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Hardware Science Technology

A Room-Temperature Superconductor? New Developments (science.org) 102

Posted by BeauHD from the remarkable-claims dept.
Derek Lowe, a medicinal chemist and freelance writer on science and pharmaceutical topics, comments on the latest developments around last week's remarkable claim of a well-above-room-temperature superconducting material at ambient pressure, dubbed LK-99. Here's an excerpt from his post: As of this morning, there are (as yet not really verified) reports of replication from the Huazhong University of Science and Technology in China. At least, a video has been posted showed what could be a sample of LK-99 levitating over a magnet due to the Meissner effect, and in different orientations relative to the magnet itself. That's important, because a (merely!) paramagnetic material can levitate in a sufficiently strong field (as can diamagnetic materials like water droplets and frogs), but these can come back to a particular orientation like a compass needle. Superconductors are "perfect diamagnets," excluding all magnetic fields, and that's a big difference. The "Meissner effect" that everyone has been hearing about so much is observed when a material first becomes superconductive at the right temperature and expels whatever magnetic fields were penetrating it at the time. All this said, we're having to take the video on the statements of whoever made/released it, and there are other possible explanations for the it that do not involve room-temperature superconductivity. I will be very happy if this is a real replication, but I'm not taking the day off yet to celebrate just based on this.

And even though I'm usually more of an experimental-results guy than a theory guy, two other new preprints interest me greatly. One is from a team (PDF) at the Shenyang National Laboratory for Materials Science, and the other (PDF) is from Sinead Griffin at Lawrence Berkeley. Both start from the reported X-ray structural data of LK-99 and look at its predicted behavior via density functional theory (DFT) calculations. And they come to very similar conclusions: it could work. This is quite important, because this could mean that we don't need to postulate completely new physics to explain something like LK-99 - if you'd given the starting data to someone as a blind test, they would have come back after the DFT runs saying "You know, this looks like it could be a really good superconductor..." [...]

I am guardedly optimistic at this point. The Shenyang and Lawrence Berkeley calculations are very positive developments, and take this well out of the cold-fusion "we can offer no explanation" territory. Not that there's anything wrong with new physics (!), but it sets a much, much higher bar if you have to invoke something in that range. I await more replication data, and with more than just social media videos backing them up. This is by far the most believable shot at room-temperature-and-pressure superconductivity the world has seen so far, and the coming days and weeks are going to be extremely damned interesting.
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A Room-Temperature Superconductor? New Developments More

A Room-Temperature Superconductor? New Developments

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  • Guardedly Optimistic (Score:5, Interesting)

    by memory_register ( 6248354 ) on Tuesday August 01, 2023 @04:50PM (#63732278)
    I'm sure everyone would love to see this work, and it's true that sometimes we get leaps in science. Materials physics breakthroughs at this level are just so infrequent, I don't want to hope too much just yet.

    That being said, go replication teams go!

    • Re:Guardedly Optimistic (Score:4, Interesting)

      by EvilSS ( 557649 ) on Tuesday August 01, 2023 @05:07PM (#63732308)
      Good news is everyone and their mothers are working on replicating this, and the process seems pretty straightforward and within reach of virtually any university lab. Hell, it wouldn't be that out of reach for a chemist working in a home lab with some experience and a few thousand to throw at it. We should know in another week or two if it's real or not. I'm still predicting not but these early reports are intriguing.

      • Re:Guardedly Optimistic (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Nrrqshrr ( 1879148 ) on Tuesday August 01, 2023 @05:14PM (#63732316)

        Exactly.
        What's so interesting about this is that, if it's indeed the real deal, we will be able to bulk order this within the year online. There are probably people out there trying to refine the production process before we even have confirmation of what it can do.
        Again, IF it's the real deal (Big if that's getting smaller and smaller every day, it seems), then the first person to come up with a high-yield production process will get filthy filthy rich.

