The key thing to notice in this video is that the spec is levitating above a single monolithic magnet.
The levitation with ordinary diamagnets such as pyrolytic carbon requires an array of magnets to create a concave pocket in the field, otherwise the floating sample will "slide off" and fall. Monolithic magnets produce convex fields.
Some people elsewhere also commented that this could be a video of an ordinary high-temperature superconductor, but I doubt it. Such a tiny spec would warm up to room temperature very quickly. I've experimented with broken and shattered fragments of YBCO and it wasn't possible to make small pieces hover like this, they'd warm up too quickly. Also, they were always frosty looking. To make them look black you'd have to do it in a perfectly dry atmosphere, which is a non-trivial setup.
I had to look up "high-temperature superconductor" since it read like a typo:
> High-temperature superconductors (abbreviated high-Tc or HTS) are defined as materials that behave as superconductors at temperatures above 77 K (−196.2 °C; −321.1 °F), the boiling point of liquid nitrogen. They are only "high-temperature" relative to previously known superconductors, which function at even colder temperatures, close to absolute zero.
How can you tell though? There are magnets which look like a single thing, but the polarity switches on the same side multiple times (sorry, I don't know what they're actually called).
This is very well done if faked (dated up the top left), so it would be another first if it was a real fake. That would also be exciting.
The strange things are...
No one else can find it yet.
It's not a phone video off a monitor, it's an actual video, time stamped and watermarked. Poster says Twitter is lowing the quality. It's also a strange aspect ratio and position for lab video (that watermarks a date).
Curious, what does the text flying by on the screen say on the bilibili video? I’m always amazing at the cultural differences in design and how Chinese apps tend to always be so busy. Everything feels like a slot machine.
The original source of the video (from a telegram channel?) has the rock floating horizontally, which would make an actual superconductor much more plausible.
This whole saga is so exciting to watch. Maybe someone with a background in material science and/or engineering can help me out with a question: _If_ LK-99 turns out to be a room temperature superconductor how likely do you think it will be that we figure out how to to mass produce it in sufficient quality and quantity so that it can in fact be used for all the exciting applications we have for rtscs?
I mean it's one thing to create a lab sample at 10% yield the size of a thumbnail but another thing entirely to create super long cables or massive amounts of motor parts or large sheets of it for MRTs.
Is it a matter of time? Or could some applications remain elusive because of other potentially undesirable properties of the material (brittleness, heterogeneity, you name it)?
If its real, it's going to excite a metric fuckton of funding in hightc superconductors research.
It doesn't have to be LK99. It'll be one of the other variants that we discover.
Others with more knowledge materials production please add more to this... but it's certainly encouraging there's no rare earth metals or anything radioactive as a component!
Similar ceramic or crystalline superconductors took a long time to convert into useful cables. One technique is to fill a hollow silver(!) tube with powder, and then press it flat to compress the grains so that they touch. It may be possible to re-use similar techniques as-is, but that's hard to predict.
One theoretical paper suggests that the copper doping has two ways of occurring in the crystal structure, and that the more energetically favoured one is not the desired configuration. It may be very challenging to produce the desired crystal structure in bulk, and then it might not be stable over long time periods.
With most superconductors, they start to lose their benefits close to their critical temperature. So this material may not be able to support strong magnetic fields or high currents.
I expect thin-film applications to happen first. It's easy to control, easy to make large contiguous surfaces, and very useful for all sorts of things. Thin motherboards, LCD/OLED display panels, flat antennas, etc, etc...
Rather than this particular "magic" material, LK99, in the original paper(s), authors propose their theory on why this material is behaving the way it is. This is a totally new way for achieving superconductivity in room conditions. If it is confirmed to be true, scientist can try to create similar materials with similar lattice structures focusing on what's needed, rather than focusing on LK99.
Even if LK99 may not, one of the materials with similar properties they will create may be easy to produce and robust to use.
