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Comment by m-watson | Hacker News Reader

This write up of it [0] tries to address that a little but I agree that all the scrutiny is deserved and should continue.

"The previous paper has been resubmitted to Nature with new data that validates the earlier work, Dias says. The new data was collected outside the lab, at the Argonne and Brookhaven National Laboratories in front of an audience of scientists who saw the superconducting transition live. A similar approach has been taken with the new paper. "

[0] https://phys.org/news/2023-03-viable-superconducting-materia...

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The good news is that 1 GPa (10 kbar) is a lot easier to achieve than hundreds of GPa, which means that replication will be much easier. The previous "room temperature" claim involved around 2 Mbar or 200 GPa. For comparison, the detonation pressure of a high explosive is around 50 GPa. So, hopefully, this time, we won't have to wait as long.

Only if one can get ahold of the material.

> However, outside access may fall short of the community’s hopes. Dias and Salamat have founded a startup, Unearthly Materials, which, Dias said, has already raised over $20 million in funding from investors including the CEOs of Spotify and OpenAI. They’ve also recently applied for a patent on the lutetium hydride material, which would deter them from mailing out samples. “We have clear, detailed instructions on how to make our samples,” Dias said. “We are not going to distribute this material, considering the proprietary nature of our processes and the intellectual property rights that exist.” He suggested that “certain methodologies and processes” are also off the table.

This is exactly the kind of thing the patent system was intended to prevent. You have to share enough details of your secret sauce so others can replicate it, even if you intend to not license it or charge outrageous licensing fees. That way the knowledge is out there today, can be expanded on by other researchers/inventors, and at a specific date in the future anyone can use it.

It also helps reduce fraudulent claims of new discoveries.

I don't understand, and if you could illuminate it would be very helpful, how are such pressures achieved and maintained even for the shortest time without destroying the apparatus that holds it?

These are generally done with diamond anvils which concentrate force on an extremely small area.

I understand that but it sort of dodges the issue that such enormous pressures must exceed the strength of any material, however small that pressure is contained in.

The compressive strength of typical diamond is about 470 GPa, so no this is very well within the strength of the material. The current record for highest compression achieved in a lab is 770 GPa using a special form of diamond.

Note to silent downvoters, this is what an answer looks like.

(Thanks jjk166)

Wikipedia provides a nice overview:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_anvil_cell

Contra the diagram, I don't believe the diamonds in a real anvil are faceted.

According to the wikipedia article you link, they are usually faceted with 16 faces (under "Force Generating Device")

Oh, I want to believe. But I will do so only when those other groups publish their own results.

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