequately followed? If important information is left out that's actually important, it's not surprising if replicating it is difficult. If they just ignored part of the steps as unimportant then they were running a different experiment entirely. In an odd sort of way it's actually a useful experiment in that it helps us better understand precisely why something does or doesn't work.

        • If important information is left out that's actually important, it's not surprising if replicating it is difficult. If they just ignored part of the steps as unimportant then they were running a different experiment entirely.

          That's the problem though: you do not always know what is important. It could be some seemingly trivial step/condition that is missing from the paper or some, again seemingly trivial, variation that the reproducer made. That's why it is important to communicate with the original authors to try and understand if you are doing something different or whether the original result is wrong. If the authors refuse to communicate and you can't reproduce the results then it remains irreproducible and so the conclusi

      • This is why it is important to work with your fellow experts in a field once you publish a significant result. What you do not do (as these guys did) is release a bombshell result and then say that you are too busy to provide samples or to work with fellow experts to help them reproduce the results. Refusing to communicate and work with others is the behaviour typical of charlatans, not scientists.

        These assertions are a little strange given scientists working on reproducing the claims have reported constructive communication with the authors.

    • BCG does not cure type 1 diabetes.
      It does inexplicably help in its treatment though.

      But it's far from Earth-shattering.
      A1C improves by 0.3% in the control to 1.18%.
      To put that into reference, a person's A1C fluctuates more than that between any 2 tests.
      That doesn't mean the statistical improvement isn't there- it is. It's just.... not impressive.

  • I've always wondered what's the point (Score:5, Interesting)

    by OpenSourced ( 323149 ) on Saturday August 12, 2023 @12:18PM (#63762314) Journal

    I mean, what do you win by doing that kind of unsupported claims? It's the notoriety, it's to distract from other problems? I cannot see what you get doing that kind of "discoveries", and I cannot really suppose it's an honest mistake, not in this case, perhaps in the cold fusion shenanigan, but hardly in this one.

    • Money of course.

    • I cannot really suppose it's an honest mistake,

      they can be incompetent, why not? Also even if everybody say it is not superconductor, they may still find naive customers or VCs to make some money.

    • what do you win by doing that kind of unsupported claims?

      P. T. Barnum: There's a sucker born every minute.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by guruevi ( 827432 )

      Sadly, in science these days it's not the content of the paper that granting agencies look at, it's the volume of the papers you publish and how often they've made the papers.

      Basically as long as you crank out papers with big claims that hit the news, you are in line for more funding, by the time someone else finds out, you've gotten your next big win already. This one will get shuffled under "woops, we made a mistake, the scientific process guys, it works!".

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      I think it is pressure that leads to loss of connection with reality. Anybody smart would have realized that such a claim would be immediately subject to serious verification attempts and hence would have made extra sure at least some of these were successful.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      I cannot really suppose it's an honest mistake

      Ah yes, it must be difficult understanding the fallability of mere humans from your perspective of a perfect cutting edge research record.

    • I mean, what do you win by doing that kind of unsupported claims?

      No unsupported claims were made. The material exhibited levitation. That was the claim. That was confirmed. It was postulated that this could be evidence of superconduction. That turned out to be false. Literally the normal process for science.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by DamnOregonian ( 963763 )
        No, lol.

        For the first time in the world, we succeeded in synthesizing the room-temperature superconductor (Tc400 K, 127C) working at ambient pressure with a modified lead-apatite (LK-99) structure.

    • It could be an honest mistake. Just as an example (not saying this happened here) if the data acquisition system that measures the voltage drop has digitizing error, there coudl be what appears to be exactly zero voltage, below some current, followed by a sudden step - appearing to be a superconducting critical current. Diamagnetism might look like field exclusion etc.

      Considering that the researchers published detailed fabrication procedures, I don't think it was a fraud. Its even possible it was corr
    • I've met too many scientists who are absolutely convinced by their own data and believe their methods to get the data are infallible, and yet when you look at their work and the chain of events leading to the basis of their work, the opportunity for human error or even misunderstanding the potential conclusions of their own results is extremely high.