It's a great question. I don't think anyone has a certain answer but it's definitely a real risk. The quick example is graphene which has all kinds of interesting properties, but, as far as I can tell, no practical applications primarily due to production issues
the original poster said that this video was sent to him by a fellow researcher who received it on telegram from 'a colleague'. no further details given. if this is truly lk99 showing flux pinning, then that would be very strong evidence that it's also a superconductor. (physics bsc here, my only experience with condensed matter is 1 course and nothing more)
I've got to imagine this is fake (not LK-99, but this video specifically) because there's already other partial levitation videos out, and anyone that synthesized this material well enough to get full meissner effect levitation would post about it with their name (or lab name) attached ASAP.
edit: also the origin story sounds strange, unless translated badly "A fellow researcher of mine said he received this video from another colleague on Telegram."
As a non physicist here, why not showing a video of a ohmmeter showing zero's when measuring the resistance of this material instead of its levitation?
A Meissner effect demo is usually seen as an easier and stronger proof of superconductivity than a resistance measurement, which is a delicate task and susceptible to experimental errors.
First, one cannot measure superconductivity with an ordinary ohmmeter. Electrodes, wires and the ohmmeter itself are resistive, the meter can never show zero ohms. So you can't just look at the screen read-out and say there's superconductivity, you need to set an experiment up to do it manually, with a current source and a voltmeter to measure the IV curve across the material [1]. Even then, the voltmeter will never show "zero" volt because of noise, such as thermocouple effect, triboelectric effect, or electromagnetic interference - which need to be minimized during the experiment and removed during post-processing. There are also the problems of sample preparation and purity as others have noted.
Look at how tiny the spec is. What would be the most convincing evidence? A resistence meter that basacally touches itself or a spec clearly floating on a magnet without cooling.
Why is everything surrounding this discovery seem so amateur? From the initial paper being so flimsy to all the "leaked" videos looking like it was taken by a monkey trying to learn how to video tape for the first time.
Like, is it that difficult to try to get a decent video of something that is life changing?
Edit: Is it possible to replicate the structure of this material using carbon nano-tubing? Someone mentioned packing ceramic like materials into silver tubes as a means of making cables; can that be done with carbon nano-tubing?
What's stopping us from using superconductors to link power grids together? Does this technology enable more solar energy use without overloading the disconnected power grids?
The bulk cost of this material is not going to be the problem with commercialization. The ingredients and labor aren't very expensive. The problem is that no one has found a process to consistently make chunks bigger than like a rice grain of this stuff.
[+] [-] jiggawatts|2 years ago|reply
The levitation with ordinary diamagnets such as pyrolytic carbon requires an array of magnets to create a concave pocket in the field, otherwise the floating sample will "slide off" and fall. Monolithic magnets produce convex fields.
Some people elsewhere also commented that this could be a video of an ordinary high-temperature superconductor, but I doubt it. Such a tiny spec would warm up to room temperature very quickly. I've experimented with broken and shattered fragments of YBCO and it wasn't possible to make small pieces hover like this, they'd warm up too quickly. Also, they were always frosty looking. To make them look black you'd have to do it in a perfectly dry atmosphere, which is a non-trivial setup.
[+] [-] ghayes|2 years ago|reply
> High-temperature superconductors (abbreviated high-Tc or HTS) are defined as materials that behave as superconductors at temperatures above 77 K (−196.2 °C; −321.1 °F), the boiling point of liquid nitrogen. They are only "high-temperature" relative to previously known superconductors, which function at even colder temperatures, close to absolute zero.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-temperature_superconducti...
[+] [-] xdennis|2 years ago|reply
How can you tell though? There are magnets which look like a single thing, but the polarity switches on the same side multiple times (sorry, I don't know what they're actually called).
[+] [-] aaron695|2 years ago|reply
This is very well done if faked (dated up the top left), so it would be another first if it was a real fake. That would also be exciting.
The strange things are...
