"Accomplished by a team at the Huazhong University of Science and Technology and posted 30 minutes ago.

Why this is evidence: The LK-99 flake slightly levitates for both orientations of the magnetic field, meaning it is not simply a magnetized piece of iron or similar ‘magnetic material’. A simple magnetic flake would be attracted to one polarity of the strong magnet, and repelled by the other. A diamagnet would be repelled under either orientation, since it resists and expels all fields regardless of the polarity.

Caveats There is no way to verify the orientation of the strong magnet in this video, also, there are yet to be published experimental measured values of this sample. Diamagnetism is a property of superconductors but without measured and verified data, this is just suggestive of a result.

Take-away If this synthesis was indeed successful, then this material is easy enough to be made by labs other than the original research team. I would watch carefully for results out of Argonne National Lab, who are reported to be working on their own synthesis of a sample.

This overall corroborates two independent simulation studies that investigated the original Korean authors claim about material and crystal structure, and both studies supported the claims.

Lawrence Berkeley National Lab: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2307.16892.pdf Shenyang National Lab: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2307.16040.pdf "

  • Contramuffin@lemmy.worldEnglish
    4·
    1 year ago

    One thing that you’ll definitely observe in daily life is the development of fusion reactors. They’re significantly safer than regular nuclear reactors (which run on fission), and also a lot cheaper (theoretically). The current downside to fusion reactors is that up until this point, it usually takes up more energy to run it than the energy that gets produced. So in other words, it doesn’t actually generate enough energy to make it worth building. Most of the energy spent is trying to keep the magnets in the reactor cold enough to function. Since room temperature superconductors should function at room temperature, there will be no need to keep them cold, so a lot of the energy spent keeping the magnets cold will become unnecessary. This will significantly improve the development of fusion reactors, to the point where it is possible that we may even see fusion reactors on our energy grid in our lifetimes. Basically, if this claim is true, you can expect that energy costs will become virtually negligible and the world will almost completely run on renewable energy

    • wason@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      Well I really hope this is real then and more importantly it translates to cheap, clean energy