Then a few hours later a paper was published with six authors (without one of the original three authors), ostensibly by the core team that has been working on this.
There should be much more detail on the Internet if you search for it.
Nobel prizes are capped to 3 people, and the speculation is that the rogue person published early to try and ensure they were one of the people that received it. No reason for infighting like that if you know it's a hoax.
Like saying "SORRY, FIRST" to the nobel committee?
There was plenty of bitter infighting over credit during the 1989 cold fusion fiasco.
Knowing it's not a hoax does not mean it is true.
As always, only reproduction attempts matter.
In this universe there are long life humans that don't really collaborate with other humans (like a single person, not a group of quasi immortal humans) in the scientific field to have all the credit because who cares if you take 200 years for a discovery if the glory is all yours
It could be the main theme in one, and then just a short thing in many others; or the main theme in a few.
It's less visible, but at this scale there's a high cost in everyone pausing their research to replicate LK-99. If it turns out to be real that's worth, but if not it could've gone to better use. Think of what we could've done with the time we spent reproducing cold fusion.
It's survivorship bias; yes, you would love to see the significant discoveries happen sooner, but if they were rushed you'd also see a lot of trash that currently never leaves the draft stage. Just look at how many people complained that the LK-99 papers were incomplete and unprofessional!
Also, LK-99 was discovered in 1999 but wasn't known as a room-temperature superconductor then. There are too many things to research and not enough researchers, so it was put on hold for two decades.
This is a (I feel rudimentarily obvious) fallacy of finite time implying there is N researchers working on one thing that must be useful at any given time. The individuals reproducing cold fusion / LK-99 / whichever might not have been spending their energy / time / funding on anything more "guaranteed productive" (nor even on anything at all) otherwise.
Knowledge motivates research. That motivating is not a classsically scarce resource, its multiplicative.
Was there anything in 1999 about the material that made it notable as a discovery then?
In some ways this is pure science. Multiple groups working on the same thing increases the chance of searching the problem space thoroughly, and not missing out on finding better local maximas.
Less visible? More like invisible if you ask me. There's all sorts of seemingly frivolous research going on at any given moment. A red herring in this case would be no different.
The instant strange behavior becomes apparent it becomes worth researching. I don't see how keeping it silent is anything other than a tragic waste.
If it's bogus, we discover that sooner.
If it's legitimate, we discover that sooner, AND the benefits to humanity can begin 24 years earlier. Think of how much we've accomplished in the last 24 years. Now think of how many benefits could have been reaped during that time by building on this new knowledge (assuming it has practical applications).
If it's truly useful and they knew this 24 years ago: what a waste.
As if researcher must drop everything they're doing and attempt to reproduce every wild claim. It simply doesn't happen because these people are able to work through hypotheticals and form value predictions... Just like they do with any other research resource allocation decision.
No, it's far worse to lock up knowledge behind academic institutional norms and hide and yell "rigor" when anyone is curious to see what's being worked on. People can decide for themselves what is worth pursuing and the OP is likely correct that we're doing damage to our own progress by not disseminating a hypothesis that's being worked on but could use more resources. Furthermore this fear of someone publishing before you in a race to claim the Nobel prize likely doesn't help.
The institutions should formalize and normalize a method for broad open access to research in progress and broader collaboration.
This goes double for government-funded research, which the overwhelming majority of basic science research is.
The people deciding to pause their research are experts with their own agency. If they are pausing their own research then it's because they've made an expert determination that it's worth doing so. So you don't need to worry yourself over it. Open the information up so that other experts can decide what to do with it.
Maybe not worth losing 20 years ... i don't know
https://twitter.com/8teAPi/status/1685294623449874432
With the anti-hype hype that surrounds this discovery this was to be expected. Why would I disclose this kind of research to the public so that the whole world can benefit from it when I'm called a fraudster or a liar. Why would I risk my reputation – no matter how I spin my research – in a sacrificial circle jerk when I can work on it stealthily and hope to make some bucks ?
edit:
KR20210062550A - Mehtod of manufacturing ceramic composite with low resistance including superconductors and the composite thereof -
The modern patent system is despicable.
