Hint: don’t believe everything you see on social media.

LK-99 has been touted as a potential room-temperature superconductor that could revolutionize fields like energy and transportation. However, many experts are skeptical as the initial research papers have not been peer-reviewed and contain inconsistencies and imprecisions. Early attempts to replicate LK-99 have had mixed results, with some samples showing signs of diamagnetism but not conclusively proving superconductivity. Even if LK-99 does turn out to be a room-temperature superconductor, significant challenges around manufacturing and engineering would remain before it could be utilized in real-world applications. Many experts believe that more incremental improvements to existing superconductors may be a more practical path forward for now.

Here’s what the experts think:

  • Condensed Matter Theory Center of the University of Maryland about the original paper:

    “Physics” being presented in these unrefereed preprints is a travesty. The original paper has no obvious SC transition and the T< T_c resistivity is 100 times that of Cu. Southeast also has no transition, just instrumental artifacts. What is the goal here? No one can fool nature

  • Condensed Matter Theory Center of the University of Maryland about a claimed replication:

    Very helpful @QM_phys_kyoto (thans) points out that Southeast may have drawn their figure misleadingly. On a linear scale, there seems to be no transition, very disappointing and not a good sign since the artifact also looms large

    CMTC has high standards and we are exhausted

thejevans
link
fedilink
51Y

Can confirm. Just finished up at the UMD physics grad program. CMTC is headed by Sankar Das Sarma, and he knows his shit.

Wtf for some reason, my comment does not appear as it supposed to and my edits do not seem to work properly. I’m referencing two tweets: https://twitter.com/condensed_the/status/1686901855358427136 and https://twitter.com/condensed_the/status/1686895266329174016

Edit: For some reason, the “<” character kills the comment

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