Flux Pinning in sample of LK-99?
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So, it's easy to imagine how this could be faked.
Doing a quick sanity check on youtube videos, every example I can find of it levitating involves use of magnet arrays as well.
It appears he was a latecomer to the project, mostly borrowing his reputation to the trio of anonymous, non anglosphere native original authors.
The original authors have something. They don't have the expertise in condensed matter physics to really know what. They don't know how to report results and what results would be conclusive. Their work is simply not convincing, and if they were experts they would also not be convinced.
That's why they brought in another collaborator who is an expert. But because the paper was released early it's clearly a mess. You can see the big quality improvement though just between the two drafts.
https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/jou...
It's a pretty common practice across science.
For actual flux pinning, the first thing you would do is show what happens if you put the thing upside down. It should stick. Even if it does not, you would show that it does not.
So what I'm saying is that even if it's reasonable to deduce that this supposed magnet is being suspended from a string, it doesn't look like it is. If it is fake, it's a well-done illusion not a shoddy illusion.
In all likelyhood, your answer would be: Yes, it does.
It's clear however that a lot of us (myself included) don't want to see a speck of dirt on a string. They want to see history in the making.
I have no idea what I’m talking about, but in other flux pinning demonstrations the sample seems to oscillate around the fixed point. That smooth settling looks like some sort of damping, like maybe a force that increases with distance, like maybe spring tension.
(Of course, “we have no idea” is an acceptable answer if that turns out to be the case.)
> (Of course, “we have no idea” is an acceptable answer if that turns out to be the case.)
Of course.
(FWIW I’m thrilled about the possibility of a rtrp drop this year, and I have to assume 'pera is as well. But this video doesn’t look just like flux pinning we’ve seen before. It’s visibly a little different in a way that wants explanation. I wouldn’t come out the gate calling it a hoax, but I’d feel better about not doing that if the basis for skepticism were at least acknowledged.)
If I had a magnet that was much bigger than the superconductor it would look even more similar (less 'pivoty').
OP's video has two stacked metal objects – could the lower one possibly contain copper?
Edit: relevant Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spin-stabilized_magnetic_levit...
If this is fake, it's a very well-done fake. I'm feeling 60% sure that LK-99 is RT superconductor at this point. It has theoretical support now since last weekend.
2. In the video, while the effect dynamics look quite good for flux pinning, there is some really concerning artifacting on the alleged LK-99 piece while it bounces. Specifically, it looks like it may be attached to a taut horizontal string that has then been edited out, but they didn't successfully rotoscope over the parts very close to the alleged LK-99 piece during specific moments. This could just be a compression artifact, I have never seen one like this but apparently this is a capture of a capture by the time we can access it, and I don't use Douyin or Bilibili so I wouldn't have a lot of familiarity with what their compression artifacts look like.
Basically, I am pretty sceptical about this video in specific. I do think LK-99 is more likely than not at this point, but I also think it's more likely than not that this specific video is not real.
I also think it's extremely likely that as LK-99's profile raises and VFX editors get more familiar with what exactly a real video should look like, convincing fakes are going to be produced and go viral. The most common way this happens is that the VFX artist does it as an exercise and shows a few people without ill intent, but the video is then reposted by other people a few times until it reaches a wide audience who has no chance of knowing its origin. However, there are some scammers/influencers who are good with VFX and can fake a video themselves.
Basically, be a little bit careful about video, and things you should want are: the camera is moving around the piece and not static, the light changes during the video, the pieces themselves are moving, you see the pieces getting set up or finished later, and there's stuff moving all around the object to make strings less likely.
The context here is rather strange as well, the same user uploaded another video that no one would believe actually demonstrated the meissner effect. Its a very small magnet on just a piece of paper. Did the user try again with this video?
It's trivial to record a video 20x longer with a moving POV without revealing IP or secrets, but far from easy to product 20x more doctored vfx.
If all of this checks out, then it's a new era.
Funny enough this is a quote taken directly from the wikipedia article that Andercot linked, in the "loopholes" section:
>Earnshaw's theorem has no exceptions for non-moving permanent ferromagnets. However, Earnshaw's theorem does not necessarily apply to moving ferromagnets,[4] certain electromagnetic systems, pseudo-levitation and diamagnetic materials. These can thus seem to be exceptions, though in fact they exploit the constraints of the theorem.
...
>Diamagnetic materials are excepted because they exhibit only repulsion against the magnetic field, whereas the theorem requires materials that have both repulsion and attraction. An example of this is the famous levitating frog (see Diamagnetism).
The only examples I can find of stable non-superconductor diamagnets involved 4+ magnet arrays, though, or multipole magnets, e.g. https://phys.org/news/2014-08-diamagnetic-levitation-pyrolit... and not dipole configurations like this video seems to show.
But you CAN do it with concentric rings of magnets. Such magnets seem common for this exact demonstration actually. It doesn't look like one of those in the video though.
