Expert prognosis for the planet

[Irace86.2.0]

Originally Posted by soundman98

lab work is not reality.

it's going to be at least another 10-20 years before that makes its way to full production, and that's assuming that manufacturing can even be scaled appropriately. there's a trillion ideas that work in the lab or small batches, but can't be scaled to mass production.

We should know soon whether this is legit, just another dead end, a misunderstanding, or manipulation/fraud/deception. Considering the transparency, I would say this is either legit or a misunderstanding. We should know in days--maybe a week at most--like these articles mention.

The materials are abundant and available. The manufacturing of this product wouldn't take special equipment. The applications could be immediate like with electronics (a year or two), but yes, there are long term implications that would take decades. Cheaper MRI machines could be quick, but mag-lev trains would take longer. Upgrades to the grid would be immediate, but system wide improvements would take a long time.

https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2023/0...on-status.html

If reports that Argonne National Lab has completed synthesis of LK-99, proposed room temperature superconductor from South Korean researchers, are correct then characterization information should be released in 1-3 days.

SThe general public seems oddly pumped about how ‘easy’ the 4-day, multistep, small batch, solid state synthesis is,” Jennifer Fowlie, a condensed matter physicist at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, quipped on Twitter. “Some of you haven’t had blisters from overusing your pestle and it shows.” Nevertheless, physicists will put the claim to the test very quickly, Norman predicts: “If this is real, we’ll know within a week.”

Michael Norman, a theorist at Argonne National Laboratory, said we will know within a week in a July 27, 2023 Journal Science article. This means the end of the day of August 2nd, 2023 or earlier (IF the within a week estimate is correct).

https://www.electropages.com/blog/20...-finally-thing

To create the new material, LK-99, the researchers mixed several powdered compounds containing lead, oxygen, sulphur, and phosphorus, then heated them at a high temperature for several hours. This process resulted in a dark grey solid. When they measured the resistivity of a millimetre-sized sample of LK-99 at different temperatures, they found that it fell sharply from a sizeable positive value at 105°C (221°F) down to nearly zero at 30°C (86°F).

What makes the supposed discovery critical is that the equipment needed to make the material is cheap and readily available, and the instructions outlined in the paper (which has not been peer-reviewed) are easy to follow.

[Irace86.2.0]

Originally Posted by soundman98

lab work is not reality.

it's going to be at least another 10-20 years before that makes its way to full production, and that's assuming that manufacturing can even be scaled appropriately. there's a trillion ideas that work in the lab or small batches, but can't be scaled to mass production.

Updates:


A Room-Temperature Superconductor? New Developments

https://www.science.org/content/blog...w-developments

Conclusion

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.

LK-99 superconductor: Chinese researchers demonstrate magnetic levitation as proof

https://interestingengineering.com/i...vitation-proof

[soundman98]

Originally Posted by Irace86.2.0

Updates:


A Room-Temperature Superconductor? New Developments

https://www.science.org/content/blog...w-developments




LK-99 superconductor: Chinese researchers demonstrate magnetic levitation as proof

https://interestingengineering.com/i...vitation-proof

lol, no updates yet?!?

don't worry, i got you

https://hackaday.com/2023/08/05/lk-9...uperconductor/

So sadly it seems LK-99 isn’t the miracle it was billed as, unless there’s some special quirk in the production of the original Korean sample which didn’t make it to the other teams. We can’t help wondering why a sample from Korea wasn’t subjected to external evaluation rather than leaving the other teams to make their own. Never mind, eh!

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/sc...e-with-a-catch

But questions remain even here: it seems that LK-99 only shows superconductivity at 110 kelvin (-163C), which disputes the "room-temperature" bit originally claimed (although all tech enthusiasts that have dabbled in liquid nitrogen cooling know that 110 kelvin is handleable, if not practical). It's also unclear why LK-99 would show both diamagnetism (responsible for levitation) and superconductivity, but within different temperature bands — expectations would paint it more as a "buy one, get two" promotion.

But while this is incredibly promising news, there are still caveats. For one: it's strange that two teams verified different halves of the superconducting requirements, but no team has successfully verified both (as of the time of writing). You would think that it would make more sense for one side to take more time to crack than the other; otherwise, why didn't the initial Meissner-effect observation also show the hallmarks of zero electrical resistance? What is stopping these teams of extremely talented individuals from achieving what others before them did in full?

