News

Just a word of caution: Non-peer reviewed, non-replicated, rushed-looking preprint, on a topic with a long history of controversy and retractions. So don't get too excited yet.

Reposting my comment from another thread to add a bit of context in case anyone’s curious.

So I read the paper, and here’s a tldr about how their material apparently gains its properties.

It is hypothesized that superconductivity properties emerge from very specific strains induced in the material. Hence why most of the discovered superconductors require either to be cooled down to very low temperatures, or to be under high pressures. Both shrink the material.

What this paper claims is that they have achieved a similar effect chemically by replacing some lead ions with copper ions, which are a bit smaller (87 pm for Cu vs 133 pm for Pb). This shrinks the material by 0.48%, and that added strain induces superconductivity. This is why it apparently works at room temperature — you no longer need high pressures or extreme cold to create the needed deformation.

Can’t really comment on how actually feasible or long-lasting this effect is, but it looks surprisingly promising. At least as a starting point for future experiments. Can’t wait for other labs’ reproduction attempts. If it turns out to be true, this is an extremely important and world-changing discovery.

Fingers crossed :)

I would be very skeptical of this paper's claims.

1. It hasnt been peer reviewed

2. The data hasn't been replicated

3. The clains being made are extraordinary. i.e a cheap material that has a superconduction transition temperature 200 degrees kelvin above the cuprates at standard pressure

4. The fragility of this superconductive state makes me wonder if what theyre claiming to observe is an artifact (pathological science) rather than a real effect

5. The paper is "rough around the edges" i.e multiple proofreading mistakes and has undergone little apparent editing for quality

Sceptical because "revolutionary" discoveries like this always end up either being bogus or have some massive caveat that makes them effectively useless outside of very specific scenarios.

Thought I will be pleasantly surprised if proven wrong

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that until this is peer-reviewed and replicated, this is worthless.

I'll also gladly eat my shorts if it turns out they actually did it but ATM I'm very skeptical.

Incidentally, here's the same research with more co-authors.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.12037

This is huge, is it not? No loss in potential energy means that I could have an infinitely floating coffee cup without the use of power, no?

If they take too long the room temperature won't be enough due the increase in temperatures 😅 /s

What's the purpose of posting these results before they have been peer reviewed and reproduced?

anyone with a better understanding able to articulate potential trade-offs/complications to using this in practical applications?

*edited:
more discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36864624

the critical field and critical current seem very low … This means you can't actually push big current through this thing (yet). You can't make a powerful magnet, and you can't make viable power lines

The method to produce this material as described in the related paper [1] is fairly simple and could be done at home with a $200 home metal melting furnace from amazon and the precursors (which also seem to be fairly standard easy to obtain metals)

Read this comment thread from SC researchers: <reddit link removed>
Lots of problems with the paper, they claim. It is not up to the standards of current SC research. One of them says Dias's work shows more merit than this.

That "levitation" video is worthless: One edge of it is still resting on the magnet, and plain old steel screws will do that if you put them on a plain old speaker magnet. If they can't even manage to show actual levitation after claiming it, then I highly suspect the rest of the claims are just as invalid.

Here we go again...

To be honest, this seems very sus to me. A big paper with only three authors?! I went down the rabbit hole of trying to find the lab from which it has been published. It's almost there is no online presence. In another paper they put out along with it, they say that they show Meissner effect (levitating effect of a superconductor) and that a video is attached. I looked for the video but I wasn't able to find it. :/

Maybe it's me misunderstanding, but 127 is considered room temp?

If this were true they wouldn’t have released this, they’d have released a room temperature and pressure superconductor and instantly become billionaires.

This... this is literally revolutionary if true. Has it been corroborated by other experiments? How certain are the results? How hard is it to mass produce this? This could literally be the breakthrough of the century in materials science here.