Sabine Hossenfelder Wrongly Predicts LK-99 Superconductor Failure and Fade into Obscurity

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Sabine Hossenfelder predicted that the first superconducting replications will fail and then we will never hear of LK-99 and doped Larkanite superconductors again.

Sabine predicts first published replication attempts for making superconducting LK99 would be failures. This was correct.The first two published experimental replications from India and China were negative (aka they did not find their prepared sample to be superconducting). However, there are now reported but unpublished results which are at least partially positive.

However, the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab simulation supporting LK-99 and the Shenyang national lab first principle paper suggesting using gold and silver to dope to make superconductors indicates that Sabine will likely be wrong.

Sabine rushed her Youtube ahead of her normal Wednesday release schedule in order to get a video out on the LK-99 topic. She should have waited until Wednesday and she would have had the Berkeley simulation paper information and partial positive experimental reports.

I don’t hate Sabine. I, Brian Wang, am predicting that LK-99 will matter and will lead to significant developments and a new category of superconducting material. I am tracking and citing. There is incomplete information right now. We are both making predictions with incomplete information.

This article just makes both predictions public. I could be wrong. She could be right. She could be wrong and I could be right. There is also a lot of in between possibilities.

However, it is definitely not the fraud scenario. It could be mistakes.

42 thoughts on “Sabine Hossenfelder Wrongly Predicts LK-99 Superconductor Failure and Fade into Obscurity”

    • I don’t hate her. I am predicting that LK-99 will matter and lead to significant developments and a new category of superconducting material. I am tracking and citing. There is incomplete information. They are both predictions with incomplete information.

  2. “The first replication failures is correct.”. Presumably this word-string is meant to convey that… well…

    You know what, I have no idea what this is supposed to convey. Anyone have a guess?

    • She predicted that the first experimental attempts at replicating the LK99 room temperature superconductor would be negative. The first two published experimental replications from India and China were negative (aka they did not find their prepared sample to be superconducting. However, there are now reported but unpublished results which are at least partially positive.

      • Yes, but not at room temperature… that’s important. Partial success is a funny to say failure – ha, let’s see it!

      • Everyone with any sense is predicting as she has. This is another overhyped fraud until proven otherwise.

        • Thus it will be more amazing, that I predict the low probability outcome and it happens. You, she and others are taking the supposed easy bet that it is a fraud and/or overhyped. If it is a fraud then it is complete hype, not just overhyped.
          So if it pans out in any way as a superconductor and not a room temperature superconductor then it would be overhyped. But a new type of superconductor (not type 1, or type 2 or 1.5 and mostly unlike some other unique superconductors) that would be a substantial win and not a failure and not obscure.

          If it gets to a billion/year superconducting products within 30 years then it would be as good as YCBO ceramic. This was still a big scientific development.

          If this is part of the path to usable room temperature superconductors within 30 years it would still be world changing and a huge success.

          If this is part of the path to usable room temperature superconductors within 5 years it would be world changing and fully living up to all hype if the any products start releasing within 5 years. The ramp to completely switch over all computers and other products takes time. Replacing all infrastructure and reshaping industries even with a breakthrough takes many decades.

    • Ehhh. The markets still have this at only 30% likelihood. 70% that it is not a RTSC. They were at 75-80% for N a day before the simulation papers. None of the advancements have overall improved odds all that much once fully factored in, though they caused temporary (some large) spikes that did not last.

  3. REAL Science breakthroughs aren’t like a needy girlfriend. They stand on merit, EMOTIONLESS and stoic… needing no Fanbois or Cuddles.

  4. She states in her video that she’d love to be proved wrong but based on previous attempts and the strange nature of publication it was likely to be a failure.
    I’m sure that she will happily accept that she’s wrong and give suitable credit to those involved.
    Don’t diss her too much, her content has inspired many into careers in science.

  5. I dont understand what is happening anymore. A theoretical paper is not a proof. At all. Half assed videos on the internet about magnets, much less so. When did we forget how to make the correct measurements for this kind of stuff?

    The original authors do not have a single RxT with field, their magnetization data is miserable (and inconsistent), and the xrd characterization is pathetic.

    The “confirmations” so far have been equally rushed and ridiculous. An object affected by magnetic fields? Why not just put the sample in a magnetometer and show the Meissner phase on the MxH loops? Takes 30 min.

    If anyone needs a reality check, it is the author of this blog.

    I understand the general public being excited. But this is getting ridiculous.

    • Arbitrarily to protect their patent secrets replicating would be difficult wouldn’t it? what are the correct ratios, how would somebody get the material to the the right distance apart, and what is~ their conductivity properties especially when those atoms don’t line up correctly?

