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Comment by valine | Hacker News Reader

What’s the explanation for the sudden drop between 230K and 250K? It’s not dropping to zero but something is happening there.

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Yes, very odd. This may be why the original team believes they have a superconductor on their hands, but it doesn't quite get there and yet it does show the Meissner effect so something doesn't quite add up yet.

Original team had 20 years to play the synthesis lottery. Maybe you tweak the setting just enough and that low resistance drops to zero. Who knows, I’m still feeling optimistic.

He said in the video that their sample was more pure than the original paper. Would be wild if some impurity is what pushes it over the edge to a full blown super conductor.

They weren't quite playing the lottery as much as they were taking stacks of tickets and scratching them all off one by one to find something that looks like it might be a winner. This was very hard work. 100's or even thousands of samples.

> Would be wild if some impurity is what pushes it over the edge to a full blown super conductor.

I already mentioned this in another comment, but x-rays and radioactivity were discovered in that precise way.

Note that the team claiming a zero resistance replicate at 110K is the same team who said failed to replicate Meissner a few days ago. In the latest video they still don't think they have observed Meissner.

Yes, true, but other teams say they have so it's a bit of a mixed result.

But given some time all of that will resolve. Fascinating to see science at work at this level out in the open.

It was exactly one of the point that were criticised in the original paper. I think that the supposed Reddit “expert” that ridiculed it should really be shamed to apologise to the authors. And together with him a lot of other people in various other places on the net.

perhaps it's an imperfect synthesis?

Or perhaps the other sample was an imperfect synthesis...

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