      • Re:Guardedly Optimistic (Score:5, Interesting)

        by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Tuesday August 01, 2023 @05:17PM (#63732322)

        It can’t be too many labs though. I was ordering some stuff from Sigma (a top chemical vendor) this morning and just for fun looked at whether they had PbO and PbSO4 in stock and they did. Makes me think either they aren’t seeing a huge spike in orders or they keep a huge inventory.

        • Re: Guardedly Optimistic (Score:5, Interesting)

          by EvilSS ( 557649 ) on Tuesday August 01, 2023 @05:28PM (#63732338)
          Or labs are getting it from other sources. Sigma is great because they have virtually everything but god damn they are expensive.

          • Or labs are getting it from other sources. Sigma is great because they have virtually everything but god damn they are expensive.

            So, McMaster-Carr?

        • Lead, oxygen, and sulfur? Is that it? That's more common than shrieking wives and philandering husbands. No other elements? No complex, hard-to-replicate chemistry?

          • Also copper, but that's part of the amazing thing is that it is all common material and the process to create is crazy within reach to the point that high school science classes can even play with it.

            Things look surprisingly promising so far, which is insane to see play out.

            • Re: Guardedly Optimistic (Score:5, Informative)

              by dsgrntlxmply ( 610492 ) on Tuesday August 01, 2023 @06:12PM (#63732432)
              It needs an inert atmosphere box, a vacuum line, a torch hot enough to seal fused silica tubes, and a tube furnace or kiln. That is within the range of the friendly local 4-year university. I could do the Pb first step in my ceramics kiln: crucible in air. That does not get to measurements, but it does get half way to parlor tricks with magnets.
          • It's the phlebotinum you need to alloy it with that's the bitch to get, special order from the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics and you'll pay through the nose for it.
      • So you're saying we can expect to see Jeri Ellsworth replicating it in a few weeks time?

      • I'm still predicting??? not but these early reports are intriguing.
        Seriously?

        People do science and you do magically predict? That is a non sequitur.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      The whole thing is not all that different from the discovery of high temperature superconductors in the 80s. That doesn't make it true, but yelling "cold fusion!" doesn't make it not true either. If this works it is a (decently large) incremental improvement over what's gone before. We only care about it because it happens to cross a temperature line we're intimately associated with.

      • Huh? We care because this would potentially open up an enormous range of uses for superconductors.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

          That's the temperature line we're intimately familiar with. If we evolved on Titan we'd have been partying it up in 1986 instead. "Room temperature" is scientifically arbitrary. It's exciting from an applied perspective.

          • The cryogenic equipment to make and maintain liquid helium is expensive, delicate, and very power hungry. The cryogenic equipment to make and maintain liquid nitrogen is cheaper but still not cheap and quite bulky.

            If you don't require any cryogenic equipment for your superconductors, you could make a superconducting super capacitor the size of a standard car battery that will power an electric vehicle for hundreds of miles, charge in minutes, and deep cycle millions of times. You could have nearly lossless

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

              You're not really following. Don't worry about it. Yes, a room temperature superconductor, that works well, would be revolutionary.

  • 1. It’s not aliens.
    2. It cannot send information faster than light.
    3. It doesn’t superconduct at room temperature.

    • 1: until it is because the universe is fucking huge. Insert HHGTTG quote here.
      2: it probably can't but it's still early days
      3: give it a month... we'll see.

      • 2: it probably can't but it's still early days

        No, we know in advance the answer to that one. It can't. Relativity isn't a "physics suggestion", its a physics law, and an immutable one.

        • There is no law saying FTL is not possible. What it says is that you cannotaccelerate to the speed of c.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

          No, we know in advance the answer to that one. It can't. Relativity isn't a "physics suggestion", its a physics law, and an immutable one.

          Actually, the fundamental speed limit is the speed of information, or the speed of causality. The fact that right now our physics tells us both the speed of light and speed of information/causality is the same is currently only coincidence.

          Nothing can go faster than the speed of information or causality.