No one else can find it yet.
It's not a phone video off a monitor, it's an actual video, time stamped and watermarked. Poster says Twitter is lowing the quality. It's also a strange aspect ratio and position for lab video (that watermarks a date).
It's watermarked with a unknown watermark.
Twitter account is brand new.
[+] [-] est|2 years ago|reply
Two from HUST: https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV14p4y1V7kS/ https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV13k4y1G7i1/
One by USTC https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1Ex4y1X7ix/ this tiny sample can stand on its pointy side.
Another by Qufu Normal University https://www.zhihu.com/zvideo/1669820225079070720
[+] [-] soultrees|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] est|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eiiot|2 years ago|reply
https://twitter.com/vasuttomas0423/status/168642344021411840...
[+] [-] zeronullempty|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dtx1|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drooby|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Escapado|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tired_and_awake|2 years ago|reply
It doesn't have to be LK99. It'll be one of the other variants that we discover.
Others with more knowledge materials production please add more to this... but it's certainly encouraging there's no rare earth metals or anything radioactive as a component!
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/bb/Ti...
[+] [-] jiggawatts|2 years ago|reply
One theoretical paper suggests that the copper doping has two ways of occurring in the crystal structure, and that the more energetically favoured one is not the desired configuration. It may be very challenging to produce the desired crystal structure in bulk, and then it might not be stable over long time periods.
With most superconductors, they start to lose their benefits close to their critical temperature. So this material may not be able to support strong magnetic fields or high currents.
I expect thin-film applications to happen first. It's easy to control, easy to make large contiguous surfaces, and very useful for all sorts of things. Thin motherboards, LCD/OLED display panels, flat antennas, etc, etc...
[+] [-] psKama|2 years ago|reply
Even if LK99 may not, one of the materials with similar properties they will create may be easy to produce and robust to use.
[+] [-] dmarchand90|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] koalala|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] toomanyrichies|2 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] dTal|2 years ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeIizmhzPQc
[+] [-] sigmar|2 years ago|reply
edit: also the origin story sounds strange, unless translated badly "A fellow researcher of mine said he received this video from another colleague on Telegram."
[+] [-] q3k|2 years ago|reply
You underestimate how many people simply don't feel the need (or explicitly don't want) to have their name attached to their work.
[+] [-] tanepiper|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] WithinReason|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] swader999|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xorbax|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dtx1|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrandish|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jychang|2 years ago|reply
@dang might be a good idea to replace the link
[+] [-] anthony88|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] segfaultbuserr|2 years ago|reply
First, one cannot measure superconductivity with an ordinary ohmmeter. Electrodes, wires and the ohmmeter itself are resistive, the meter can never show zero ohms. So you can't just look at the screen read-out and say there's superconductivity, you need to set an experiment up to do it manually, with a current source and a voltmeter to measure the IV curve across the material [1]. Even then, the voltmeter will never show "zero" volt because of noise, such as thermocouple effect, triboelectric effect, or electromagnetic interference - which need to be minimized during the experiment and removed during post-processing. There are also the problems of sample preparation and purity as others have noted.
[1] It's basically the same 4-wire Kelvin sensing used by all milli-ohmmeters. But to characterize superconductivity, you need to do even better. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four-terminal_sensing
[+] [-] Out_of_Characte|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] netheril96|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] out_of_protocol|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Kenji|2 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] sixQuarks|2 years ago|reply
Like, is it that difficult to try to get a decent video of something that is life changing?
[+] [-] 38|2 years ago|reply
http://farside.link/twitter.com/zebulgar/status/168649851722...
[+] [-] RyanAdamas|2 years ago|reply
Edit: Is it possible to replicate the structure of this material using carbon nano-tubing? Someone mentioned packing ceramic like materials into silver tubes as a means of making cables; can that be done with carbon nano-tubing?
[+] [-] stephenitis|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tb_technical|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wffurr|2 years ago|reply
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