You'd think to put your deliberate typos in the word 'supercobductor' though...
Now I'm imagining a high-velocity corn transfer mechanism
Some guy got a little traction on Twitter briefly for his room temperature superconductor patent a couple days ago, but when you click his name he's just some crypto nutjob with no science background
And this suggests that they were conflicted for some reason about publishing, likely commercially so (as evidenced about the patent). Maybe they were trying to create a product with it that they could sell before others could replicate the material.
So the rogue employee does absolutely deserve credit for bringing this thing into the world and humanity should not stigmatize them for doing so; perhaps we should do exactly the opposite.
Isn't it false?
I have read that the description is pretty extensive, just the yelds are really bad because the production method is 1) hard and 2) inconsistent?
So the description is good but hard to replicate
If he really did it for all mankind then give him a huge prize
L&K, are two PHDs taught by their now dead former professor. Their research into LK-99 is inherited from their former professor but they lacked funding, hence it was a hobby project for a long time, and they needed funding to work on it full time.
The Korean professor: A professor who started taking interest and sponsoring the project for the last few years. However, he likely didn't participate directly in the research much.
The American professor (Ethnically Korean): A professor who was brought in rather recently (Maybe last 1-2 years?), to help bring credibility to the team. He is probably the one with the expertise to perform measurement and ascertain that it is a superconductor.
The Korean professor got kicked out from the team for unknown reasons. This was evidenced in the April paper published in Korea, which lacked the Korean professor's name. Quantum center also removed him from the website.
4 months later, he was back with a vengeance, and published the paper, with only him, and L&K on it (ie, the 3 man paper). The Korean professor possesses no sample, and also lacks the original data for LK-99.
A day later, the american professor hastily rushed out another paper (The 6-man paper), with L&K, himself, and 3 irrelevant lab assistants.
Since the earlier Korean paper in April got 0 attention and was treated like a typical troll paper. They probably assumed posting on arxiv was just good material for later legal battles, but they could otherwise continue happily researching and patenting their material. However, interest in LK-99 exploded like a nuke, because the first signal for credibility: That two professors were in a bitter battle over authorship, did not escape people's eyes.
2 days later, the Korean professor had a presentation at a Korean conference, but attendees were disappointed by his data and lack of samples (Prediction markets hit a low of 15% at this point).
However, the American professor took control of media communications, and quickly dissociated with the Korean professor, yet he completely stood by the claims of LK-99. Now the American professor has talked to numerous Korean media and directly sent an exclusive video to NYT.
Its interesting why L&K chose the American professor over the Korean one. Needless to say, if this works out, the interpersonal saga will end up in a Netflix documentary, and probably many court cases.
I should also note that the nobel prize is likely a secondary concern for the group. They aren't in a comfortable academic position where money is only a bonus. They were struggling PHDs for a long time. Nobel prize money is too little, and will come way too late to make a difference for their lives. L&K and the American professor are likely trying to maximize the value of their patents and know how to sell to investors, rather than to make public verification ASAP, which would be optimizing for a nobel prize.
L&K = Sukbae Lee, Ji-Hoon Kim
Korean professor: Young-Wan Kwon
American professor: Hyun-Tak Kim
Former (Long dead) professor: Tong-Seek Chair (Sample paper: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02697404)
Well, you have to provide the full name. Bummer :D
I assume the news would also be much shorter but slighly more confusing if we just called all "Joe"s "Joe" ?
Whereas they would be much less ambiguous but slighly harder if we all had a uuid assigned at birth. (Or maybe a checksum of our DNA ?)
"Despite the important role that monozygotic twins have played in genetics research, little is known about their genomic differences. Here we show that monozygotic twins differ on average by 5.2 early developmental mutations and that approximately 15% of monozygotic twins have a substantial number of these early developmental mutations specific to one of them."
This is why you list the full name, rather than just the surnames. As you've listed them they are quite helpful.
"ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS We acknowledge late Prof. Chair Tong-seek for initiating research of a 1-dimensional superconductor of over room temperature at atmospheric pressure. In particular, his enthusiasm on superconductor study impressed many researchers. "
If this works out, this will be by far the biggest invention from Korea ever. They will be remembered in every Korean textbook to the end of time.