For now, LK-99 seems to have some limitations. It's currently hard to synthesize at high purities (because it only happens in very specific areas of the compound), meaning yield is likely to be poor. And in fact, perhaps this purity problem (acknowledged in the original paper) is the root of most of these issues: scientists have had a difficult time creating enough quantities of the material that display any of the superconducting or diamagnetic features.

https://www.theverge.com/23820077/lk...ductor-experts

To start, there were inconsistencies in the data; the two preprints disagree with each other. There’s reportedly also conflict between the authors (there are three authors named on one paper and six on the other). The preprint with fewer authors contains “many defects,” an author of the other paper told New Scientist. The author, William & Mary physics research professor Hyun-Tak Kim, also said that the preprint was uploaded to arXiv without his permission. Kim and other corresponding authors of the papers did not respond when The Verge reached out to them.

Wait, there are more red (or at least yellow) flags…

Grovenor points out that the researchers didn’t perform a heat anomaly test that’s standard for major laboratories studying these kinds of materials. “All superconductors that have ever been proven to be superconductors show this specific heat anomaly,” he says. “If there is no specific heat anomaly, it ain’t a superconductor.”

The preprints are also imprecise in their definition of “zero” resistance, according to Nadya Mason, a condensed matter physicist at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Superconductors should have zero electrical resistance, but the preprints show “zero” on a scale that makes it difficult to tell whether LK-99 is truly a perfect superconductor or just a very good conductor. “Metal is a really, really, really, really, really good conductor,” Mason says. But it’s still not perfect. “You do lose a lot of energy in heat. That’s why our laptops get hot and why you lose so much energy in the power grid. So it really matters whether you have a perfect conductor or a really good conductor.”

The building blocks for LK-99 raised some eyebrows, too. Unlike many superconductors made from metal, it starts out as a nonconducting mineral. “When you start with a rock, chances are you will end with a rock,” says Michael Norman, a distinguished fellow and former director of the materials science division at Argonne National Laboratory. Doping the material with copper is supposed to be what transforms it, but it’s not clear where the copper is supposed to go and how it manages to transform the rock into a superconductor.

“This discovery is completely out of the blue,” says David Larbalestier, chief materials scientist of the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory and professor at FAMU-FSU College of Engineering. “I have no idea what the idea, frankly, behind doping this [mineral] with copper was.”

[Irace86.2.0]

Originally Posted by soundman98

lol, no updates yet?!?

don't worry, i got you

https://hackaday.com/2023/08/05/lk-9...uperconductor/

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/sc...e-with-a-catch

https://www.theverge.com/23820077/lk...ductor-experts

Thanks. It is still a little too early. People are having a harder time replicating LK-99 than I thought they would, and that is different than saying they were unable to verify the claims made about LK-99. This is like Gordon Ramsey giving different chefs a basic writing of one of his Michelin Star recipes, and then having a series of chefs trying to replicate the recipe only to say the dish didn’t look or taste good. It initially seemed like making the exact same compound would be more like making popcorn than baking a cake. They may just need more time to dial in the technique.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02481-0

But Robert Palgrave, a chemist at University College London, says that both teams’ materials differ from the original. Both X-ray diffraction patterns are significantly different from the Korean team’s patterns and from each other, says Palgrave.

We clearly need more time to be certain. There is plenty to suggest doubt, but enough theoretical and partial demonstrations to be curiously optimistic. We are definitely not ready to invalidate their claims, and we are past the point of evidence to conclude that their claims were outright fabrications.

[soundman98]

the fact that korean scientists haven't made their sample available for verification is a huge red flag. the next red flag is the serious lack of scientifically-verifiable procedural items like baking time/temperature. red flag #3 is the independent testing of samples for different properties.

and the largest red flag is the small batches.

[Spuds]

I will say, without any research whatsoever, that most discoveries are entirely accidental. It is possible, if improbable, that the first team made some sort of mistake or some chance alignment resulted in some super material that can change the world as we know it.

That being said it's looking more probable they made a mistake in the test is what I gather, which is usually the case.

[Lantanafrs2]

So Koreas been retrieving UFOs too lol.

[Irace86.2.0]

Originally Posted by soundman98

the fact that korean scientists haven't made their sample available for verification is a huge red flag. the next red flag is the serious lack of scientifically-verifiable procedural items like baking time/temperature. red flag #3 is the independent testing of samples for different properties.

and the largest red flag is the small batches.

