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Comment by gfodor | Hacker News Reader

The substance produced from the paper isn't a superconductor. While extremely unlikely, there is still a chance that LK-99 is a superconductor, but the paper itself did not sufficiently describe the method needed to make it so as to replicate it properly. We will know the resolution to this once the sample from the original researchers is assessed by a third party, of which there are presently at least two to my understanding doing this right now.

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The thing is that there are now multiple independent lines of investigation pointing to LK-99 not being a superconductor, and explaining away the original "smoking guns" offered by the authors.

It's like we have a murder suspect, the murder weapon, and fingerprints lifted from the scene. At this point it could still be space aliens, but nobody in their right mind would treat that possibility seriously.

You almost described the reaction of the "tech bros" when the Reiser murder happened: The number of gymnastics some people went through to justify Hans' actions(removing a seat in his car, buying books about crime investigation, blood on the car, etc, etc.) was comical.

It stands to reason that someone who can create his own file system can't possibly be guilty of murder.

These analogies aren't useful. Much of this process so far has relied upon a single point of failure not failing: that the paper contains the necessary information to replicate and describe the material. If that assumption is wrong, while some science will still remain valid, much of it would turn out to have been unindicative of the actual state of reality.

But what about the alternative explanation for what the Korean team saw? Occam's razor is coming firmly down on one side here.

Yeah the odds are extremely low but the case isn’t closed yet. There is ongoing analysis of the actual samples.

The German team produced a crystal of pure LK-99 and tested it. From the article:

> LK-99 is not a superconductor, but an insulator with a resistance in the millions of ohms

And furthermore, the graphs from the original pre-print article are just graphs of the resistivity of Cu2S.

It sounds like there's nearly zero chance of any further science here (beyond confirmation).

The point is that the original team did not produce a pure crystal, and impurities can be the source of novel properties in a material - you’ll know it as “doping” in the semiconductor industry.

Other comments from more informed people indicate it’s unlikely that this will yield anything useful though.

A pure crystal of lk-99 is about as useful as a pure crystal of cake.

Seems like there's a chance the preprint for LK-99 described the material wrongly, so it was not accurately replicated.

"A crystal of pure LK-99" is an oxymoron, LK-99, the physical substance in Korea, is not a pure crystal.

"So you're saying there's a chance?"... What you say is not incorrect, proving a negative here beyond all other possibility is hard. But I feel like for the lay person like me (us?), this matter should be considered resolved now. There's no point stretching hope and spending energy to follow it further.

It’s resolved once William and Mary are done.

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