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A comment on Successful room temperature ambient-pressure magnetic levitation of LK-99. Parent comment

Re:Successful room temperature ambient-pressure magnetic lev... by lucideer on Friday August 04, 2023 @05:52AM (#36997700)
> 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.

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.

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Re:Successful room temperature ambient-pressure magnetic lev... by Aardwolf on Friday August 04, 2023 @06:08AM (#36997808)
> Also, LK-99 was discovered in 1999 but wasn't known as a room-temperature superconductor then.

Was there anything in 1999 about the material that made it notable as a discovery then?

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Re:Successful room temperature ambient-pressure magnetic lev... by ClumsyPilot on Friday August 04, 2023 @07:50AM (#36998619)
Most PhF students a desperately looking for a usefull thing to work on. Most professors desperstely search for a usefull topic that they can use to justify grant funding. etc.
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