- video recorder in a kitchen or living room
- created by some random tiktok account
- no credentials, no description
- tagged "mysterious"
It's hard to understand how anyone would believe this, specially after so many other fakes
IMO there’s an awful lot of amateur / informal attempts that are promising enough that, while not convincing, are inspiring of hope. But I do wonder how much is fake. But more than a few seem to be clearly not fake, such as the work Varda is posting.
As for this video, well, it's like all the other ones that came before it, we'll know more once we have more data/videos/replication attempts.
[0] https://www.douyin.com/video/7263715495256378659
[1] https://www.douyin.com/user/MS4wLjABAAAAJaTuSBArw0c6bK0eI9T1...
The Chinese subtitles in the first demonstration claim "further efforts will be made to reduce impurities", then the subsequent video claims "technical details will be published once they are properly organized and documented".
For now LK-99 is an material that displays some of the superconducting properties at room temperature.
Although generally the accepted method is that other labs reproduce it and that the paper passes peer review. Some videos aren't enough.
> He posted on his personal social media, According to public information, he is an assistant engineer in the Department of Metallurgical Engineering and Materials of Wuhan University of Science and Technology, and is also a doctoral candidate at the school.
Assume for now (subject to verification, of course!) that this material is a non-Cooper-pair superconductor.
Could one still build Josephson junctions -- and SQUIDs -- from this material?
If the answer is "yes", it's going to make a whole lot of magnetotelluric geophysicists very, VERY happy.
Typical setups are networked fields of multiple axis sub nanotesla magnetic sensors with processing to reduce noise and subtract interference in order to extract a differential change across time and space to convert to a deep earth image.
You know, the usual stuff.
The essential principal is a fixed sensor (network) that records the diurnal (daily) magnetic flux and specifically locals for local 'drag' caused by local features (deep metal deposits, more generally volumes with varying magnetic properties).
Get a plane: https://www.magspec.com.au/about-magspec
STOL crop dusters are fun: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_MO5Wfomks
Deep stuff requires much longer frequencies.
Still hard to pass up a chance to pile on the downsides of the slog work :)
It feels like this thing soon will start appearing all over ebay and aliexpress
> Patents are territorial and must be filed in each country where protection is sought.
[0] https://www.stopfakes.gov/article?id=Is-My-US-Patent-Good-in...
This is to create a risk reduction mechanism for investing in capital to make this at scale, which will cost on the order of $100-500M to scale for world use through trial and error.
If IP is ignored, no business will invest in the initial experiments due to first mover disadvantage in game theory.
Not if you belive that
The business that spends will have their workers immediately poached if they don’t have IP protecting their initial startup costs.
https://health.ucdavis.edu/news/headlines/little-magnets-are...
To put it in perspective: millions of people in the US regularly handle ammunition and shoot firearms at indoor ranges. Those contain lead in many forms: the projectile itself, lead fulminate in the primer compounds, lead suspended in the air after firing, etc.
You make sure to have adequate ventilation, don’t touch your face, and wash your hands when you’re done. It’s important, yes, but not really that big a deal.
Other diamagnets do that too, but in a decaying way that allows for movement. They usually rotate or move slowly sideways.
No other kind of magnetism show similar behavior. They either attract or repel all the way in.
Because it is starting to seem like it's the latter.
> “ Specifically they were one of the last believers of long-forgotten Russian theory of superconductivity, pioneered by Nikolay Bogolyubov. The accepted theory is entirely based on Cooper pairs, but this theory suggests that a sufficient constraint on electrons may allow superconductivity without actual Cooper pairs. This requires carefully positioned point defects in the crystalline structure, which contemporary scientists consider unlikely and such mode of SC was never formally categorized unlike type-I and type-II SC. Professor Tong-seek Chair (최동식) represented a regret about this status quo (in 90s, but still applies today) that this theory was largely forgotten without the proper assessment after the fall of USSR. It was also a very interesting twist that Iris Alexandria, "that Russian catgirl chemist", had an advisor who was a physicist-cum-biochemist studied this theory and as a result were so familiar with the theory that they were able to tell if replications follow the theoretical prediction.”
So it might be an old hypothesis brought back?
(This isn't a commentary on the truthfulness of the superconductor claims.)
Most hypotheses are wrong, and even if they turn out right it may well be a case of being right for the wrong reasons. Regardless, this is top tier research: unglamorous, uninstagramable drudgery guided by intellect. Sure, there's luck involved, but research always involves luck.
Note to pedants: yes yes, the Venn diagram has an intersection.
Putting it into one's bio is what makes it... cringe, as the kids say.
The superconductor can move because it's staying at a consistent height.
The video linked is also pretty good at showing similar behaviors to the sample of LK99 we see claimed in the video: the superconductor can wobble, shake and does return to it's original position (or tries to) - but it's got a lot more mass.
That's how a levitating train levitates.
Things like making hot sauce from latex gloves, or turning toilet paper into high proof alcohol.
He's a fantastic no-nonsense youtuber.