          Here's a simple thought experiment. Say you have a handheld laser pow

          • he fact that right now our physics tells us both the speed of light and speed of information/causality is the same is currently only coincidence.
            This is not a fact.
            There is no laws of physics telling us that imaginary fact of yours.

            Hint: entanglement. Ooops.

            • Don't confuse nonlocality of wave function collapse with the fundamental postulates of relativity, which aren't threatened by it.
              Every quantum mechanical theory in existence had to account for relativity in order to work right, and it makes sense, because relativity is a geometric fact.
          • The spot is not a thing that moved.

            Classic example of why it's important to use a proper frame of reference.

            Your example is akin to saying "let's assume that you are static and unmoving in the universe. How quickly does the solar system change orientation when you move your head from left to right?"
            You can make anything appear to violate physics if you use ridiculous coordinate systems.
        • Except laws of physics are created/laid down by humans, and humans are very well known for making mistakes. There are still more then enough things that our laws of physics can't explain. So never ever keep yourself held back by such 'laws' as they might not be so set in stone.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jbengt ( 874751 )

          Relativity isn't a "physics suggestion", its a physics law, and an immutable one.

          Relativity isn't a law, it's a scientific theory based on laws. And scientific laws are the given (albeit based on observations) axioms from which scientific theories are built. Such laws are not necessarily immutable, as more extensive or more detailed observations can result in new, more refined laws, and potentially invalidate the old laws.

        • We can and have observed quantum spooky action at a distance at sufficient remove (entanglement apparatus synched between the ISS and the opposite side of the Earth) to confirm that states remain in synch outside of the entangled particles' light cone.

          At the moment, this can only be used to know specific random remote information, and thus is not useful for communication in practical terms. Could someone eventually work out a way to coerce entangled particles into a meaningful behaviour pattern though? Not

          • Nonlocal wavefunction collapse cannot facilitate causality violations.
            If you observe your entangled photon, you collapse the other entangled photon as well.

            Whether or not entangled wavefunction collapse constitutes "action" is still not definitively shown.
        • Calling it "The Speed of Light" is what confuses most people about it. It makes the speed seem arbitrary. So does the more accurate term, "the speed of light in a vacuum". Fewer people would insist that we just need to be more clever to get around C if we called it by a more accurate name. It's actually the speed of causality. You can't construct a causality chain that propagates faster than C. Sending a signal faster than light is the same thing as sending a signal back in time. It's not that you can't do

      • 1: until it is because the universe is fucking huge.

        Which is an excellent argument for why it's not aliens. The distances involved are too large.

    • And their engineering corollaries:

      1. We detected results that could indicate alien life, but don't.
      2. We can't really provide the promised latency and/or bandwidth.
      3. We can't sell you this battery.

    • It cannot send information faster than light.

      It will soon in Florida, they're aiming to repeal that law because it's woke.

  • I can't wait to see what new modes of transportation, communication, and of course, weapons, this advance introduces.

    If indeed it's a legitimate thing, and it's only taken a few days to replicate in China, we'll see it being applied industrially and commercially before not a lot of time at all.

    • In terms of weapons, I believe you could cast aside your rail guns and switch to a superconductor-enhanced coil gun known as a quench gun.

      Lasts a lot longer, fires faster.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward
      It sounds like even if it's true, it's just the start of a research path to something actually usable, so it will likely be several years at least before any commercial/industrial applications.

      • Re: Can't wait (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Junta ( 36770 ) on Tuesday August 01, 2023 @06:06PM (#63732422)

        Not so sure. Either it's busted and it flops or it's going to be everywhere in short order. And we're going to know whether it's busted or not in real short order.

        It's ludicrous that room temp, low pressure superconductor would be found at all, but even crazier is that the materials and process described is crazy within reach. There's no room for the snake oil to hide if it's snake oil No need to dump funding into the researchers without proving for yourself. No need for crazy research to refine the process, the process is already good. There's going to be lots of research into other materials and processes, for lower toxicity, even cheaper processes, maybe higher current density, but those won't be blockers for a lot of things.