      I do not believe it's lies. I do not believe it's an honest mistake. I do believe it's another all-too common human habit: an over-estimation of one's own

  • I'm not sure I believe that the results justify the claim. Given the LK99 is a polycrystalline fragment, it was always going to be difficult to show that it was a superconductor, and probably difficult to show that it could conduct. You're going to need to get the correct kind of crystallization, and you're going to need to test the correct faces of the crystal. It seems pretty clear (to me) that most times you product the stuff, you aren't going to get a superconductor. This is a lot different than working with metals. More like the early days of transistors. when the results you got were determined by things you couldn't (or didn't) even measure.

    OTOH, I'd sure like to see a public demonstration of an existing sample before I believe it.

    • I'd like to see any example of flux locking in it whatsoever.
      The video does not demonstrate the behavior of a semiconductor, nor do the measurements in their paper.

    • Yes, and that was always why I thought they needed to work with a CVD machine, and use atomic layer deposition of the copper into the lead apatite surface, rather than their haphazard method.

  • They're doing it wrong (Score:3, Informative)

    by Ol Olsoc ( 1175323 ) on Saturday August 12, 2023 @12:51PM (#63762376)
    This superconductor works perfectly, but it has to be done correctly.

    You need a blockchain run Beowolf cluster of EM drives, powered by a Pons Fleischmann cold fusion capsule. Oh - and a dollop pf KY-Jelly.

    Then, all will be made clear!

  • VPS Awana (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bill_mcgonigle ( 4333 ) * on Saturday August 12, 2023 @01:07PM (#63762398) Homepage Journal

    The Indians seem to be more patient.

    After publishing two LK-99 replication failure preprints, VPS Awana's lab called up the Koreans and discussed their methodology. After refining their process's vapor deposition they have a success preprint in flight. Reportedly it describes the refined process.

    This guy:

    https://scholar.google.com.tw/... [google.com.tw]

    He might be wrong but all these labs doing science by press release are behaving wrong.

    The Koreans themselves reported low success yields, which doesn't prove them right but it should have set expectations low.

    And the nuts on here calling for the hangings of scientists based on press releases are truly dangerous psychopaths.

    • Wish I had upvotes for this one.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Nutria ( 679911 )

      Shouldn't the exact methodology have been described in the original paper?

      • Re:VPS Awana (Score:4)

        by mamba-mamba ( 445365 ) on Saturday August 12, 2023 @02:26PM (#63762578)
        Ideally, sure. Have you ever had the experience where you baked cookies according to a recipe and someone else, following the same recipe, produced cookies way better or way worse than yours?

        No? How about have you ever read a bug report, tried to follow the steps and couldn't produce the bug? Because something NOT IN THE REPORT was different? Or maybe you have written a bug report and someone else couldn't reproduce it because something you took for granted was not in the steps?

        Etc. It will all sort itself out in time. I am sure the (gender-neutral) guys who initially reported it are completely overwhelmed in a way that most of us cannot imagine.

        If baking good bread is difficult (and it definitely is), I am sure making room temp superconductors is even more difficult.

    • Did you see the most recent article from the 7th? He pretty much slams LK99, "no evidence of superconductivity" over and over.

      • Did you see the most recent article from the 7th? He pretty much slams LK99, "no evidence of superconductivity" over and over.

        What is being referred to occurs after that was published.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cats-paw ( 34890 )

      He might be wrong but all these labs doing science by press release are behaving wrong.

      You're right, those labs are behaving wrong. Here's a lab doing science by doing science.

      https://www.nature.com/article... [nature.com]

      Also, in reference to some other posters, don't compare inorganic chemistry to organic chemistry as to level of difficulty.

      Being able to reproduce results in a living creature can obviously depend on some crazy level of detail and subtleties. It's not quite the same amount of trouble if you are trying

      • Re:VPS Awana (Score:4)

        by sfcat ( 872532 ) on Saturday August 12, 2023 @03:32PM (#63762666)

        organic chemistry

        You misspelled biochemistry. Organic chemistry is mostly the chemistry of hydrocarbons (as in oil). Biochemistry is the chemistry used by life. Still uses carbon but also many more base elements and is much more complex as you said.

    • No. [nextbigfuture.com]
  • I really, really wanted to lose it.
  • LK-99, the Pluto of superconductors.
  • The media is an accomplice. They know damn well the overwhelming likelihood is that something is crap, but they still hype it every time.

  • It's a desert topping.

    No. It's a floor wax.

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