Ask HN: Any live updates on superconductor replication?

9 pointsAlexanderTheGr82y ago8 comments

Does anyone know how the room temperature superconductor replication is going? I can't wait to see the results. I can't find any live updates from labs except for 1 guy on twitter

8 comments

8 comments · 4 top-level

3cats-in-a-coat2y ago· 3 in thread

People have completely unrealistic expectations. Even if we find superconducting properties, it doesn't mean we can scale this material and its properties to the level where we'll use it for all those fantastic purposes like loss-free energy transfer for the entire electric grid, or effortlessly levitating trains.

Remember graphene. This is at best graphene 2.0. Meaning it's a small step and a lot of work left to do.

brucethemoose22y ago

I mean... Even if it was absurdly expensive to manufacture and shape, and insanely temperamental/quench happy, it would still revolutionize high end motors (like in power plants), energy storage through toroidal batteries, some electronics, satellites/probes, many sensors, all sorts of scientific equipment...

Nitrogen/Helium cooled superconductors are already used in some of these places, at tremendous cost and difficulty, and some of those are very finicky.

3cats-in-a-coat2y ago

Remember graphene.

Oh, also it's a ceramic, so good luck using it in motors and so on. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceramic_engine

barelyauser2y ago

Ceramic permanent magnets generators are used in windmills. The comparison you made with ceramic blocks for internal combustion engines is nonsense and honestly it appears you brought it up solely to reinforce some bias of yours. If you have nothing to contribute to the topic I suggest you refrain from misleading others.

lamontcg2y ago· 1 in thread

presentation in korea at "11th international symposium on metallic multilayers" claimed they tried to replicate and found no meissner effect:

https://nitter.net/sanxiyn/status/1684817320269774848

lamontcg2y ago

Oh I read that entirely wrong when I woke up this morning.

Young-Wan Kwon is one of the [many] LK-99 coauthors. He gave a very unconvincing presentation at MML 2023 which did not show any evidence of the Meissner effect.

jacquesm2y ago

Nothing yet, and that in itself is news. A confirmation would be quick, a non-confirmation much slower. So it could still happen but the chances of it being the real deal are diminishing as it takes longer to confirm past roughly now.

pfdietz2y ago

No news is bad news, so I think we can give up on this now.

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