Drunk scientists pour wine on superconductors and make an incredible discovery | Hacker News Reader

Drunk scientists pour wine on superconductors and make an incredible discovery

io9.com

128 pointsJangoSteve22 comments

The superconductor proceeded to text its ex-girlfriend all night.

Couldn't help it. But I did try and find a more sober analysis of what was going on as it seemed that the only accurate words in the title were "scientists" and "superconductor." All I found was a press release from NIMS saying they would announce at ASC2010.

"The National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS; President: Sukekatsu Ushioda) has discovered that alcoholic beverages, including red wine, beer, and others, are effective in inducing superconductivity in Fe(Te,S), which is an iron-based superconductivity related substance. This result was obtained in research by a team headed by Dr. Yoshihiko Takano, Group Leader of the Nano Frontier Materials Group of the NIMS Superconducting Materials Center (Managing Director: Hiroaki Kumakura)."

http://www.nims.go.jp/eng/news/press/2010/07/p201007270.html

The original paper is linked at the bottom of the article: http://arxiv.org/abs/1008.0666

The first comment on the reddit thread is also pretty entertaining: "Similar decreases in resistance occur when wine is poured on sorority girls."

They would say that at Reddit, wouldn't they.

It appears that science has reached its Ballmer Peak. http://xkcd.com/323/

Ok, I've got to ask: is there anything red wine won't do? Maybe scientists should start investigating it for use as an alternative to fossil-fuels as well? ;)

It will work wonders as an alternative as long as you remove the 90% water content.

I propose an addition to all scientific testing. In addition to the control you also have an 'alternate' which is red wine. It would seemingly solve a lot of scientific research and may lead to untold leaps forward in technology. Or we could end up with millions of drunken scientists clogging the data pathways by texting their ex's and drunk-facebook stalking.

Done http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1030611/Prince-Charl...

Did they all jump then into the hot tub? And did John Cusack get transported back to the '80s?

I'm sorry, but it doesn't state they were drunk. They had a party and decided to test other liquids. Wine came out best. http://arxiv.org/abs/1008.0666

I demand a similar experiment with marijuana.

this reminded me of an article back in 2004, where an engineer discovered sake can be used to make wood pliable enough to form it into speaker cones: - http://www.boingboing.net/2004/04/06/sake-marinade-soften.ht...

Sigh. 12 comments so far and only 2 or 3 are not jokes?

Jokes are better than your lack of contribution.

I personally am happy to have a bit of humor. I hated the time humor was not an option here.

Though completely content-less humor comments are not explicitly against the guidelines, as you point out, for a long time now many many users have frowned on them.

Maybe its just time for me to start ignoring the discussions.

The reason they are frowned upon is because the discussion section should contain, ya know, discussion. Not 30 pages of tired memes.

I am suddenly struck with a flashback to the Cold Fusion experiments. I want to see this reproduced in a (pun totally intended) more sober setting

Fellow HNer mmaunder has got a point here:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1419536

I bet the superconductor just thinks it conducts better a little buzzed.

I was either hoping for Gay Robot* or Electric Dreams, but this is quite cool.

* Gay Robot was created when his inventor accidentally spilled a wine cooler on the motherboard.

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