Not all the replication videos show the sample in the middle, see the Varda sample videos. Constructing something that simulates something else is proof of very little, other than there are other possible explanations. The existence of alternative explanations isn’t a proof the proposed explanation isn’t true.
This paper doesn’t explain away anything yet - they’re conjecturing based on their experience with their sample. Their conjectures are no more credible than the opposing supporting conjectures.
IANAP and I don’t have a horse in the race, and while I’m excited to see if this is true, I don’t believe anything other than there’s a long road of research ahead and nothing will be proven with hottake nitter videos or hottake preprints.
You’re reading something entirely different - at the end of a long discussion of sending the samples off for more testing, holding hope it’s a SC but admitting it’s always been a long shot, he notes at the end:
> That said, I think we're getting to the point where magnetic observations may be adding more noise than signal. Yesterday, I did perform the pole flip that was discussed in the last video. Very important to note, however, that ferromagnetism can exhibit pole agnostic behavior too. Check out the excellent video by @vangennepS. nitter.net/vangennepd/statu…. While the amateur magnetics method was fun to try for a screening method, it seems to have too many false positives to be entirely trustworthy.
That’s not at all supportive of “explains everything I’ve seen”
He wrote that other tweet before that paper was put up on arXiv. How does the fact that the one I linked to is a reply to the one you quoted change the plain meaning of his words?
I'm trying to understand how I've misinterpreted his tweet but I've got to interpret "Sounds like it explains everything we're seeing" as referring to his own observations too, not (just) other people's.
He's been looking for an explanation of this sort for a while:
My bad, my reader view cut the tweet off and just showed the original.
Still, his phrasing doesn’t indicate it’s over for him, just bordering - perhaps explains everything they’re seeing, but it’s :
* not LK99
* a conjecture
* isolated to magnetic properties that are acknowledged to be novel and don’t rule out messier effect
* ignore other claimed properties like resistivity
Also, something explaining everything you are seeing is again a demonstration of an alternative, as is evinced by the material not being LK99, that claimed LK99 as a ceramic without a reliable method of production with a claimed low production rate (less than 10% of runs claimed by the original authors, with them claiming to have done over 1000 runs to produce their sample).
Again: I think it’s time for science to take the helm and hottakes to take a back seat for a while. I expect we will have something noteworthy either way by the end of the year. By the end of the month conclusions are fun gimmicks. I’m down with fun and love a good gimmick, but I’ll withhold belief in either direction until the original teams paper is released, their claimed sample is analyzed independently, more details of the claimed process are released to allow replication, and any novel properties have a stronger theoretical explanation. It’s extraordinarily unlikely they have found a room temperature super conductors, but not impossible. Regardless, they’ve discovered something novel and that, by definition to any scientist, is interesting.
> I think it’s time for science to take the helm and hottakes to take a back seat for a while.
It has been time for that from day #1. It either exists or it doesn't. Whatever people think won't make a shred of a difference and until there is replication if you want to look smart without doing any work you can pick 'it isn't real' (but boy will you look stupid if it eventually is) or 'it is real' (but boy will you look stupid if it eventually isn't).
I think all this whole saga has done for me is to show how little patience people have and how even findings of fact can lead to polarization if there is an element of uncertainty thrown into the mix.
Yeah I agree. I think it’s certainly entertaining, but my faith in the standard practice of science isn’t threatened by the social media / rapid experimentation. I’ve seen a lot of hyperbole about how this will replace methodical science and other malarkey and if it had been a slam dunk simple thing they would be crowing incessantly. But as these things are, it isn’t simple or obvious, and it require a meticulous process that can’t be easily supplanted by nitter feeds.
This is suspect because to balance a magnet like that you’d need to make it very very specifically to make it balance like that. Which means as soon as you flip it, it would not float. In the lk99 samples both sides can float
Just remember, it’s their sample that they theorize it is. A theory/guess does not rule out superconductivity. Their sample if slightly different could also cause these effects. We need more than one and especially a concrete way to make this before testing. The formula isn’t shown in details from the original paper
In the original video he flipped it 360 degrees off the center of the magnet yet it kept the angle it was pointed at. Wouldn't a ferromagnet want to stay orientated with the field of the magnet and flip the other direction when rotated?
That thread above has him flip the magnet and the same thing happens. Note the sample isn't magnetized itself, it's just ferromagnetic so conducts the field so the tip of the sample is the same and the top of the magnet (and this repels). That happens regardless of flipping the magnet.
Not flipping the magnet, rotating the sample. In https://nitter.net/VanGennepD/status/1688052003216261120 (the video with the rubiks cube) at around 20 seconds they rotate the sample around 360 degrees and it stays at the same angle. Normally I'd expect it would stay at the same angle of the magnetic field.
The above twitter thread it looks like he does that too with the ferromagnetic material. He has a long chain of posts although the first post after the original video has him rotate the sample 180 degrees on top of the magnet (still points up) and then again back to the original position. He does have it flop on top of the magnet at some point and has to poke it back upwards but that happens in the original video too so meh. The way the object moves is just too similar imho. It looks like plain old ferromagnetic material of that shape does this.
The only evidence of superconductivity is zero resistance. When you have a coil, pump it with current and let it rest for few years. If the current is still the same, it's superconductor.
And this new paper finally rigorously explains away all the half-levitation videos. They can no longer be considered any evidence of SC at all.