Room Temperature Superconductor Paper Retracted by Journal Nature

Re:Room Temperature Superconductor Paper Retracted by Journa... by chihuahua on Thursday November 09, 2023 @08:36PM (#38213986)

I think the "99" in LK-99 refers to the year it was first created by the authors of the paper. Were they under the impression that it was a superconductor for the past 24 years, and only found it it was bogus because it attracted worldwide attention this year? If so, that seems strange.

I can see how one might make this compound, do some tests on it, and think "oh it's a superconductor" for a few months, but then surely they would do more tests to explore its properties and discover it's not a superconductor. Did they remain deliberately ignorant for 24 years?

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Re:Room Temperature Superconductor Paper Retracted by Journa... by teraflop on Thursday November 09, 2023 @08:57PM (#38214165)

I don't think the inventors actually thought they had samples of a superconductor for 24 years.

My understanding is that they thought they'd detected signs that LK-99 would be superconducting, if they were able to come up with a process to synthesize it with sufficient purity. They spent 24 years (slowly, and without a lot of funding) trying to do that. And over the last couple of years, they started to convince themselves that they had succeeded.

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