I think there are multiple big reasons they didn't publish sooner. It is pretty clear that they were convinced, but had insufficient evidence to convince others. Additionally there had recently been a sensational fraud in their field so journals would have been extremely sceptical.
It seems to me they were just in the process of constructing a convincing paper, which included convincing tests and could have been acompanied by sending out samples to independent labs.
Then they were essentially forced to put out what they had, which made their claims even more unconvincing.
It's also worth mentioning that room temperature superconductor "discoveries" happen a lot, and have always turned out to be a disappointment.
It's been considered to be within the same bermuda triangle of scientific vaporware that demarked by quantum computers performing useful tasks, fusion power generation, that sort of thing. Always just around the corner and dude trust me it totally works in my lab. It's basically a meme in physics.
Room temperature superconductivity is not demonstrably impossible like a perpetual motion machine, but mainstream press picking up on yet another set of amazing claims in this field tends to (deservedly) lead to a lot of eye rolling.
The consequence is that if you've made actual progress in the field, you'd better be very sure you are right and able to back it up.
Talking about fusion, isn’t the major part of the Tokamak plant in Cadarache in France, dedicated to cooling down the superconductors to zero temperatures?
If we make a leap in room-temperature superconductors, do we also make a leap in fusion?
It would help with one (out of many) problems in that field, sure. Though it would likely depend quite a bit on the nature of the superconductors we're able to produce.
What’s the track record of open prediction markets (no barrier to join) vs super predictor markets (have some requirements - be it credentials, proven expertise, or track records)?
I keep seeing markets like this posted for LK99 and personally find it unconvincing more than a sentiment analysis of the twitter and news hype cycle.
We're not, and don't think there's a physicist in the world who wouldn't advice tempering expectations at this point. Yes it would be exciting if it's the real deal, but it's also far from the first candidate we've seen and so far they've never been replicated.
An argument probably could be made for normal run of the mill improvements and confirmations that make the scientific state of the art move inch-by-inch versus such ground breaking discoveries that has the potential to help the world to such a big degree. They could very well write their finding in a way that we claim we discovered that this works, these features work, but we suspect these may also work, and XYZ needs to be tested further and those are reserved for future work either they themselves are doing are can be sped up by others participating. They still get the claim as the pioneers for the discovery(rightly so), and still accelerate the rate of practicality.
The only problem would be if they worded it in a sensational way without evidence to backup their claims like almost all battery tech seems to be these days "we discovered a solid state battery that will change the world, make EVs, flying planes, ships, trucks and remote control toys orders of magnitude cheaper, faster, safer blah blah ** once we figure out how to get it working in real world conditions and test it for real. We were talking about possibilities extrapolated from our little theoretical progress."
I still believe the scientific community is smart and moral to accept statements held true by evidence. Scoffs are reserved for hyperbolic claims.
To make my argument, see the recent paper on achieving energy positive nuclear fusion - the authors didnt wait until they could achieve Nett energy positive condition (where total energy to the system is lower than what was produced). They published when they achieved energy to the reaction < energy output from the reaction which was a big deal in itself eventhough the practical goal would be achieved in future by building upon this..
Evidently they did have sufficient evidence. With such a big potential payout of such a world changing material, others have invested a few days of time into verifying their rushed paper and indeed their weak evidence was enough.
Again, with a payout so big and ease of replication fairly low, the evidence doesn’t even have to be that convincing.
> I think there are multiple big reasons they didn't publish sooner. It is pretty clear that they were convinced, but had insufficient evidence to convince others. Additionally there had recently been a sensational fraud in their field so journals would have been extremely sceptical.
But hasn't it been 24 years since they discovered LK-99? Or am I missing something? If that's true wouldn't it be a tragic shame that it wasn't revealed earlier, so that progress and applications could occur?
It was originally discovered in 1999 but was shelved for over a decade due to insufficient funding. As I understand it, they only received funding in 2018 and became more confident in their discovery after that.
I agree, the world still doesn't really care about science. And yet everyone's living lives that are all the more better because of science.
It's a human problem, we only care about what happens to us or our tribe and most of our focus is not very forward looking. We're better than other animals as evolution favoured us looking just a little more forward than other animals, but now we have to escape the timekeeping of our meaty flesh and think "if we dump money into science then this generation will get some cool stuff and the next will get a shit tonne of cool stuff".
It seems to me they were just in the process of constructing a convincing paper, which included convincing tests and could have been acompanied by sending out samples to independent labs. Then they were essentially forced to put out what they had, which made their claims even more unconvincing.