LK99 -- A new room temperature superconductor?

[Music] foreign to this week's science news today we'll talk about the new superconductor claim bad news for new physics a Quantum radar how to print origami space-based solar power full moon station a dire prediction for the collapse of an ocean circulation Europe's first hyperloop test why NASA shoots lasers at the rainforest and of course the telephone wearing the biggest science news this week has without doubt been that of a Korean group that says they found a superconductor that works at room temperature and atmospheric pressure in case you didn't have time to make sense of the headlines don't worry I have a summary on July 22nd a paper with three Korean authors appeared on the preprint server archive titled the first room temperature ambient pressure superconductor that might sound obscure but in plain English it means basically please give us a Nobel Prize a superconductor is a material that has zero Electric distance that repels magnets we know a lot of superconductors but the known ones either require very low temperatures or high pressure or both this is why there's this white smoke in the video that's evaporating liquid nitrogen which is required for cooling the superconductor if we had a material that was superconducting in an everyday environment that had dramatically improved the efficiency of the entire electric grid could make the hyperloop a reality and would probably even make a bigger particle collider affordable the new superconductor allegedly works at temperatures below 127 degrees Celsius they called it LK 99 and no that doesn't stand for lots of kryptonite it stands for Lee and Kim and the year in which they first synthesize the material the three authors of this paper also applied for an international patent last year which was published in March it later emerged that the third author of the paper Quan uploaded the paper without knowledge of the first two authors that isn't the only weird thing something else that's weird with the paper is that it doesn't contain a measurement for the drop of electric resistivity it just contains a figure for the conductivity at room temperature word are still just two hours later another similar paper was uploaded to the archive this one with three more authors and that does contain a measurement of the resistivity as a function of temperature but the resistivity doesn't just drop to zero at a critical temperature it first drops to a non-zero value and then slowly decreases that's odd but at least it does go to zero you say well as Alex Kaplan pointed out that's kind of hard to say because the unit on the vertical axis is so huge that even the resistivity of standard Metals would be visually indistinguishable from zero now neither of those papers has been peer-reviewed but it turns out that the paper was published in April in a Korean journal with all six authors I have found that article somewhat difficult to understand the three author paper on the archive seems to Signal some kind of tension in the group about who deserves credit for the discovery they also uploaded a video that shows how the material kind of floats above a magnet superconductors do that but so do other materials in the video you can see that the material seems to be repelled from the magnet on one side but attracted on the other and that it at some point briefly Falls onto the magnet they say it's because the material has defects but I lost hope for this discovery when I saw the video this doesn't look like the meissen effect to me many condensed metal people have argued that it looks like the material is more likely to be diamagnetic than superconducting diamagnetic materials are repelled by magnets nevertheless several groups immediately went and tried to synthesize the material to reproduce the claim with that around Andrew mccallop even live streaming their experiment on Twitch I'm recording this video on Sunday and I don't know what's going to happen in the next couple of days so I have to make a wild guess here I suspect that the first reproduction attempts will find that the material isn't super conducting and there'll be some discussion about whether the stuff was synthesized correctly and then we'll never hear of it again though if this episode encourages small apps to live stream their experiments on Twitch that might change the world after all scientists from the University of Colorado have made the most precise measurement of the electric dipole moment of the electron and I have concluded that a lot of new physics is unlikely to lie within the range of the Large Hadron Collider the electric dipole moment of the electron is Loosely speaking a measure for the shape of the charge distribution of the electron they did their measurements by holding about twenty thousand Hefner fluoride ions in an iron trap with electric and magnetic fields then they used lasers to bring the ions into a superposition of two spin States finally they measured the energy difference between the two states that difference depends on the electric dipole movement they didn't find any evidence for a contribution from the electric dipole so that allows them to set a bound which is tighter than any previous bounds this story has widely been reported as having something to do with the supposed mystery of why there's more matter than antimatter in the universe falsely claiming that the standard model predicts the universe should contain matter and antimatter in the same amounts this claim goes back to a comment on the paper which was also published in science which