  7. Sabine is not a person who answers questions under her videos. Neither she reacts. She just simply create contents. I don’t trust her knowledge.

    • Looks like you are rushing to denounce. Which is worse? Predicting the likely outcome based on a long list of previously giddy announcements on uncertified breakthroughs, or leaping on the underinformed optimistic bandwagon?

    • I missed Sabine early days on YouTube pushing truth and facts instead of it’s currently ego tripping nature constantly talking down on everyone else

  8. I find it perfectly normal that any criticism of scientific assertions might be wrong. A lot of cherished theories nowadays ride on flaky experimental bases, that such a thing deserves to be pointed out.

    Bit I also agree this refutation was a bit premature and rushed, given the short time frame expected to have replications showing more clearly the truth of the matter. Just wait a day or two to make your mind and tell.

    The dialectic process of science is in general a bit slower than social media trends and people’s transient interest.

    • I would urge you to actually examine her statement on the subject. She did not refute anything. It’s this article that jumps to conclusions.

  9. Sabine Hossenfelder has produced an almost unbelievable number of remarkably coherent and intellectually sound breaking science news videos in the last decade. She is a bonafide physicist, published and regarded widely. Typically, her video topics look at the ‘dark side’ of the mainstream interpretation of science announcements, much to the chagrin of her colleagues.

    As an example, for quite some time now, she has soundly and loudly criticized the quantum computing world for basically failing to produce a quantum computer — of any type — that has solved a real-world problem of any complexity beyond multiplying a couple of modestly small prime numbers together. Checking up on her criticism, I found that her references and induction is essentially correct.

    From that she garnered — as expected — a WHOLE LOT of counter criticism. People in the ‘quantum computing community’ became intensely outraged at her dismissal(s) of their ongoing progress and technological accomplishments. Yet, it remains … quantum computing has revolutionized nothing so far, and is still not executing sophisticated NP analysis with any convincing level of statistical certainty for the solutions involved.

    But that’s off track. The point really is that Professor Hossfelder’s ‘schtick’ is to be a well-considered but hard-nosed science glee club contrarian. And, all too often, her cynicism has panned out. Her cynical view of the Higgs Boson announcements is of late coming true: the re-analysis of supercollider data is shedding a grim light on the basic evidence itself. No 6 sigmas there. Nope.

    Her point on this issue is fairly clear: the likelihood of this supposed room temperature superconductor actually being a superconductor is very low to start with, and the evidence shown could as easily be a play on diamagnetism. Something which does happen at room temperature, and as any good High School physics teacher can replicate, with a flat piece of graphite which will suspend itself above a quad of neodymium super-magnets. Diamagnetism.

    Also note, that the quick-to-publication spot did not rule out superconductivity for the novel lead-oxide-doped-sulfate compound, but rather shows the need for the material to independently and rigorously pass ALL of ‘the usual diagnostics’ of a superconductor, from levitation in a magnetic field, to total magnetic field ‘shielding’, to 4 electrode electrical resistance disappearance and to depressed thermal superconductivity onset while undergoing external magnetic bias.

    So… maybe Sabine was premature in her critique, maybe she wasn’t. Time ought to tell, and like any remarkably clear thinking scientist, should future evidence bolster and eventually 6-sigma prove the stuff to be real, she WILL author a retraction — and ANALYSIS — in full. It is her way.

    Wouldn’t it be nice of the other glee club reporters across the world were to be so intellectually sanguine and ethically responsible to do the same?

    ⋅-⋅-⋅ Just saying, ⋅-⋅-⋅
    ⋅-=≡ GoatGuy ✓ ≡=-⋅

    • “ALL of ‘the usual diagnostics’ of a superconductor, from levitation in a magnetic field, to total magnetic field ‘shielding’, to 4 electrode electrical resistance disappearance and to depressed thermal superconductivity onset while undergoing external magnetic bias. ”

      Or just drill a hole in a piece so you have a ‘loop’, and demonstrate that you can set up a persistent current.

    • I don’t feel like a self proclaimed “wild assed guess” ever needs much of a retraction, but someone who rushes in with hindsight to dunk on her for stating the obvious should. And I don’t mean you off course, I mean Mr. Wang. Let’s take pause to consider cold fusion and the mess of people who maybe claimed to have produced that but yup, kind of fizzled didn’t it.

      I say Sabine was still right to make her Wild Assed Guess which after all was just a call for caution before rushing to conclude the world of super conductivity is forever changed. She is doing exactly what scientists should do. Remember a reproduction isn’t a reproduction until it is also widely verified because every experiment can be just another false productive.

