Re:Electronic Structure of LK-99
by pjc50 on Wednesday August 02, 2023 @06:14AM
(#36968969)
mRNA vaccines are a huge discovery, not quite as powerful as room temperature superconductors but still up there in terms of impact on humanity. And encountered a very different kind of skepticism while ultimately turning out to be not only real but widely deployed with great speed.
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Haven't mRNA vaccines been in development for over a decade though?
LK-99 has been in development for longer, 24 years, if you believe a quote copied in many current articles and below. You may have heard before, "it takes years of work to become an overnight success..."
> Lee & Kim had been working on the material on and off since Kim was in graduate school in 1999 (LK-99 geddit?). Lee never makes tenure and is still stuck as an adjunct professor 19 years later. Kim goes off to work in battery materials for a decade plus. 2018 - they get funding from industry for another go at it.
Assuming it's all true what I like about their story is that they've basically been doing a guided brute force of candidates rather than to just sit around and theorize they got their hands dirty in a way that really impresses me.