Superconductor Breakthrough Replicated, Twice, in Preliminary Testing::It’s been a rough few days in the condensed matter physics realm following claims of the world’s first room-temperature superconductor being achieved. However, work to verify and replicate the results

  • Pyr_Pressure@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    There was an article yesterday of a team not being able to replicate it, so now I’m confused.

    • dbilitated
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      1 year ago

      According to the simulation apparently it only works if the copper atoms end up in an unlikely place in the crystal, so fabrication might be unreliable. I recall someone in another thread saying the authors themselves had around a 10% success rate. So other efforts to replicate are likely to see more failures until the fabrication is better understood. Makes sense I guess.

      The fact that another team saw something I think is really hopeful, even if it’s hard to produce and poorly understood, if there is a room-temp effect then it’s only a matter of time before it’s studied properly and understood. From there hopefully a reliable method of fabrication can be published.

      If there is no effect replicated anywhere then the paper is fraud, but if there’s any effect replicated then it’s just a matter of study and engineering to figure out what it is. It would be interesting even if it isn’t exactly room temp superconductivity.

    • TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      That’s how replication works. It really only takes handful of labs being able to replicate to confirm there is a ‘there’ there. Positive evidence of replication is much stronger than negative evidence.