I find hugely worrisome if you don't have a PhD in physics you can ignore the next two sentences but for the rest of you over educated Bunch time evolution in the standard model is hamiltonian the present state is a consequence of the initial State and the time evolution of course does not predict the initial state okay back to the paper that they didn't find any sign of an electric dipole moment allows them to rule out anything that could cause it and that includes a lot of conjectured new particles up to energies of 40 tev That's well beyond what the LHC can test that tells us two things first chances that the NHC will find anything new just went down even further second it's a good example of how high Precision measurements are a cheaper way of looking for new physics than building larger and larger colliders hello hi Rishi yes yes we do have news from Scotland one second a new study has found that the Loch Ness monster isn't a giant eel they're now looking into whether Bigfoot isn't just a misunderstood lumberjack that's right they should first make sure that dark matter isn't a joint deal I totally agree well thanks for calling in bye a group of researchers artsiana Ross Leon has developed a Quantum radar for microwaves and has shown that it outperforms its non-quantum relatives this Quantum radar is an example of quantum Metrology that's Metro as in meter and it means it's got something to do with measurement not meteorology that's clouds and stuff Quantum Metrology means you use quantum effects to make more precise measurements that might sound somewhat oxymoronic because isn't quantum mechanics all about uncertainty yes but quantum mechanics also has entanglement that's a non-local correlation between particles that's stronger than any non-quantum correlation the quantum radar uses entangled particles of light the photons the basic idea is fairly simple though the devil is and the details you create a pair of entangled photons keep one in a Quantum resonator and send the other one out to probe for the Target if the target is there some of the photons come back and you compare them to the entangled partner that you kept the relation between the two can reveal information about the sample faster than normal photons could in their paper they demonstrated that this was actually the case they saw 20 faster radar detection compared to non-quantum Raiders this Quantum Advantage has been demonstrated before in the visible spectrum but not for microwaves microwaves are much much more challenging because in this frequency range there's more noise from thermal vibrations while Quantum radar sounds pretty exciting this device isn't going to be used to scan the skies for UFOs anytime soon to begin with because they did their measurements in a dilution refrigerator and if we had the UFOs in a dilution refrigerator I'm sure we could think of easier ways to study them than a Quantum Raider researchers at the University of Tokyo have combined 2D printing techniques with chemistry and the Art of origami to create a soft folding fabrication method they use the commercial inkjet UV printer to scratch patterns onto each side of a heat sensitive plastic sheet when the sheet is dipped into hot water it folds itself into an intricate 3D object like this Hut this clever manufacturing solution for 3D objects Works faster than conventional 3D printing and also wastes less Plastics the Tokyo team says the new method is almost three times faster than previous methods and has more than a thousand times higher resolution which allows them to create all sorts of geometric knickknacks that's so cool can't assemble that IKEA bed just Add Water the Swiss company austral has put forward a 269 Pages report on the possibility of building a solar power satellite that could one day supply energy to a moon base they developed the design as part of the European space agency's campaign for clean energy that called for new ideas for solar power from space the company proposed v-shaped solar panels in a helix configuration that kind of resembles a butterfly fully extended the satellite would be about a square kilometer in diameter they have come up with a well thought out way a to build its components mainly on the moon and from lunar resources and leave the assembly in space to robots the power station would be hovering at a LaGrange point between the Earth and the moon according to their estimates it should be able to generate about 23 megawatts of power that's enough to power a large-scale factory they think their design will also help scale up space-based solar power into an affordable and environmentally friendly solution for our Earthly energy needs that sounds amazing let's put that on the to-do list right after nuclear fusion Quantum Computing and immortality research out of the University of Copenhagen suggests that a drastic slowdown in the Atlantic meridianal overturning circulation amok for short could be much more imminent than previously believed the a mark is part of a big current system that transports warm water North in the Atlantic Ocean a slow down our collapse of the amok would likely trigger a significant drop in temperatures across middle and Northern Europe while warming the southern hemisphere once the amok stops it could take thousands of years for it to resume the amok should not be confused with the Gulf Stream I explained the difference in an earlier video global warming is the problem for the amok because this circulation is partly driven by the difference in water temperature between the Equator and the poles and global warming