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The First Room-Temperature Ambient-Pressure Superconductor (arxiv.org)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by ono@lemmy.ca to c/science@beehaw.org

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And some commentary on the paper:

https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/breaking-superconductor-news

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[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (10 children)

If would be one hell of an error, if so, to get measurements across several different properties and temperature ranges that were all consistent with superconductivity.

You're right, maybe it's fraud, at least partly.

I understand it's very hard to measure the conductivity of a microscopic crystal attached to other different crystals, which is why a lot of less-than-solid claims about high-temperature superconductors get made.

[–] FaceDeer@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago (9 children)

Here's a video of a macroscopic piece of the material magnetically levitating.

Sure, it could be faked, but that would be a bit more than the usual "massaged the numbers a bit to discover a really small effect" stuff.

[–] jarfil@beehaw.org 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (7 children)

At first sight, it looks fake:

A levitating superconductor locks into place onto the magnetic lines, it shouldn't be bouncing up and down like that while touching the magnet with one side.
Pyrolytic carbon can levitate on a magnetic pole grid at ambient temperature and pressure, while magnetic poles can be "printed" onto a single magnet slab, giving the illusion of superconductive levitation where there is none.
At one point in the video the piece of material falls down completely to the magnet, then it bounces back up when pushed to another point, which looks less consistent with superconductive levitation, and more with a prepared trick magnet.

[–] EGN_Atze@feddit.de 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

That behaviour looks pretty normal for a Type-I superconductor, the "locking on" you are referencing is a property of Type-2 Superconductors. For more information search Meißner-Ochsenfeld Effect (ideal diamagnetism, type 1 SC) and flux pinning (type 2)

I have a fair bit of experience with superconductivity and the submitted manuscript on arXiv looks solid, I didnt notice anything suspicious

Edit: the falling down may be because the material is not superconductive throughout, it looks like it falls down, rotates because of the magnetic field (maybe the non superconductive phase is magnetic?) then pops back up because the magnetic field of the magnet is once again strong enough to lift the sample (the Meißner effect dispels the field inside the Superconducter by generating shielding currents just below the surface, thus "mirroring" the field of the permanent magnet)

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