Hacker News Reader

Comment by coryfklein | Hacker News Reader

Why are all these materials confirmations coming from Chinese speaking scientists? Do scientists in the US not do materials science so much?

View on HN

I'd expect DuPont, BASF, Apple, Google, Intel, IBM, GE, Kodak if any of their labs remain, any number of biotech labs like Genentech might have that are sufficiently mat-sci adjacent, all of the major of universities; MIT, Harvard, etc. Any of the national labs. Sandia, Lawrence Livermore, whichever are appropriate. It's just that whole DEA and red phosphorus being a meth precursor making it difficult. Yay, war on drugs.

US does fine; likely in less of a rush to be first-past-the-post on announcing results. When the big US labs announce, they will likely be more careful and vetted and authoritative.

I guess that you can thank the DEA for this specific case…

What about European or Japanese scientists? And about Korean scientists not part of the original team?

The last should also be able to get their hands on a sample provided by the original team and won't have to do reproduction attempts, right?

Who told you that they are not attempting the reproduction? Even US labs are attempting it, some of them explicitly in the open like the Argonne National Laboratory. Here you can find a non-comprehensive list of reproduction attempts: https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/claims-of-room-tempe...

Oh, so there are finally Korean labs in that list! Last time there were 1 American, 1 Indian and 5 Chinese labs which I thought very weird. Hopefully the Korean labs can get an original sample.

The Drug Enforcement Administration? What does that have to do with physics?

This is probably about the fact that red phosphorus (required for the original process) cannot be purchased without a license (https://nitter.net/andrewmccalip/status/1684191067477004288#...), so kitchen chemists are out of the race. Established labs should have less problems though.

Plot twist - a cartel holds a press conference, and beats everybody to the punch

Because the US/EU labs are being methodological and careful. This is by far the most reputable result to come out of China so far on LK-99

996 culture

Reply on news.ycombinator.com