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Light bulb moment. Photo by Diz Play on Unsplash
LK-99, we’ve been waiting so long…
LK-99. This is a name you may be hearing a lot of in the future.
Or maybe not.
It isn’t a new Star Wars droid character, though it sounds like one. Instead it’s the mysterious, and possibly miraculous, substance at the center of the wildest story in science this past week.
LK-99 superconductor research breakthrough could mark ‘new era for humankind’
Imagine riding a levitating train at speeds of 14,000 miles per hour — cutting the trip from New York to Los Angeles to just 20 minutes.
A team of South Korean researchers say the science fiction fantasy is closer to reality than ever before with what they claim is a revolutionary breakthrough in superconductors.
The researchers published their findings July 22 — immediately sending the close-knit scientific community into a viral lather.
“We believe that our new development will be a brand-new historical event that opens a new era for humankind,” the researchers wrote.
Way to manage expectations, guys.
But if LK-99 does what they claim it does, “new era for mankind” could be an understatement.
Their paper, which was not peer-reviewed, claimed they were able to synthesize the world’s first superconductor able to conduct electricity at room temperature and ambient pressure from a lead-based material known as LK-99.
“If it wasn’t clear why this is a big deal, if successful LK-99 would be a watershed moment for humanity easily on-par with the invention of the transistor,” engineer Andrew Cote wrote on his X profile.
I haven’t science hype on this level since they unveiled the Segway.1
Why is that?
A superconductor is able to conduct an electric current with virtually zero resistance — thus allowing electricity to flow through it without any energy loss.
Such a superconductor – working at room temperature and ambient pressure – is one of the holy grails of materials science, a development that dreamers suggest could maximize the efficiency of our energy grids and supercharge fusion energy production, speed up progress on quantum supercomputers or help usher in an era of superfast transport.
So even though the team in South Korea come off as amateurs, other scientists around the world — both amateurs in their kitchens and professional researchers in government labs from the US, China, and elsewhere are racing to confirm and reproduce or debunk the South Korean team’s reported results.
This post by Peter Xing on Medium, LK-99 : Everything We Know So Far gives a good summary of the story so far:
Since 1999, a tiny group of Korean scientists, working in obscurity and in their off-time, pursue the dying wishes of their materials professor who has his own theory about room temperature and pressure superconductors, a century-defining material, the holy grail of materials science and an instant Nobel prize.
A week ago, one of them went rogue and published a paper describing how to produce their substance, LK-99, which may or not be this holy grail material. It requires no exotic materials or equipment to reproduce, but the paper omits a lot of detail about the specifics of the synthesis.
They accompany it with pictures and a video. There are mistakes in the paper, but the authors say they are trivial, will be fixed, and all of them stand by their claims, even as they feud with each other.
This kicks off a world-wide race to debunk or reproduce. US, Chinese, Japanese, and Indian labs all drop what they’re doing and give LK-99 a shot. One guy at a startup in California tries on his own as well, and 10,000 people tune in to watch a Twitch stream of a webcam pointed at a kiln. The process takes a few days.
A Russian anime catgirl joins the fracas, ruthlessly making fun of both the original Korean scientists for their bizarre methodology, and of Western/Chinese labs for simply following the steps without understanding what they do. She applies the Soviet technique of ignoring the steps outlined and instead trying to figure out what they actually do, and comes up with her own procedure.
(You need a Medium membership to read the rest of Xing’s article.)
The CNET article I linked above goes into more detail about the response of physicists around the world to the LK-99 claims and sounds an appropriate note of caution. (Cold fusion anyone?)
It could be the Korean amateur team made errors in their work that produced false results. It could be an elaborate hoax.
It could change everything.
Thursday Things doesn’t cover breaking news very well — unless it breaks on Thursday — and this is a rapidly evolving story. My best advice for the latest developments is to Google “LK-99” and see what’s happening!
One shotting cancer
I like to find stories about promising new treatments and cures for deadly diseases. This one is about a potential cancer-fighting pill that can take on every kind of solid tumor cancer at once. Which would be fantastic if it works out.
Scientists have developed a holy grail cancer drug that kills all solid cancer tumors while leaving other cells unharmed.
The new molecule targets a protein present in most cancers that helps tumors grow and multiply in the body.
It is significant because this protein - the proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA) - was previously thought to be 'undruggable'.
The drug was tested on 70 different cancer cells in the lab - including those derived from breast, prostate, brain, ovarian, cervical, skin, and lung cancer - and was effective against them all.
The pill is the culmination of 20 years of research and development by the City of Hope Hospital in Los Angeles, one of America's largest cancer centers.
That said, there is a long path between “promising results in the lab” and an actual safe, effective and approved medicine reaching real patients. As with LK-99, it’s huge if true.
Emus 1, Australian Army 0
If you’ve never heard of the Great Emu War of 1932, when the Australian army declared war on emus — and lost — here is a quick read about it.
The Great Emu War of 1932 | A Unique Australian Conflict
1932. Emus were trampling around and munching on the wheat crops in Western Australia. The Army was called in to solve the problem:
On the 2nd of November 1932 the military traveled to Campion, where some 50 emus had been seen. The birds were out of range of the guns, so the locals attempted to herd the emus into an ambush. However the birds split into small groups and ran so that they were difficult targets.
The wily emus immediately split their forces and reverted to guerrilla tactics. The army never had a chance…
The unconquerable emu. Photo by Melissa Keizer on Unsplash
Thank you for reading!
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Seriously, go back and read some of the hype for that when it was still a mystery project. People would visit inventor Dean Kamen’s lab for a sneak peek and then come out blathering about how this new invention would change the world.
Does innovation need hype? The case of the Segway.
Is hype a good predictor? As it turns out, much of the time it’s not, even when it’s turned up to 11.
One of my favorite examples is the Segway Human Transporter. I vividly remember how it was announced in 2001. The press was in full-on hype mode. Jeff Bezos was on TV saying that this was going to revolutionize transportation forever. Steve Jobs speculated that cities would be built around it. Everybody was excited.
It was embarrassing. Flash forward to 2020: Segway to End Production of Its Original Personal Transporter
Not that the Segway scooter wasn’t cool, and perhaps it did change things for mall cops and tour guides. But the hype was excessive. And the infernal e-scooter soon surpassed the clunky Segway as a sidewalk menace.