Researchers Claim LK99 Is All Wrong in a Nature Article

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An article in Nature, says making conclusive statements about LK-99’s properties is difficult, because the material is finicky and samples contain varying impurities but then goes on to make conclusive statements that LK-99 claims were wrong.

In their preprint, the Korean authors note one particular temperature at which LK-99’s showed a tenfold drop in resistivity, from about 0.02 ohm-centimetres to 0.002 ohm-c m at 104.8ºC. This drop in resistance is definitely Copper-sulfide contamination because there is a copper sulfide phase transition.

The half-levitation is again copper-sulfide and ferromagnetism.

Pure LK-99, or Pb8.8Cu1.2P6O25 (without impurities) is not a superconductor, but an insulator with a resistance in the millions of ohms.

The original (rushed) pre-print papers were wrong.

They also claim that the density function theory results are wrong because they are based upon wrong assumptions about the material.

The open questions are there other impurities or differences in what the Korean researchers made or did (especially for the chemical vapor deposition) that does have properties.

The original Korean researchers and those given actual original samples have not published new and more definitive results. They will have to show measurements and results to refute these claims.

The current answer is all of the positive results (experimental and theoretical) were wrong and done by researchers who were not very good, made wrong assumptions and were fooled.

15 thoughts on “Researchers Claim LK99 Is All Wrong in a Nature Article”

  2. There are, currently, just as many articles trying to debunk this as there are supporting the truthful existence of it. How about everyone just shut up and wait for the research to be finalized? It’s called humility; learn it.

    • You are aware that everytime a new technology breakthrough happens in some part of the world the “experts” come out and squash it. Status quo my friend. Status quo. We are 100 years behind in technology. Zero point energy, perpetual motion, hydrogen vehicles, superconductors.. so many silenced. History repeats. People forget.

      • Perpetual motion isn’t physically possible. Every single equation we especially the basics of thermodynamics all conclusively deny the possibility of perpetual motion.

  3. I agree, science is a method. There may have been some unusual properties that fooled them, but people doing DFT analysis have found that doping the material could actually bear some fruit. Whenever anyone discovers some odd or unusual property of a new material, it’s always worth looking into even if you can rule out the initial claim and could lead to a new discovery. What these people are advocating is an appeal to authority and literally applying some kind of dogma to the scientific method, which is the antithesis of science.

  4. The failure of replication by other scientists based on archive paper doesn’t mean that LK-99 is not a superconductor with the definition of an existing theory. The Korean researchers have test it for 20+ years after they found LK-99, one test per week for more thousands times.

  5. Nature, but only an online article – not to be confused with a peer-reviewed paper.

    That said, even if there is something actually there, it is clear that it’s very difficult to replicate, making it at least impractical. The best bet at this point is independent analysis of the original team’s best samples. I would say this is required for reliable conclusions in any direction.

    Even if LK-99 is not a superconductor, there does seem to be something interesting going on with that general material class, which is worth further investigation. Not just Pb9Cu(PO4)6O, but also related materials, additional dopants, etc.

    • If there is something superconducting in LK-99, there’s no evidence that its synthesis is impractical. All we know is that the instructions in the pre-print research paper are not an effective way to make it. The biggest strike against LK-99 is that its just probably not a superconductor, being an extraordinary claim from a hastily research paper with a serious reproducibility problem.

  6. No playing the Sabine Hossenfelder or Thunderf00t card is just WRONG … the correct answer as always is don’t trust or believe them and don`t trust Brian Wang either, wait till the tests have actually been done and published in peer reviewed publications at that point only can you now the results anything else is refence to authority, science is a method not a expert

  7. Oh my God, it turned out that Sabine Hossenfelder and Thunderf00t were right! Who would have thought that very reputable scientists with decades of good scientific work under their belt were correct… It seems that expert opinions do matter.
    Now let’s start the clock: weird conspiracy theories about the low-temperature superconducting mafia and the Illuminati within the scientific community in 3, 2 1…

    • No playing the Sabine Hossenfelder or Thunderf00t card is just WRONG … the correct answer as always is don’t trust or believe them and don`t trust Brian Wang either, wait till the tests have actually been done and published in peer reviewed publications at that point only can you now the results anything else is refence to authority, science is a method not a expert

    • No, Sabine Hossenfelder is fine, but Thunderf00t is just an idiot, even if what he says happens to be correct. Let’s not enable the guy.

  8. So… Maybe the only future studies done adjacent to LK-99 will now be theorizing the weird DFT simulations. Only if the simulations are reliable, that is. Chapter closed.

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