>The Chinese team is not rejecting the results obtained by the team at UoR—instead, they suggest it is possible that the nitrogen dopant present in their material was of insufficient quantity to produce the desired effect. They also note that in their sample, the dopant was unevenly distributed. They suggest further testing is needed to verify the results obtained by the group at UoR.
Replication can be hard. Failure to replicate shouldn't lead to immediate rejection.
Replication can be hard. Failure to replicate shouldn't lead to immediate rejection.
My understanding, though, is that this researcher has a very problematic track record. It may not be appropriate to give him the benefit of the doubt here.
At the same time extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. The refusal to allow anyone to use their samples, or to apparently provide sufficient information to allow someone else to create the material they claim to be a room temperature superconductor, leans to it reasonably being an incorrect claim. Others point to past behavior as indicating this is fraudulent, but I'm just going to assume it's accidental error.
Maybe we should just ignore all findings until another team has independently reproduced the result.
Even if what the original team concludes is true, a repro failure could indicate that it's under-documented. And if it's under-documented, then has science really moved forward?
Yes, but one team failing to reproduce it doesn't mean it can't be reproduced. Once there's two or three teams unable to reproduce it we can be confident to say "the described method doesn't work".
In this case I mostly agree, but more generally there are so many more wrong ways to do something difficult that you could have 100 failed replications and 2 reproductions and it would just mean 2 people did it right.
The title of the paper is: "Evidence of near-ambient superconductivity in a N-doped lutetium hydride". The Nature editors (and perhaps the authors themselves) covered their backs. They previously had to retract a related paper (from the same group) with much bolder claims.
Both sides are putting their credibility on the line. And this is good Science.
Semi-related: I find the seemingly simple (or basic?) issue of cooling to be really interesting. Mainly because so much energy, effort, and cost is spent on cooling, and our tech and manufacturing industries depend so much on it, yet I don't see anyone trying to "disrupt" it. I very well could not be plugged in enough to know if anyone is or isn't though.
That being said it seems like one could offer cooling solutions that would cost them very little after initial setup, like providing infrastructure in places that are "naturally" very cool. This would probably be either deep in the oceans (I believe Microsoft piloted deep-submerged servers) or high up in the atmosphere, or even space itself.
I fail to see how you could "disrupt" something like cooling solutions in the way I believe your post implies.
First, the ability to remove large volumes of heat from a DC (or analogous plant) is largely dependent on the local geography/environment. In modest cases, that may come down to average ambient temperatures and the cost of electricity. In more extreme cases, access to a massive heat sink such as a body of water may be necessary.
Second, the technology used to evacuate heat is very mature. The modern world depends on HVAC and has for a very long time. While there are incremental advances such as new refrigerants and compressor technology, there is always a cost to performance tradeoff.
If you are trying to cool something to <10K, I don't think it matters all that much what temperature you start at. Unless you start at space, which is already that cold (in shadow) but sending and operating stuff in space is hardly a cheap alternative.
Yeah that's was what I suspected. Outside of space-based infrastructure or at massive crush-depths in the ocean the "naturally" cool places wouldn't really make a dent in the required temperatures.
I don't wonder then if, when the cost of build goes down and speed of transmission goes up, space based infra for these things will be a big industry.
Cooling in space is actually very difficult. While unlit space can be thought of as "cold" (ie you're in thermal equilibrium with a very cold resevoir) vacuum is an incredible insulator so once you get any heat coming in (including the onslaught of heat from the local giant nuclear fireball) it's very difficult to dissipate.
More generally, ambient temperature is irrelevant, what matters is heat transfer rates. If you just stick something someplace cool, it'll heat up. You need something like a flowing river to carry the heat away. This is one reason that things like power plants tend to be built on rivers. For things like computing, total heat production is much less of an issue and can easily be conveyed away from the building by airflow. The difficulty is cooling within the building, as tightly packed server racks are not very conducive to airflow, so you need active cooling.
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Replication can be hard. Failure to replicate shouldn't lead to immediate rejection.
My understanding, though, is that this researcher has a very problematic track record. It may not be appropriate to give him the benefit of the doubt here.
Even if what the original team concludes is true, a repro failure could indicate that it's under-documented. And if it's under-documented, then has science really moved forward?
'Did not' does not necessarily mean 'cannot'.
Both sides are putting their credibility on the line. And this is good Science.
That being said it seems like one could offer cooling solutions that would cost them very little after initial setup, like providing infrastructure in places that are "naturally" very cool. This would probably be either deep in the oceans (I believe Microsoft piloted deep-submerged servers) or high up in the atmosphere, or even space itself.
Just a thought exercise I suppose...
First, the ability to remove large volumes of heat from a DC (or analogous plant) is largely dependent on the local geography/environment. In modest cases, that may come down to average ambient temperatures and the cost of electricity. In more extreme cases, access to a massive heat sink such as a body of water may be necessary.
Second, the technology used to evacuate heat is very mature. The modern world depends on HVAC and has for a very long time. While there are incremental advances such as new refrigerants and compressor technology, there is always a cost to performance tradeoff.
Note that the theoretical limit on cooling performance (CoP) of a Carnot engine is ~7.8. Check out this report by the IEA (page 43) https://iea.blob.core.windows.net/assets/0bb45525-277f-4c9c-...
I don't wonder then if, when the cost of build goes down and speed of transmission goes up, space based infra for these things will be a big industry.
More generally, ambient temperature is irrelevant, what matters is heat transfer rates. If you just stick something someplace cool, it'll heat up. You need something like a flowing river to carry the heat away. This is one reason that things like power plants tend to be built on rivers. For things like computing, total heat production is much less of an issue and can easily be conveyed away from the building by airflow. The difficulty is cooling within the building, as tightly packed server racks are not very conducive to airflow, so you need active cooling.