heats up the poles faster reducing the difference the other issue is that the return Loop of the amok relies on heavy salt water sinking to the bottom of the ocean and melting fresh water ice dilutes the soil content scientists used to think that an Amo collapse was unlikely to happen in the near future while its currents have slowed slightly over the past Century the amok is highly variable the current ipcc reports has the amox unlikely to collapse before the end of the century with medium confidence the authors of the new paper now did a new data extrapolation and say that the amok is likely to collapse around mid-century under the current scenario of future emissions these predictions are extremely difficult because the amok isn't just one current but many it's a complex and probably partly chaotic system however in recent years observations have indicated that the amok is slowing down and might be approaching a Tipping Point now that there is one study that disagrees with some others doesn't mean this one's right it does however demonstrate one more time that our understanding of the atmosphere ocean system is insufficient we don't even know what changes we need to prepare for in case you've been visiting Greece recently and think it might not be all that bad if temperatures in Europe dropped it would probably be very difficult for plants and Wildlife to adapt and no we can't just grow strawberry ice instead by the way if you prefer reading or listening to watching videos you can now also find us on sub stack at sciencewtg.substack.com and on Spotify and many other podcast apps under the name signs with zabina Europe's first hyperloop test segment is now an operation at the Technical University of Munich on July 10th it completed its very first trial carrying members of the construction team through its 24 meter long test tube after being certified for passenger use the term hyperloop was coined by Elon Musk to refer to a magnetically levitating train in a vacuum tunnel that could reach Hypersonic speeds the test system in Munich is far below reaching the speeds mosque envisioned the passenger port in the Munich Loop could travel at 800 kilometers per hour that's four times faster than the typical passenger train theoretically the test segment isn't long enough to reach such high speeds it's hard to test that kind of speed and momentum on such short test segments the team will now use the segment to study how efficient the magnetic gravitation is how well the vacuum works and why the thing is called a hyperloop a team of environmental scientists has studied the rainforest with lasers they use data from NASA's Jedi mission that is a laser mounted on the ISS Jedi stands for Global ecosystem Dynamics investigation and has been in operation since 2018. this device scans the surface of Earth with lasers and measures what comes back this makes it possible to measure Heights and structures very precisely for example that of forests Jedi should not be confused with Jedi which is also something with space and lasers but why Jedi sense disturbances in the fourth Jedi census disturbances in forests being aboard the ISS Jedi has the advantage of being in low earth orbits providing unique vantage point to study the world's forests from space from this position Jedi's laser can shoot into the forest canopy and collect data enabling researchers to create detailed 3D maps of the forest structure from the top of the canopy down to the ground in the new study they found that most tropical forests have a peak in the number of leaves at about 15 meters rather than at the Canopy top they also found the forest structure to be simpler and more exposed to sunlight than previously thought this study helps researchers understand how millions of species in the rainforest canopy might adapt to changing temperatures and collects information about the forests biomass and carbon storage That's essential for understanding Earth's carbon cycle and for fighting climate change I hope our weekly summary makes science news a bit more digestible but they are small to life than just science if you like to be well informed all around I want to recommend that you check out morning Brew who have been sponsoring this video morning Brew is a free newsletter that brings you up to speed in the morning with a well-corated selection of relevant news about tech business and finance they get straight to the point and aren't wasting time this newsletter has really cut down on the Clutter I used to scroll through in the morning it isn't only an excellent selection of what you need to know it's also witty and just well written if you often find yourself on Twitter clueless about what other people are even talking about morning Brew will clue you in I really feel like I understand the word a lot better since I subscribed to the newsletter morning Brew comes seven days a week takes just a few seconds to sign up to and yes it's really entirely free so there's no reason to not give it a try to check it out go to morningbrewdaily.com Sabina or click on the custom link in the info below so they know I sent you thanks for watching see you next week

Channel: Sabine Hossenfelder

Views: 554,211

Keywords: science without the gobbledygoook, hossenfelder, science news sabine, science humor, LK99, LK99 superconductor, superconductor, amoc, gulf stream, gulf stream collapse, climate change, quantum physics, quantum radar, science news, hyperloop, hyperloop munich, science funny

Id: RjzL9cS3VW8

Length: 18min 42sec (1122 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 31 2023