    • Your response is around 7 times longer than the original article. I find it amazing someone can publish and “article” consisting of three sentences. In any case hopefully this superconductor is legit but im not holding my breath

  10. I never listen to her. She is constantly dismissing things that are far outside her field as if she were an expert.

    • She took down a video about electric vehicles because it was full of inaccuracies, she put on a new video and it still contains plenty of inaccuracies. She is incompetent. “LFP batteries charge faster” nope ‘superchargers are expensive’ no they aren’t Tesla has been building them since they where are a small company and i’ve seen estimates that they build them for a fraction of other companies. “US need 5 trillion investment in transmission” Nope, most EVs charge at night when the network is least congested. ‘Quoting IEA estimates’ As if they are a reliable authority, IEA projections on both EVs and renewable energy have been comically wrong every year for the last 10 years. Sigh…

  12. Other things Sabine has declared:
    1) Superdeterminism – absolutely everything is predetermined, including the choices that experimenters make, in just such a way as to give the illusion of quantum randomness;
    2) Faster than Light travel is possible because if you just assert that there’s a preferred reference frame in the universe then all the problems go away;
    3) Entropy doesn’t exist;
    So if anything I now have more confidence in LK-99

      • And … if we’re honest … so does Brian. And FOX. And The Verge. And Walsh. And EVERYONE who authors articles and/or videos on The Interwebz. If you can’t publish something that’ll be clicked, well the hard law of Darwin’s economics takes over. Only the successful survive.

        • He’s just hoping to be there one who is right, and that’s largely by chance. But in Sabine’s case she merely passed on statistically grounded pessimism as her “wild ass guess”. I assure you the are thousands of others who even now think this will probably blow over like cold fusion, and the ones who thought it would be reproduced and be a breakthrough probably said the same about dozens of other failed results, it e just never put their money where their mouth was.

    • That is NOT what is said in any of those videos. Your oversimplification means you did not understand the content.

      For example, about the Faster than the Speed of Light
      In the early universe it was really hot. There
      10:59
      was a Higgs-field but it wasn’t condensed, kind of like the water vapour in the air.
      11:04
      But then the temperature dropped, and the Higgs field condensed. This condensate now fills the
      11:11
      entire universe. But it was only when the Higgs field condensed that particles acquired masses.
      11:18
      It’s a phase transition called “electroweak symmetry breaking” and it’s believed to have
      11:23
      happened about 10 to the minus 11 seconds after the Big Bang at
      11:28
      a temperature of 10 to the 15 Kelvin, that’s much hotter than even the centre of the sun.
      11:33
      What all this means is that in the early universe none of the particles had masses.
      11:39
      They were all massless, and they were all moving with the speed of light. Later they were not. And
      11:45
      here’s the important bit: The energy that was released in this phase transition was finite.
      11:51
      If it hadn’t been, we wouldn’t be here, and someone would have written a paper about that,
      11:56
      I’m sure. But the equation that we looked at earlier said that the difference in energy
      12:01
      should have been infinite. What gives? Mathematically it’s pretty obvious what
      12:08
      goes wrong with the earlier argument. If you look at this equation again, you see that if
      12:13
      this factor goes to zero, but the mass *also goes to zero, then the ratio can well remain finite.
      12:21
      This doesn’t help us at all to travel at the speed of light. Because we can’t just
      12:26
      uncondense the Higgs field. Even if we could, it’d basically evaporate the traveller and, I mean,
      12:32
      I’m not a doctor, but that’s probably not healthy. So, this isn’t going to let us build a warp drive.
      12:38
      But it shows that the argument that the speed of light is a barrier isn’t even technically correct.

      and she also argues about the difference between special and general relativity.

      It’s all very theoretical.

      • I haven’t seen that video, I was referring to the one where she explains away the time-paradoxes of faster-than-light travel by pointing to the existence of a universal co-moving reference frame.

    • Superdeterminism is not ruled out by current observations and can be explained in part via anthropic arguments applied to a sufficiently large multiverse model, so I wouldn’t write it off so flippantly. In any of several deterministic interpretations of QM, everything *is* determined, including experimenter “choices”, and “just such a way” is precisely how natural laws manifest. You may as well argue that the principle of least action can’t be correct because it works in “just such a way” as to minimize the action for every path.

      Points 2 and 3 are theory-heavy and tongue in cheek, but similar arguments have been advanced by Hawking and others. These are important thought experiments.

      Sabine is certainly a bit of a troll, but she isn’t stupid and I don’t think you fully understand what you’re criticizing.

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