Successful room temperature ambient-pressure magnetic levitation of LK-99

Re:Successful room temperature ambient-pressure magnetic lev... by MetaWhirledPeas on Friday August 04, 2023 @09:37AM (#36999844)

> I think there are multiple big reasons they didn't publish sooner. It is pretty clear that they were convinced, but had insufficient evidence to convince others. Additionally there had recently been a sensational fraud in their field so journals would have been extremely sceptical.

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?

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Re:Successful room temperature ambient-pressure magnetic lev... by shepardrtc on Friday August 04, 2023 @09:48AM (#36999988)

I can't wait to read the history of this material. 24 years... I can only imagine the conversations and drama surrounding it.

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Re:Successful room temperature ambient-pressure magnetic lev... by fwipsy on Friday August 04, 2023 @10:52AM (#37000860)

It was originally discovered in 1999 but was shelved for over a decade due to insufficient funding. As I understand it, they only received funding in 2018 and became more confident in their discovery after that.

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.

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Re:Successful room temperature ambient-pressure magnetic lev... by MetaWhirledPeas on Friday August 04, 2023 @12:03PM (#37001851)

> 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.

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Re:Successful room temperature ambient-pressure magnetic lev... by MetaWhirledPeas on Friday August 04, 2023 @01:32PM (#37003149)

Thanks for the link. Assuming it's accurate it sounds like the 24-year delay was just a bit of misfortune.

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Re:Successful room temperature ambient-pressure magnetic lev... by fennecfoxy on Monday August 07, 2023 @04:49AM (#37031974)

I agree, the world still doesn't really care about science. And yet everyone's living lives that are all the more better because of science.

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".

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