This one which finds substantial ferromagnetism and minimal diamagnetism is a far better reason to doubt that LK-99 is a superconductor:
https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.03110
Still very inconclusive because the synthesis is difficult and messy and nobody knows precisely what materials they're analyzing, but I've adjusted from cautious optimism to mostly resigned pessimism.
The original three author LK99 paper and nearly every subsequent attempt at replication involved annealing in the suggested vacuum of 10^-3 torr.
This paper indicates that the superconductivity aspects of the material are greatly enhanced if heated in normal atmosphere.
Authors are Kun Tao, Rongrong Chen, Lei Yang, Jin Gao, Desheng Xue and Chenglong Jia, all from aforementioned Lanzhou University
Paper is available here: https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.03218
I had to reread that a couple times before I realized you meant “make” and not “fake” (…right?)
The original two papers were inconsistent with respect to the vacuum required in the process. Perhaps they were working with crappy equipment that can't maintain a vacuum and accidentally annealed their sample in normal atmosphere, giving rise to unusual properties. Kinda explains why even the original authors don't have enough good samples.
The research field is apparently fraught with failures.
The video is a great primer on the subject and tones down all the hype when looking back at previous breakthroughs.
It is fun to watch the absolute torrent of confirmation bias and people changing their minds all the time in the comments though. Must be exhausting to constantly wax and wane like that.
As you say, unless you regularly dance at the bleeding edge of material science, nothing you believe really matters, so why not jump in with both feet?
So at this point no one should be believing anything until we have a lot more evidence.
The current "free-market" process of replication attempts is going to resolve the issue both quicker and with more statistical significance than peer-review ever could.
Perhaps this isn't what you're implying, but the peer-review word in your comment jumped out to me, as if that changes anything.
Superconductors look far more promising than the economics of nuclear power (which have gotten worse, not better) or fusion (still perpetually 20+ years out), and it's a critical field to work on because we desperately need stuff that superconducts at LN2 (or warmer) temperatures for things like medical imaging, because we're going to run out of helium completely in 100-200 years (and it will become wildly uneconomical well before then.)
https://www.kjmagnetics.com/blog.asp?p=superconductors#:~:te....
If it turns out they’re wrong, then they will likely do a follow up paper that explains what their mistakes were. No biggy. It’s just a couple of preprints, after all, and it’s widely believed that it was pushed out without all of the authors’ consent in the first place. It won’t leave them with lasting reputational damage from their peers, though it may place slightly more scrutiny on their outputs at a later point.
They may get ridicule from the people who took their paper at face value without noting the informality of the format, the incomplete studies performed on the sample, the almost-clear methodology etc. But those people aren’t scientists - all of the scientists who have discussed this have assumed from day one that it is likely an error, and perhaps toyed around in case their assumption is wrong.
To have reputational damage, they’d need to refuse to retract their work, refuse to elaborate further, claim they invented room temperature superconductors without sufficient proof, then attack anyone who questions them.
Reputation matters, so don't commit fraud and don't try to trick others. That is the sort of thing you won't be recovering from. But being wrong is fine, even if you truly believe(d) that you are right. Note that this whole saga was not started on the timetable of the people that have the most at stake. I'm hoping they are right, I'm fearing they are wrong and if it turns out that they were wrong then I hope that they will not be dissuaded by that and that they and many others will continue the search. There are a lot of things that came out of materials science in the last two decades that we'd have never had if not for people searching for them. Not all of those searches will pan out, that's pretty much a given. Think of it as sifting for gold in a mountain of junk. For every piece of gold there are piles and piles of junk. And sometimes stuff that looks very much like gold, but ultimately isn't. That should not affect the reputation of the seekers. They are either going to try again, or maybe they'll give up. But what others think of them doesn't matter all that much.
And even if the research is incorrect LK99 is still going to be a useful addition to science.
Everyone just needs to take a deep breath and put down the pitchforks.
I guarantee some people will be clinging to claims that LK-99 was a superconductor even 5 years from now, just like the cold fusion crowd that still exists.
LK-99 was plausibly a high T superconductor candidate, and high T superconductors are a real thing that exist. It is worth attempting to replicate.
Cold fusion says “all of thermodynamics is wrong”. A much bigger claim…
