What would you need to see to say "I am 100% convinced this is / isn't real"?

And how long would you expect it will be before that occurs?

(1) When there's peer-reviewed replication from a group of reputable labs.

(2) When I see the classic superconductor-on-magnetic-track demo, but without liquid nitrogen.

What I'm actually even slightly more excited about is "what comes next" -- not the market part, but the "fast follow science". For instance, in the few years after LCBO and LSCO were found (TC~30K) we quickly found YBCO and BSCCO (Tc~130K). I would expect that we'll find a whole class of these materials with substitution tricks that possibly work, and there will be a whole slew of options for "going to market" with the technology. The door this opens is what is more exciting than the specifics of LK-99 itself in my opinion.

Estimating times, after the fast follow science (0.5-2 years optimistically?) we will hopefully have the actual "we're all convinced this is real, and the technology can start to be applied in real devices". Specifically, after everyone is pretty clear on a lot of the material properties and ways to reproducibly make high-quality crystals, so consistency is clear on measurements... then begins the cycles on how to manufacture high enough quality material at scale that it can actually be applied. (specifically, these materials (assuming they're like YCBO/BSCCO) are superconducting crystals that have grains, alignment issues, are physically brittle, have homogeneity issues, etc.) While each solvable, these are all real engineering and material challenges that increase cost to manufacture, and all of this will probably take time before we suddenly get wide-scale products that use this (this is all assuming it's real, haha, there's still plenty of reason to be skeptical).

Few will remember the million replications, but whoever describes a novel version - even if it's no better - will find themselves on equal footing for helping to understand what's happening

Here's his video of making YBCO for anyone that hasn't seen it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLFaa6RPJIU

The moving magnet induces a current in the tube which in turn creates the magnetic field that interacts with the magnet.

“Ah,” nodded Arthur, “is he? Is he?”

An Ig Nobel AND a Nobel. That's quite the achievement.

As someone who is versed in semiconductor band structures but not superconductor band structures: What is it about Cu d-d interactions that causes the superconductivity?

Degenerate energies in semiconductors don't give rise to electron pairing, so I'm a bit out to sea with the proposed mechanism here.

Roughly, one of the "properties" that shows up with these materials is that the 3d orbitals of coper atoms are involved in forming the bands near the fermi level. Couple that with the fun story of Cu electron configuration being [Ar] 3d^10 4s^1, which suggests that spin-effects are "at play" with these electrons near their filling levels. Combine that with the spin-character properties of cuprate paring (eg. s-wave vs. d-wave superconductors, (d-wave for BSCCO for instance)). All together it lends itself to a nice spin-orbit coupled band "setup" at the fermi energy that I have a hunch somehow backs the underlying mechanism of these d-wave superconductors. Fully admit, there's some leaps there in the raw logic -- if I could fully explain it I probably would still be in the field, haha.

I'll note: I've been out of the field for ~8 years, but a quick google search led to some more recent papers [1][2] working through plausible explanations based on some of these copper d orbital shenanigans.

[1] https://www.scirp.org/journal/paperinformation.aspx?paperid=... [2] https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.11664 (d-p, but includes the Cu d-orbital and also specifically states "We also show that the effect of the nearest-neighbor d-d Coulomb interaction Vdd is actually quite important for the stability of superconductivity and phase competition.")

Fair enough, and thanks for the readout. I realized after posting I essentially demanded an explanation as to why the cuprates are high-Tc, which is probably it's own Nobel prize.

https://www.wired.com/story/how-an-anonymous-4chan-post-help...

Compression algorithms detect recurring blocks and remove them with a special symbol and I think the shortest path would be uncompressable with compression algorithms.

Chiming in, not just you. :) I very briefly studied materials science a few decades ago and I'm 0% surprised that a potential breakthrough involves, of course, cuprates.

Assuming no videographic trickery, what else could it be, other than the Meissner effect?

"In simple terms, diamagnetic materials are substances that are usually repelled by a magnetic field. Electrons in an atom revolve around the nucleus, and thus possess orbital angular momentum. The resultant magnetic momentum in an atom of the diamagnetic material is zero."

https://byjus.com/jee/diamagnetic-materials/

50+ years later the US has how many high speed trains, of any kind?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36967333

In case you aren't familiar with the man's work, here are some highlights of his discoveries over the last decade:

Conditional possibility of spacecraft propulsion at superluminal speeds

High frequency gravitational waves-induced propulsion

Piezoelectricity-induced room temperature superconductor

Craft using an inertial mass reduction device

On the Existence of the Superforce–the possible fundamental Force of Unification

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=7%2C39&q=Sal...

I can't wait for my cheap antigrav FTL iron man suit to arrive next year.

Ahem :)

Though it may depend on what the patents are for!

This gives a low resistance and diamagnetism which is used as proxy to real superconductivity.

I may be wrong though.

So many questions. I assume this is all possible but they are focussing on one thing at a time to duplicate the results, if possible.

Perhaps heating it up while it levitates would be a better idea. Put the magnet in an oven together with the sample and bake?

And it's ridiculous that I'm saying that on the context of testing a superconductor. But well, here we are.

I do expect people to fully characterize it eventually.

Neo magnet fabrication is fascinating by the way, the somewhat magnetized blanks are not all that impressive from a magnetic field strength point of view, but then you zap them with a strong enough field and they then suddenly are the best thing since sliced bread.

This technique was first developed for 'regular' ceramic magnets.

https://idealmagnetsolutions.com/knowledge-base/how-neodymiu...

An uncoated magnet will oxidize very fast, so you always have to ensure that the coating on any magnets you use is perfect or the magnet will surely fail.

You would use metals as your leads and create Josephson-junctions-like interfaces.

Basically the abrupt change in electron mobility across materials can cause knock on effects that dominate what you are trying to measure.

Interfacial engineering is one term in materials science that implements best practices for dealing with such challenges.

Whereas the Meissner effect is unique to superconductors. It just has to be distinguished from diamagnetism, and there are materials which are strongly diamagnetic but not superconductors.

If the field is still there, then you have a superconductor.

But the Meisner effect is a unique signature of a diamagnetic material and will provide you some evidence even if the sample is tiny. So I understand why they have not yet resorted to other measurements, if there is no Meisner effect you don't need to continue with the hard work of trying to make a wire (which may well be a serious challenge for this stuff, the yield will have to come up significantly before that's a real possibility).