        This seems way too good to be true, but it surprisingly is looking positive.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by erice ( 13380 )

          Not so sure. Either it's busted and it flops or it's going to be everywhere in short order. And we're going to know whether it's busted or not in real short order.

          I can think of a few more options.

          • It works but is difficult to produce reliably. Good enough for lab experiment. No mass production
          • It works and can be made reliably but is fragile. Can't survive the real world
          • It works, is robust but its superconductive capability is fussy about environmental conditions. Room temperature and pressure, sure, but which room? Doesn't work in the real world

          It doesn't seem to have the unobtainium problem so that is at least promising.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by jonadab ( 583620 )
      If it's actually real you mean? Some of that is pretty predictable...

      Maglev trains would be able to run their propulsion systems on flashlight batteries. (You still have to power passenger-comfort things like light and heat/AC however; and if you go crazy fast, you have to deal with things like the waste heat that the air resistances produces.)

      Here's a big one: very-long-distance power transmission lines could run at human-safe voltages without losing a lot of power. You have to make the whole conductin

  • Hmm ... which room? (Score:5, Funny)

    by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Tuesday August 01, 2023 @05:34PM (#63732348)

    It doesn't matter what temperature the room is, it's always room temperature.
    -- Steven Wright

  • And now, much like Lord Kelvin after Kitty Hawk, suddenly "it could work"? My my, how fickle is the scientific consensus?

    • We no longer need the scientific method. We have consensus. If enough scientists from random unrelated fields say a thing is true then who is some jackass who actually specializes in that field to say otherwise?

    • Nobody ever said room temperature superconductors were impossible. Definitely not since Type II was discovered or YBCO.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      If anyone told you "it can't be done" they weren't speaking scientifically. Back before high temperature ceramic superconductors you could maybe defend that position. As soon as someone made hunks of ceramic superconduct at non-liquid helium temperatures room temperature became just another number on the thermometer.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Jeremi ( 14640 )

      My my, how fickle is the scientific consensus?

      "When the facts change, I change my mind - what do you do, sir?" - John Maynard Keynes

  • I still feel like this material is probably bullshit, but if it's not, we have more of a problem than a breakthrough. The only way this doesn't wind up with lead being fucking everywhere is if capitalism dies before we can produce it industrially.

    • There's at least some hope that after proving the principle in lead/copper, that some less problematic materials are figured out to be able to do the same trick.

      If this pans out, massive investment in materials science work to refine it as this is a holy grail of so many applications.

      • There is absolutely no such hope. Leaving aside that it's possible there just isn't such a material to be discovered, there will at best be token efforts to even attempt to find one. That's exactly why capitalism needs to die first. Private industry has *never* missed an opportunity to poison people for profit.

        • Did it hurt?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Bongo ( 13261 )

          I never had a problem with corporations, but the last few years have broken my naive illusions. However, I don't imagine it's as simple as "capitalism". Perhaps more about ego and power. If a few groups get so much power that they can just go round buying politicians, the media, propaganda campaigns, getting people censored, changing laws, pushing NGOs, fackety fact checker outfits, key opinion leaders in scientific fields, prestigious advisory boards, etc., etc., then we really don't have a working system.

          • If a few groups get so much power that they can just go round buying politicians, the media, propaganda campaigns, getting people censored, changing laws, pushing NGOs, fackety fact checker outfits, key opinion leaders in scientific fields, prestigious advisory boards, etc., etc., then we really don't have a working system. And they are smart too, where the very thing people feel is right and good and fair, is the very thing that they're deliberately programming people to believe, for profit and power. Propaganda works when people believe it's the right and fair and best thing to believe. But I guess these games have been going on since forever.

            It's almost as if that IS the system, as designed.

            However, I don't imagine it's as simple as "capitalism".

            Try re-imagining that again.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Junta ( 36770 )

          Yes, it may be possible that this is the only material, or that other discovered materials will be of unfeasibly exotic nature. However even this has been the area of crackpot research, if this validates, it will set off a whole bunch more research, with who knows what result.

