Solar panels are so cheap that we now:

(1) make fences out of them, because they're cheaper than fencing
(2) just throw them on the ground without mounting
(3) use them as conference tables
(4) build 56 GW/year manufacturing facilities

Energy abundance is here! (sources in 🧵)





1. fencing:

https://twitter.com/FT/status/1775011843532079406

It's as close to official as we'll probably get: LK-99 is likely simply a ferromagnetic material, which explains its levitating properties, according to new research from Peking University.

The room temperature superconductivity revolution will have to wait another day. Guo et. al synthesized #LK99 with the published methodology and matched the material composition to the original using X-Ray Diffraction. They observed levitation in the sample and conducted a litany of other tests.

My current reasons to / not to believe:

WE'RE BACK:
* Diamagnetism is pretty rare and the Meissner effect is a key way to measure SC in a bulk heterogenous material
* We've seen multiple ~confirmations of diamagnetism
* DFT calculations are good (small update) IT'S OVER:
* Still no good resistivity data; HUST and Lee et. al are extremely inconclusive
* The hypothesized crystal structure may be extremely unstable/impossible
* Diamagnetism is totally possible without SC and in fact we've seen it before in USOs (unidentified SC objcts)

Well, here we have it! The first claimed replication of zero resistance in LK-99. As with the original pre-prints, the results are presented unconventionally (in a livestream on bilibili, a Chinese video sharing site). A few important caveats and notes in the thread 1. The Tc is not room temperature! It's 100 K, approx -279 ºF.
2. The shape of this resistivity graph is pretty weird. You'd expect a discontinuous drop straight down, rather than a curve down.
3. 1E-5 ≠ 0! Although it may be within measurement error.

WE ARE OFFICIALLY BACK

@sineatrix finds a theoretical basis for superconductivity in Cu-doped Lead Apatite.

Isolated flat bands at the Fermi level is a hallmark of superconducting crystals. LK99 has it!!!!

This is huge

What a discovery. Remarkable speed and thoughtfulness in this succinct and clear pre-print.arxiv.org/abs/2307.16892

A few #LK99 updates (in case you haven't seen)

1. Twitter anon @iris_IGB claims to have made the floating rock, people are getting excited
2. @eirifu has a great tracker of replication efforts (linked below)
3. The replication probability on @ManifoldMarkets is up to 28% @iris_IGB floats rock (still could be diamagnetism, but would be 10x stronger diamagnetism than graphite)

https://twitter.com/iris_IGB/status/1685731177523449856

Holy crap. Did anyone else see the peer reviewed paper yet?? It clearly shows the specific heat discontinuity and other major changes.

I am shook. I am also so confused. I've been heartbroken before

journal.kci.go.kr/jkcgct/archive…

If you are a researcher in this field with a strong POV, I would be happy to share it below for exposure on this thread. DMs open

https://twitter.com/alexkaplan0/status/1684044616528453633

Currently seeing some discussion on the scale of dimagnetism vs graphite. Prof. Natelson did some calculations in the @condensed_the replies:

https://twitter.com/NanoscaleViews/status/1684041646021701632

Today might have seen the biggest physics discovery of my lifetime. I don't think people fully grasp the implications of an ambient temperature / pressure superconductor. Here's how it could totally change our lives. 1. 100 billion kWh of electricity are wasted on transmission losses each year in the US alone. That's equivalent to 3 of our largest nuclear reactors running 24/7. Superconductivity enables lossless electricity transmission at high voltages and currents.