A Paper Posted Last Month Claims To Have Achieved Superconductivity at Room Temperature, But Other Physicists Say the Data May Be Incorrect (vice.com)

dmoberhaus writes: Last month, two Indian physicists posted a paper to arxiv claiming to have demonstrated superconductivity at room temperature. If this paper is legitimate, it would represent a breakthrough in a problem that has existed for superconductivity for 100 years. Understandably, the paper shook the physics world, but when researchers started digging into the data they noticed something wasn't quite right -- the noise patterns in two independent measurements exactly correlated, which is basically impossible in a random system. The Indian researchers have doubled down on their data, and things only got weirder from there. This is a look inside what could be the biggest drama to happen in physics in nearly a decade.

Comments

Invent a way to verify this

[DickBreath]

If only there was some kind of something-something method by which one scientist could reproduce another scientist's results. Theories could be formed. More experiments tried and reproduced. Etc. Such a thing could be a force that would propel technological advancement forward at an incredible rate.

If someone can invent some kind of scientific method, they should patent it!

Re:Invent a way to verify this

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, it bugs me when people say "well science is not a democracy. Something is either proven or it isn't."

The scientific method is essentially democratic. One person claims to have done something via an experiment, and that doesn't prove anything. You need a whole bunch more people to do the same experiment....to convince them. And their experiments need to be peer-reviewed. To convince even more people. Eventually, when enough people are convinced, your hypothesis is essentially voted into being a theory.

Though there will still be hold-outs within the scientific community and it is always possible some upstart will publish results that totally contradict yours. And the democratic process of truth-establishment will go around again.

And that's how it should be. When truth-establishing processes are dictatorial in nature, you get crazy religious wars. And Hitler.

Re: Invent a way to verify this

[c6gunner]

The scientific method is essentially democratic. One person claims to have done something via an experiment, and that doesn't prove anything. You need a whole bunch more people to do the same experiment....to convince them. And their experiments need to be peer-reviewed. To convince even more people. Eventually, when enough people are convinced, your hypothesis is essentially voted into being a theory.

That's not at all how that works. A hypothesis is just an idea. A theory has predictive power. We don't vote to turn a hypothesis into a theory; a hypothesis is just the starting point for an experiment. Based on the results of the experiment you may be able to formulate a theory ... and if that theory is valid, you will be able to predict future results. Popularity and opinion are irrelevant; either your theory predicts future outcomes, or it does not.

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

The easy answer is accidental duplication of one input location. If two sensor locations were mis-wired or the collection software had a typo so that one was recorded twice while another was ignored, that would get identical noise in two columns and the appearance of immeasurably fast communication between two locations.

The hard answer is accidental room-temperature superconductivity. It's also the fun answer.

Re:Vice?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is Vice really a valid source for news like this?

Yes.

I'm guessing that you reason to even ask this is that you feel (politically/ideologically) uncomfortable about some of their reports . However, reporting on reality doesn't take our feelings or biases into account. FWIW, I've not yet aware of anything that Vice has reported inaccurately.