          While private industry can be grossly irresponsible (so too can certain governments), that does not preclude them from chasing other opportunities.

          Even if it is a superconductor, it will have limitations. It may not work for useful mag

    • I'm more worried about the arsenic mines in Canada that were gifted to us by capitalism.

    • The only way this doesn't wind up with lead being fucking everywhere is if capitalism dies before we can produce it industrially.

      Probably not, unless it's also crazy cheap and easy to install. The resistance of copper or aluminum is already perfectly acceptable in most applications. In most cases, it would be possible to get lower resistance just by using thicker wires, but we don't bother because the resistance-cost tradeoff isn't worth it. The same will apply here: if these superconductors cost more than copper or aluminum that can carry the same amount of current, they're not going to win for most applications.

      These will open up e

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by sjames ( 1099 )

        *IF* this is real, and there are good reasons to doubt it, it could be very useful for a number of applications. Long Island already receives some of it's power over a "high temperature" superconducting cable. Not having to keep it chilled with liquid N2 would be a big cost savings, for example.

    • Re: Oh, great. (Score:1, Interesting)

      by DNS-and-BIND ( 461968 )
      Say, comrade, why is it that socialist countries always have toilet paper shortages? How are you and the politburo planning on producing room temperature superconductors when you can't even make a roll of paper with a cardboard core?

    • The only way this doesn't wind up with lead being fucking everywhere is if capitalism dies before we can produce it industrially.
      Lead is not a problem if it is contained. Like in common car batteries, aka: starter batteries.

    • I still feel like this material is probably bullshit, but if it's not, we have more of a problem than a breakthrough. The only way this doesn't wind up with lead being fucking everywhere is if capitalism dies before we can produce it industrially.

      If this not only works but works for the reason the researchers believe (induced stresses caused by replacing some of the metal atoms with those of another element with a slightly different "size"), it provides a new way to design room-and-higher-temperature superc

  • I am willing to bet that the conclusions of the Korean team are wrong. And I'll feel ecstatic if I lost that bet.

  • I like reading what Derek Lowe writes. Seems like an interesting person. In this instance, I'm not sure he added anything to the conversation.

    • Well not everyone except those of us doom scrolling for LK99 content on social media knew of the report from China and also the DFT results.

  • Sabine Hossenfelder opinion (Score:4)

    by John Cavendish ( 6659408 ) on Tuesday August 01, 2023 @07:40PM (#63732600)

    A feet on the ground opinion about the reported superconductor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
    Summarized as: let's wait for the scientific evidence, since there are none so far.

  • It'll make all the renewable-but-also-intermittent energy sources more viable because we can dump electricity into large scale SMES with literally 100% round trip efficiency at zero cost...after that storage has been built, of course.

    Storage is definitely the biggest issue with renewables right now.

  • Not looking good (Score:3)

    by sjames ( 1099 ) on Wednesday August 02, 2023 @02:34AM (#63733194) Homepage Journal

    The paper has not been peer reviewed. But some analysis suggests that some of the data is curiously absent, there are two competing papers both claiming credit, and the demo videos are inconsistent with the meissner effect. In fact, the videos seem to demonstrate diamagnetism and Lenz's law instead.

    Since it is easy and cheap to test, it makes sense to try to replicate this, but I'm not chilling the champagne just yet.

  • Could a kind soul, please, outline a couple of references (paid or free, books/papers preferred) that would allow somebody with Griffiths Quantum Mechanics under his belt to get a working understanding of the original arxiv paper and the simulation and replication studies? I'm not talking of beeing able to significantly contribute to the experts' discussion, but getting over the point of "Wow, this might be great" to being able to grasp for example the explanation of the mechanism like "As for a room-temper

  • Well? Did the paper start out with "Once Upon A Time"?

    Not that all these "discoveries" on RTSC, cold fusion, Bigfoot discoveries, Hollow Earth Science, etc aren't entertaining.

    It's just when the bullshit quotient STARTS at 100%...

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