Data sharing is common, but sample sharing is not as common (Link). Scientists are supportive and collaborative inside the community, and they scrutinize the community too, but there is also a lot of competition to do something meaningful and impactful. They all want to make a discovery and go down in history for making a difference to society. The potential to make money is there too, but really there is more of a drive to be a famous scientist who made a major contribution to society and to science. Scientists learn in school about the history of scientific discoveries, of people who barely missed winning Nobel Prizes for discoveries because they weren't bold enough or weren't willing to put their results out there. The discovery of DNA is one example. The Korean scientists could have put out enough of their findings to be able to claim to be the first, to be able to stake a claim on the discovery, which means their results could be false/rushed/incomplete; they did say they were going to continue to try to purify and refine their compound. They could also be trying to hide the full recipe in order to be able to patent and sell their findings in the future.

I can give you something like a bag of Kettle Brand kettle chips, and from that bag you will have the ingredients in the order of what was most used to what was least used. From the description, you will understand that the process of reproducing the chips will require a different technique than frying standard potato chips. From the nutritional facts, you will have data on macronutrients and micronutrients. Even though you know the general technique of making kettle chips, how likely are you to reproduce chips indistinguishable from Kettle Brand chips?

Check out the synthesis below. It explains the basics, but how fine of a powder, how long to mix things, what is the heat source (does that matter), etc? Again, if this was a Kettle Brand chips recipe, a Dom Perignon champagne recipe or Micheline Star recipe, would it be enough to reproduce something to the same standard? Living in wine country, I think of all the variety of wines using near identical techniques and ingredients with slight differences in the smallest details of production. At the same time, once you know the process, reproducing a product in mass is not a problem. We will have to see how things go or what this turns into in time.

Synthesis

Lee et al. provide a method for chemical synthesis of LK-99 in three steps:

First they produce lanarkite from a 1:1 molar mixing of lead(II) oxide (PbO) and lead(II) sulfate (Pb(SO4)) powders, and heating at 725 °C (1,000 K; 1,340 °F) for 24 hours:

PbO + Pb(SO4) → Pb2(SO4)O
Then, copper(I) phosphide (Cu3P) is produced by mixing copper (Cu) and phosphorus (P) powders in a 3:1 molar ratio in a sealed tube under a vacuum and heated to 550 °C (820 K; 1,000 °F) for 48 hours.

3 Cu + P → Cu3P
Then, lanarkite and copper phosphide crystals are ground into a powder, placed in a sealed tube under a vacuum, and heated to 925 °C (1,200 K; 1,700 °F) for between 5‒20 hours.

Pb2(SO4)O + Cu3P → Pb10-xCux(PO4)6O + S (g), where (0.9 < x < 1.1)
The above reaction from the initial paper is not balanced, however. A paper by Kapil Kumar et al. reported the presence of Cu2S as well. A balanced reaction might be:

5 Pb2SO4O + 6 Cu3P → Pb9Cu(PO4)6O + 5 Cu2S + Pb + 7 Cu

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LK-99


Bigger and Better LK99 Replication Sample from Andrew McCalip and Varda Space
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2023/0...rda-space.html

The pieces are made in test tubes right now, which is why they are small.

[Irace86.2.0]

Reddit Megathread

https://www.reddit.com/r/Physics/com...99_megathread/

[Unplugem]

Originally Posted by Irace86.2.0

I have to laugh at the thumbnail with the guy flashing the Freemasonic "666" hand sign. These puppets always show who their master is. The scary part is some folks actually believe these liars.

[Dadhawk]

Meanwhile, back at the lab, US scientists repeat the second net positive fusion reaction.

https://www.reuters.com/business/ene...ft-2023-08-06/

[MyHybridBurnsGasAndTires]

Originally Posted by Unplugem

I have to laugh at the thumbnail with the guy flashing the Freemasonic "666" hand sign. These puppets always show who their master is. The scary part is some folks actually believe these liars.

always good to see this weirdo find another forum to post his crank theories

[Spuds]

Originally Posted by Unplugem

I have to laugh at the thumbnail with the guy flashing the Freemasonic "666" hand sign. These puppets always show who their master is. The scary part is some folks actually believe these liars.

You're right it's everywhere! Its a musical caball!








More information on how to say "OK" underwater and in general.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/OK_gesture















Bonus pic

[Unplugem]

@Spuds