Two weeks ago the Korean group presented new room temperature superconductivity research and this week the Chinese research group published new research on LK99 type superconductors. Are we at a breakthrough? What has been done in this new research?
There is still a lot to be done on the LK99 type room temperature superconductors.
The groups working on it are sincere and are making progress on improved synthesis and performing needed experiments. The current work is not well funded enough to quickly do many complicated analysis and for more expensive equipment for better measurements.
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This could have been Moscow’s breakthrough with Iris Alexandra’s demonstrating full levitation of a tiny speck of modified-recipe-produced LK-99 sample many months ago. She had previously reported a critical temperature of 7C for this material so we may see whether it’s a true room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductor (I can accept calling 7C as “room temperature” in Russia !)
All she was taking credit for was process chemistry – how to make the bulk compound. Nothing ever came of the chip she displayed “levitating” in a pipette. The whole thing was like a mass hysteria on twitter.
[ am i wrong, with the assumption, that a superconductor would loose levitation height (or even ability) with an experiment going on for at least years (maybe even decades could be necessary) or is zero resistance absolute ‘zero’ for all known and verified superconductors? (thx) ]
All macroscopic magnets lose their magnetism over time. Permanent magnets lose over years. Superconductor current magnets has near zero probability of losing magnetism as long as temperature is cold enough
[ i see, with a difficulty being also between ‘near zero’ and ‘absolute zero’, where (IIRC) at least one experiment&study, reading about, told about having declining currents (within a SC) measured over a very long period of time.
Some explain SC (having Cooper Pairs established) do not loose heat energy to a structure&lettice with transporting current, and on ‘contrary’ diagrams show non-zero starting points for SC measurements for resistance (with differentiation on alternating or direct currents and influence of magnetic fields surrounding a SC (type II, no for type I ?), at least partial to ‘filaments’ within and no Meissner Effect preventing an outer magnetic field’s decline on current for some types of SC ).
e.g. ‘https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Protik-Das/publication/334413940/figure/fig3/AS:779821688815618@1562935387321/a-Resistance-measurements-of-the-superconductor-to-insulator-transition-in-NbSe2.ppm ‘
wrt to ‘ideal vs. real’
‘Milton A. Rothman wrote that the law of conservation of energy has been verified by nuclear physics experiments to an accuracy of one part in a thousand million million (1015). He then defines its precision as “perfect for all practical purposes”.’ (thx) ]
[ another example for numbers for ‘zero’ resistance (or resistivity, being material dependent resistance) would be measured ~10^-12 Ω/cm for LK99 samples (copper for comparison ~1.6*10^-6 Ω/cm, what results to a factor of losses through resistivity within copper conductors for one hour being comparable to losses summarized for ~185yrs within a LK99 sample(?)
another explanation could help with defining the meaning for ‘zero’ (voltage drop, resistivity):
‘In a class of superconductors known as type II superconductors, including all known high-temperature superconductors, an extremely low but nonzero resistivity appears at temperatures not too far below the nominal superconducting transition when an electric current is applied in conjunction with a strong magnetic field, which may be caused by the electric current. This is due to the motion of magnetic vortices in the electronic superfluid, which dissipates some of the energy carried by the current. The resistance due to this effect is tiny compared with that of non-superconducting materials, but must be taken into account in sensitive experiments. However, as the temperature decreases far enough below the nominal superconducting transition, these vortices can become frozen so that the resistance of the material becomes truly zero.’
‘A consequence of this is that an electric current flowing in a loop of superconducting wire can persist indefinitely with no power source.’
another absolute expectation: ‘indefinitely’ is a very long period of time(?)
(thx for reading)]