Just a word of caution: Non-peer reviewed, non-replicated, rushed-looking preprint, on a topic with a long history of controversy and retractions. So don’t get too excited yet.
Okay so I agree that it needs to be peer reviewed and independently verified before we can trust it. But how exactly does the preprint look rushed?
Reposting my comment from another thread to add a bit of context in case anyone’s curious.
So I read the paper, and here’s a tldr about how their material apparently gains its properties.
It is hypothesized that superconductivity properties emerge from very specific strains induced in the material. Hence why most of the discovered superconductors require either to be cooled down to very low temperatures, or to be under high pressures. Both shrink the material.
What this paper claims is that they have achieved a similar effect chemically by replacing some lead ions with copper ions, which are a bit smaller (87 pm for Cu vs 133 pm for Pb). This shrinks the material by 0.48%, and that added strain induces superconductivity. This is why it apparently works at room temperature — you no longer need high pressures or extreme cold to create the needed deformation.
Can’t really comment on how actually feasible or long-lasting this effect is, but it looks surprisingly promising. At least as a starting point for future experiments. Can’t wait for other labs’ reproduction attempts. If it turns out to be true, this is an extremely important and world-changing discovery.
Interesting and it wouldn’t be a ceramic. Downside is that it is lead based. Not exactly good for the environment or very flexible without breaking. Lead doesn’t make good wire.
Not thrilled that it is a lead alloy. Just when we are starting to get rid of all the lead in our communities, this would put it back as part of critical infrastructure everywhere…
As others have mentioned lead is still everywhere. All our combustion car batteries are still lead/acid batteries, but if what /u/fearout@kbin.social mentioned the paper claims is true, the method for inducing superconductivity in the metal could possibly be used to create other lead free ones.
Got bad news for you about wheel weights…
I would be very skeptical of this paper’s claims.
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It hasnt been peer reviewed
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The data hasn’t been replicated
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The clains being made are extraordinary. i.e a cheap material that has a superconduction transition temperature 200 degrees kelvin above the cuprates at standard pressure
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The fragility of this superconductive state makes me wonder if what theyre claiming to observe is an artifact (pathological science) rather than a real effect
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The paper is “rough around the edges” i.e multiple proofreading mistakes and has undergone little apparent editing for quality
There’s no room for pathological science
https://sciencecast.org/casts/suc384jly50n
The only way to do something like that with diamagnetism or ferromagnetism is to deliberately fake the arrangement of magnets.
There is always room for pathological science. Especially when something like room temperature superconductors are the subject in question. A good researcher will try to find and test all the alternative hypotheses that they can. i.e contrast the cisplatin paper with fleischmann and pons’ paper about cold fusion. This paper reminds me a lot more of the cold fusion paper than it does the cisplatin paper. Another example of a bad paper would be NASA’s announcement of a microbe that used an Arsenic containing analog of DNA.
I’m not excluding the possibility of fraud, but the fraud would have to be deliberate, not self delusion.
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Sceptical because “revolutionary” discoveries like this always end up either being bogus or have some massive caveat that makes them effectively useless outside of very specific scenarios.
Thought I will be pleasantly surprised if proven wrong
This is huge, is it not? No loss in potential energy means that I could have an infinitely floating coffee cup without the use of power, no?
If it were real maybe. But having read the paper, I am very skeptical that it is.
It is absolutely huge
It means that you can make supercapacitors which have larger energy storage density than our current batteries by who knows how many times
What’s the connection between conductivity and capacitance?
It’s been a while…
What’s the purpose of posting these results before they have been peer reviewed and reproduced?
Because this is how they get peer reviewed and reproduced? Publishing is how science works?
Via Lemmy?
No, obviously not, it clearly states in the Official Rules of Science that only some forms of media are acceptable.
If they’re wrong they’ll be laughing stocks forever like the idiots who tried to have FTL neutrinos.