Now to learn physics.
The alegation is that the person in question worked with them on the research, and they published it on arxiv without the permission of the others. Thus they can be a co-discoverer and also rogue former employee.
.. by way of Back to the Future hoverboards.
[...]
> Danijel Djurek, a physicist at A. Volta Applied Ceramics in Zagreb, Croatia, claims that he discovered his superconducting ceramic mixture in the late 1980s. But he was unable to pin down the structure and formula of the material, and his research was interrupted by years of war, following Croatia's split from Yugoslavia.
excerpts from http://www.rexresearch.com/djurek/djurek.htm
Accept it happened and make amends and make those things very public and move forward to making an official announcement together with the so called 'rogue' author (in my opinion he did the world a favour).
It seems to me they were just in the process of constructing a convincing paper, which included convincing tests and could have been acompanied by sending out samples to independent labs. Then they were essentially forced to put out what they had, which made their claims even more unconvincing.
Again, with a payout so big and ease of replication fairly low, the evidence doesn’t even have to be that convincing.
The only problem would be if they worded it in a sensational way without evidence to backup their claims like almost all battery tech seems to be these days "we discovered a solid state battery that will change the world, make EVs, flying planes, ships, trucks and remote control toys orders of magnitude cheaper, faster, safer blah blah ** once we figure out how to get it working in real world conditions and test it for real. We were talking about possibilities extrapolated from our little theoretical progress."
I still believe the scientific community is smart and moral to accept statements held true by evidence. Scoffs are reserved for hyperbolic claims.
To make my argument, see the recent paper on achieving energy positive nuclear fusion - the authors didnt wait until they could achieve Nett energy positive condition (where total energy to the system is lower than what was produced). They published when they achieved energy to the reaction < energy output from the reaction which was a big deal in itself eventhough the practical goal would be achieved in future by building upon this..
It's been considered to be within the same bermuda triangle of scientific vaporware that demarked by quantum computers performing useful tasks, fusion power generation, that sort of thing. Always just around the corner. It's basically a meme in physics.
Room temperature superconductivity is not demonstrably impossible like a perpetual motion machine, but mainstream press picking up on yet another set of amazing claims in this field tends to (deservedly) lead to a lot of eye rolling.
The consequence is that if you've actually made actual progress in the field, you'd better be very sure you are right and able to back it up.
I keep seeing markets like this posted for LK99 and personally find it unconvincing more than a sentiment analysis of the twitter and news hype cycle.
If we make a leap in room-temperature superconductors, do we also make a leap in fusion?
But hasn't it been 24 years since they discovered LK-99? Or am I missing something? If that's true wouldn't it be a tragic shame that it wasn't revealed earlier, so that progress and applications could occur?
Here is some (speculative?) backstory: https://twitter.com/8teAPi/status/1684385895565365248
It is a tragic shame in hindsight, but no doubt there are many earth-shattering discoveries lying within reach, if only we knew where to look.
But surely not many of them involve a recipe we know about but have chosen to keep secret from everyone else.
It's a human problem, we only care about what happens to us or our tribe and most of our focus is not very forward looking. We're better than other animals as evolution favoured us looking just a little more forward than other animals, but now we have to escape the timekeeping of our meaty flesh and think "if we dump money into science then this generation will get some cool stuff and the next will get a shit tonne of cool stuff".
But the rogue scientist wanted to share it with the entire world.
It would make for a nice movie.
Everyone's assuming it's about the Nobel, but it is much more likely it's about far more lucrative goals.
If society can't make greed go away then maybe it's better to celebrate human nature and contextualize/guide it into being pro-social.
Fiat lux!
They had been working on this for quite a long time themselves, rightfully so. But now the whole world is working on it and exploring other methods and combinations of materials I would assume (to improve upon the original design and avoid any patents).
How long would they have kept this thing to themselves without the rogue employee bringing this thing to light?
Perhaps that was part of the rogue former employee's motivation in "going rogue": this thing needs to see the light of day so it can start to benefit humanity.