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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.
The researchers either jumped the gun or faked the results.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
I seem to remember several years ago researchers in Fairbanks, Alaska had already achieved room temperature superconductivity. The trick was to turn of central heating as I recall...
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
Is Vice really a valid source for news like this?
Evidence secured!
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!
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
The researcher who found the unexpected correlation was being overly generous by suggesting it could be evidence of a not-yet-understood process. The green and blue dots from separate test runs match up essentially pixel for pixel. I'm not going to speculate whether it was an innocent error or something worse, but it's clearly not a natural phenomenon.
They did achieve superconductivity at room temperature....it is just that the room was on the surface of Neptune
So they ran the same experiment twice, and got almost identical noise? I don't have to pull any punches here because I'm not publishing a critique.. but that just strikes me as high evidence of fraud.
Entirely speculation here, but I'd guess they ran this experiment once, got the result they wanted, and were incredibly excited. Nobel Prize Time! Then they ran it again, and again, and again.. couldn't replicate the results, but still wanted to publish. So they faked the second set of data, and hoped nobody would notice.
Still it _could_ be something weird... Honestly I hope it is. But realistically this is just fraud, or at best some terrible experimental error.
Putting aside whether it's real, TFP claims superconductivity occurs at 236K = ~35 below zero in whichever temperature scale suits your fancy.
That's a bit nippy for my taste.
Turns out they moved on to "science".
Yes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." -- George Santayana Anybody remember Fleischmann and Pons? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Yes, Trump is now staffing up the Dunning-Kruger Effect Institute of Science and Technology. There first task will be to recreate the Fleischmann-Pons experiment!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
https://twitter.com/paddypower...
Not that there is any merit to article's claims but
Silver layer has "proximity effect" on some superconductors, raising the transition temperature.
There is a superconducting alloy with gold, SrAuSi3
While it wouldn't surprise me if the data was falsified (extraordinary claims requires extraordinary evidence), here's one possible explanation for those who wish to cling to a glimmer of hope.
The problem is that the blue and green show the same values, corresponding to 0.1T and 1T, only shifted by a constant small amount in the noise region. But suppose the two susceptibility values were measured as follows: change the temperature to a new value, let things sit a while to be stabilized, then do the 0.1T and 1T measurements quickly.
While the temperature is stabilizing, the material may be undergoing some small random but slow changes in stress and strain, shifting the "background noise" a little at each new temperature. If the 0.1T and 1T measurements are made in rapid succession, they might have the same "background noise" values since there wasn't enough time for it to change. The constant shift between blue and green might be a systematic shift related to the intensity of the magnetic fields involved.
Yeah, silver can enhance a superconductor, and SrAuSi3 fits into the general AMX3 broken spatial inversion symmetry class of superconductors - but with just silver and gold you don't have that BSIS. It's like saying you're producing a steak from just salt and pepper.
Good points though, I had forgotten about the one with gold component.
Every metal is superconducting at temperatures close to 0K.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
"Method for drawing seven perpendicular red lines using only green and transparent ink"
I may quote you on that. :)
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
...but it really shows that you got modded insightful, instead of funny.
I realize the sarcasm, but I truly wonder if the ones that modded you up did.
Anyone should realize the odds of recording the same noise data is essentially nil; on the order of magnitude of the odds of all the air bunching up in one corner of the room suddenly.
On the same subject, I had an intern work with our group for 6 months; his first task was to measure a set of photopeaks from a scintillator detector.
He presented an amazing analysis of 12-bit sampled white noise I've ever seen. (He did not turn on the 'high voltage' to the PMT, as he thought that was "dangerous".)
But the analysis proved it was truly random, within it's limits, lol.
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
Even the debunking was explained to you by someone else, right? :rofl:
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
If the claim had been based on factual data, it would have been headline news within days. I'd love for this to be true, but I'm not going to hold my breath. My money's on never hearing another word about this again.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Not at all. For example, copper, silver, and gold are not superconducting on their own even at (near) 0K. Their lattices are so tightly packed that even though they're decent conductors they can't generate enough Cooper pairs from free electrons.
It's not just an Indian thing; it's part of Chinese culture also.
It's not just an Indian thing; it's part of Chinese culture also.
Definitely part of American culture as the US leads by far in the number of scientific misconduct incidents.
If you believe that the provided link supports your assertion, you're clearly a simpleton.
There's an alloy known as "Electrum". It's been around since the time of the Pharaohs and was used to decorate the capstones of pyramids as well as to make coins. It's a mix of gold, silver and copper.
But on the periodic table, none of those elements are superconducting. That's due to those elements only have one free electron in the outer shell and two electrons are required to form a Cooper pair.
http://www.superconductors.org...
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
It's actually quite feasible, you just have to run the experiment in a really, really cold room. I could get room-temperature superconductivity if I could cool my room to 70K.
