LK-99 isn’t a superconductor — how science sleuths solved the mystery
LK-99 isn’t a superconductor — how science sleuths solved the mystery
Replications pieced together the puzzle of why the material displayed superconducting-like behaviours.
TLDR:
- Meisner effect caused by ferromagnetic impurities, wasn’t actually levitating, just parts of it were repelled by the magnet.
- Extreme change in resistivity at 104.8 degrees C caused by internal copper sulfide molecules, which exhibit a phase change exactly at that temperature.
- a team grew a single crystal version. It’s an insulator.
It's not a superconductor, but it is a weirdconductor
Not even a conductor at all, apparently.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.06256 this group (mentioned jn the article above) synthesized a fully pure crystal, and found that has a resistance in the several megaohms at room temperature. Just a purple piece of glass, functionally speaking. The thoughts of superconductivity was due to random copper sulfate impurities which DO conduct electricity.
This really highlights the need for real science in science, and not just random speculation. Things can get confusing very quickly for a great many subtle reasons, and people need to be wary of that.
Most people have little understanding of actual scientific processes. The media conglomerates like Sinclair love to play on this. They'll have segments like "a glass of red wine a day prevents heart disease" only to later have a segment saying "a glass of red wine a day contributes to heart disease" because of two different competing studies. These studies probably had different sample size, quality, and of course tons of unknown variables, but they drive the traffic either way and the media doesn't care.
Yeah, this both highlights the issue, but also shows the scientific process works. As independent researchers were able to disprove the hypothesis the Korean team of researchers had proposed.
Weird like this conductor?
Called it.
Why must they lie
Edit: to clarify - I'm talking about the original "researchers", if that wasn't obvious.