Researchers say they’ve replicated LK-99 room temperature superconductor

> entreaty to not shoot the messenger even as I hear a round slide into the chamber

Might be one of the most eloquent ways to say pending verification I've ever read.

Even if it doesn’t turn out to be correct, we never used to hear about this stuff.

It feels like the fact that people are coming up with things that look enough like promising candidates that it gets discussed is a good sign.

I know it could just be the hype train. Someone got a ton of press for it last year so maybe someone else could too.

I want to believe we’re getting close, at least.

And who's to say investigations like this won't lead to some OTHER unexpected discovery. Wouldn't be the first time a researcher was looking for A but stumbled onto B.

“The X-ray diffraction (XRD) data for the sample undergoes refinement using the Reflex module in Materials Studio, aligning with the P63/m structure characteristics of apatite, as illustrated in Fig. 4. However, a slight discrepancy is noted in the range of 25–27° and 30-40°, potentially originated from a minor presence of residual oxide. Despite an extended period of roasting under a pure oxygen atmosphere, the interference from cuprous sulfide still persists, attributed to the intentional addition of sulfur elements during synthesis. Complete elimination of this interference remains challenging.

In summary, the diamagnetism in CSLA has been investigated via both M-T curves and hysteresis M-H loops, which can be observed up to 250 K. Given the ZFC-FC bifurcation at above 300 K, we think there is still great chance to observe room-temperature superconductivity. The signals in our sample are still extremely weak, so we have to devote efforts to further synthesizing scalable samples with more active components.”

The changes in imaging technology would be interesting. Personally, I'd love an at-home fMRI.

Anti-gravity toys.

A freezer that uses almost no energy :D.

But there’s lots of applications - computers that are orders of magnitude faster and use way less energy, maglev trains that are orders of magnitude cheaper. Think about how as electronics got cheaper they permeated nearly every aspect to the point that cheapo $20 gadgets probably have a simple microcontroller instead of an analog circuit. Room temperature semiconductors would be a material science breakthrough that would permeate every aspect of our lives within ~40 tears similar to how semiconductors did in the 1960s (assuming we got better and cheaper at manufacturing it at scale which would be the next challenge after confirmation).

That being said, I think it’s something we should remain hyper skeptical about as a prior because of the low likelihood and how difficult it is to verify superconductance (because the samples are so small they have to use roundabout techniques to establish it like the Meisner effect that can be confused with other properties because measuring 0 resistance itself is even harder and more error prone).

I wonder if RTS enables large scale quantum computing

Super powerful tiny motors. Would be great for robotics and drones.

Global HVDC transmission network, moving power around the globe on a dime.

Magnetohydrodynamic energy storage for terrestrial power networks and space based propulsion.

Heat is a serious limiting factor for silicon. This is the application I'm excited about for superconductors, room temperature or not.

I'd expect it to take a decade at the very least and probably much longer. Don't hold your breath.

Like compare it to other experimental stuff like quantum computers, light based computers. Where are they? Not on a shelf near me, that's for sure.