Let people read this stuff, it’s better than trying to hide it and having every redneck believe we have secret technology the government doesn’t share with you.
I think the question was “what’s the purpose of posting this on Lemmy?” (not arXiv) because that does nothing for peer review but a lot for stirring laypeople’s wild imagination.
I was having a really terrible day yesterday, the overblown hype about this was a bright spot for me. I don’t watch arxiv myself so I am happy to see this stuff.
Publishing this outside of a reputable journal is definitely not how papers get peer reviewed. In fact, its a huge red flag.
This is a preprint published on arXiv.org, which is as reputable as it gets before peer review (so no red flag but standard practice). But I agree that people shouldn’t place hopes in this before it’s been peer reviewed and replicated by independent researchers.
My comment was directed specifically at the parent’s comment about publishing (in general not in a reputable peer reviewed journal which arxiv isnt) being how peer review happens. Arxiv is a preprint server. There is no peer review and while many of the papers there have survived the peer review process, a paper being on that server doesnt really say anything about the quality of that paper. It could be a great paper, it could be garbage or somewhere in between the two extremes. In any case, the hype around this paper is concerning because it has not, as of yet, survived the scrutiny that is demanded by the claims it is making.
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All computer science papers are released on arXiv before publishing. It’s pretty normal.
I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that until this is peer-reviewed and replicated, this is worthless.
I’ll also gladly eat my shorts if it turns out they actually did it but ATM I’m very skeptical.
Incidentally, here’s the same research with more co-authors.
anyone with a better understanding able to articulate potential trade-offs/complications to using this in practical applications?
*edited:
more discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36864624the critical field and critical current seem very low … This means you can’t actually push big current through this thing (yet). You can’t make a powerful magnet, and you can’t make viable power lines
The method to produce this material as described in the related paper [1] is fairly simple and could be done at home with a $200 home metal melting furnace from amazon and the precursors (which also seem to be fairly standard easy to obtain metals)
Read this comment thread from SC researchers: <reddit link removed>
Lots of problems with the paper, they claim. It is not up to the standards of current SC research. One of them says Dias’s work shows more merit than this.Insane capacity batteries
Lossless power transmission via wires
Better magnetically levitating trains
Much more power efficient computers, electronics
The list is huge
no i know many of the applications, its huge if true! i understand that, but almost everything like this comes with trade-offs, and i was wondering if there are any here that would make it non-viable for some/all applications
The claimed saturation current is very low. If this is inherent and not just a first-try thing it will be less-good than permanent magnets for doing many magnetic-field things and less-good than Aluminum for some current-carrying things.
It’s a perovskite, in semiconductor applications these have stability and durability problems.
It might also be a scam. This would make it useless.
In amongst that discussion is a lot of reason to hope this will be better, several note that the researchers made a low quality sample “spongy crap” and that in other superconductors made at that quality are just as limited, only becoming useful when better quality samples are made
that’s great news! let’s hope replication and peer review is smooth!
It would be a real bummer if this came out to be untrue. However it’s simple enough to replicate, so we will know soon enough
That “levitation” video is worthless: One edge of it is still resting on the magnet, and plain old steel screws will do that if you put them on a plain old speaker magnet. If they can’t even manage to show actual levitation after claiming it, then I highly suspect the rest of the claims are just as invalid.
Maybe it’s me misunderstanding, but 127 is considered room temp?
127c is the maximum operating temperature. If it goes above that, it looses superconductivity.
This material below 127c (which is insanely hot for superconductors) will be superconductive.
Operating range is -273c to 127c
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Makes sense. Thanks for clarifying.
I can count on my hands the amount of times I’ve seen revolutionary room conditions superconductor papers, which may not be too many, but enough to quickly dismiss this especially because it looks really barebones
This… this is literally revolutionary if true. Has it been corroborated by other experiments? How certain are the results? How hard is it to mass produce this? This could literally be the breakthrough of the century in materials science here.
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Here we go again…
Really? That’d be something else.