That page could mean any number of things, such as US article authors facing tighter scrutiny, or the US having a larger absolute number of article authors. It is hardly a replacement for a proper study of these incidents.
Ezekiel 23:20
No.
"I have worked with enough * to know that they are incapable of saying "hey I might be wrong." If you talk to just about any *, you'll hear that * is the best place on Earth and that * shit doesn't stink. It's impossible for * to be wrong because everything * is the best in the whole world."
Replace * with just about every place in the world, USA, Germany, France, Russia, Australia, (...). Well not Sweden, a bunch of anti-nationalistic complainers.
Save your trolling for something that matters...
Yes :P
And plenty non metals as well ...
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Anyone with a college degree is expected to not just pick any source, but strong sources that readers will likely to believe.
Ummm, sources that "readers will likely believe" routinely does not correlate positively with "strong sources". People will tend to believe whatever made of nonsense most strongly correlates with their pre-existing biases and beliefs.
Eventually, when enough people are convinced, your hypothesis is essentially voted into being a theory.
Science is NOT about convincing people. Science is a process of establishing models that are have predictive power regardless of whether people believe them or not. Eventually people tend to come to a consensus behind models with proven and confirmed predictive power but this is a second order effect and not the actual point of the process. Science is what is true whether or not you believe in it. This is why when people use the argument about scientific consensus in regards to climate change they are making the wrong argument. It doesn't matter what the scientific consensus is - it only matters whether the models have predictive power. Consensus is just opinion and opinions can be wrong - even informed opinions. The argument they should make is that the climate models correctly predict XYZ and we have lots of various models all getting the same results.
When truth-establishing processes are dictatorial in nature, you get crazy religious wars.
True but group-think can be rather dictatorial in effect. Nobody forces people to believe in certain crazy ideas (like religion) but if you get enough of them collectively to believe it then it becomes an unquestioned dogma.
There are many other problems with the paper. They're claiming it's done using silver and gold, for instance, neither of which have shown any evidence of superconducting at all. It's possible that if you mix them up in the right combination they somehow start superconducting, but it's a really extraordinary claim to add to the room temperature (okay, -35F) superconducting claim.
Silver and gold are such good conductors because it's hard for moving electrons to excite lattice vibrations. That exact reason makes them a poor candidate for a type 1 superconductor, where lattice vibrations link the electrons in pairs which are then bosons and can flow much more freely.
The paper claims that their material consists of nanometer sized particles of silver embedded in gold. This is so small that the usual atomic lattices essentially don't exist -- most atoms are at, or very close to, a silver-gold boundary, so the behaviour of bulk silver and bulk gold are not really relevant.
Who would have thunk it? Hydrogen, a highly combustible element, and Oxygen, which will itself freely burn, combine to together form WATER... Not POSSIBLE say physicists!
Yeah, silver can enhance a superconductor, and SrAuSi3 fits into the general AMX3 broken spatial inversion symmetry class of superconductors - but with just silver and gold you don't have that BSIS.
I can't tell if this is real or trolling. So, good job I guess.
Nope, no sig
That's a demon, wearing a human suit.
You can tell by the lies, it easy.
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
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
You didn't get what "the people" say there.
Mainly because you have wrong ideas about science and/or democracy.
Science is not a democracy because you don't get to DECIDE or COMPROMISE or AGREE on the nature of reality - reality just is.
You can't argue or vote your or any other way with science any more than you can make a cold fire by coming up with an alternative temperature scale.
And there's nothing "essentially democratic" about the scientific method itself. It is in fact an autocracy of reality.
There's ONE way to do it right, you don't get to choose another way, it doesn't matter how many votes of how many people you got on your side - reality just puts its foot down and goes "It's MY way or it's not science. Deal with it."
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.
No.
You are confusing some kind of a mix of publishing and academia and education and general knowledge with science.
One person's experimental proof of a theory, if done according to strict rules of scientific method, is enough.
For the precise reason that it would provide the same exact results REGARDLESS of how many people do the same experiment or how many people are convinced.
Also, replication or peer review are NOT done in order to convince "a bunch of people".
Replication and peer review are done in order to try to TEST the theory and/or the experiment - by doing the exact same thing as the original experimenter.
To see if it will break this time. And if the science behind the theory and the experiment is solid - it won't break.
REGARDLESS of how convinced a "bunch of people" are.
If scientific method was about democracy and conviction, everyone could simply agree that the Moon is made out of cheese.
And then the conviction that the Moon is made out of cheese would make it so.
You just gouda believe it hard enough, that's all.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srinivasa_Ramanujan. There's your Indian Descartes, except that unlike Rene, he didn't make a fool of himself in the philosophy department.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
The fact that you think there should be rulers automatically disqualifies you from rational discussion of the organization of society.
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Lots of claims, no reproducible results.
DUH!!!
Make room temperature nearly absolute zero Kelvin, and you have the answer!
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.