🔥LK-99 superconductor- everything we know so far - Kdrama included

Hello. Hello, everyone. There's a lot of you here, and I wanna welcome a shoot for up on stage while we wait for a few more guests, and then we can get started. Thank you so much for taking the time joining us. as you're as interested as all of us in this very exciting, very confusing, very potentially groundbreaking news. So I wanna introduce 2 folks up on stage 2 folks up on stage already, and bringing up another one just now. And hey, Andrew. Hey.

Hey, How are you guys?

Doing well. How are you?

A little bit you know, the palms are a little bit sweaty. This is a insane turnout. Twitter is indeed a public space on because that we have. And, hopefully, spaces or two spaces, whatever they call it now, will hold. And I only invite Sam here to speak as well. Hey, Tobias. How are you?

I'm good. I'm good. So good to good to, you know, hear from you guys in person, Alex. Thanks for putting the space together.

Thirdly. Andrew, we're gonna introduce Andrew, but many folks who are here already follow you and and follow your work. How how's your evening going, Andrew?

Lee, this has been a wild ride. Thanks for putting all this together. It's gonna be great to get all the information in one place for the first time. This is my first time experiencing the full volume of the Internet, and just been a a lot of fun to see all the positivity around the progress.

That's great. So I'll do my best that, you know, Mother think this. I will maybe preface this that I am not a scientist. Many of the terms that we'll hear today in the space I've heard for the first time a couple of days ago. What I am is a Twitter for many, many years, and I have collected a a list of folks who I I personally wanted to follow to kinda see the updates as they roll out, and we've seen many, many things roll out very quick. with a lot of confusion and different replication attempts from different places. And I just compiled the list for myself. I started following.

8 to buy had incredible incredible content diving into the the timeline. I found I I wanna introduce thank you. Am I saying this right? I think you need to hit the the mute button in a mute. If this is your first time talking on RESTASIS. let me know if you're able to do that. And if not, we'll try to solve this. And out as I was collecting folks, And I I started seeing that Andrew started doing their application attempts and even doing Twitch.

Can you hear me?

Can you hear me? We can hear you. Hey, Sam Kim. How are you?

It it it's the noon in South Korea, and I'm fine.

the afternoon. Right?

It's 1. Yes. Yes. It's the 1 PM.

Awesome. And so I was just doing an introduction maybe as you were telling up, you maybe not heard some of it. However, folks in the audience who followed this kind of thread and how we came to be here I have a a thread that I'll post on top here that has all the folks from the Twitter list that I forgot. And San Kyung and his his team is basically the reason for the space. Me and Nathan kind of found Sunqun. Am I saying Sunqun correctly? Is that is that the right way to say this?

My name is. Your your, yeah, your pronunciation is not actually not.

Okay. I'll I'll turn my best to put months at the at the right names. And so we both me and 8 to 5, a a 34 in Saint Kyung, who's in Seoul currently, and definitely speaks the language we don't speak, and so there's a lot of insight and translation. And so, yeah, I guess we'll will get started, so feel free to present yourself, and then talk a little bit about your last few days and how you came around getting in this topic. and then how kinda what you found so far.

I I didn't really expect to to speak.

That's okay. That's okay.

That's put me put me on the spot. Yeah.

I don't wanna put you on the spot, but give us maybe a brief summary.

Maybe maybe do you do you want me to help Sanyon?

Yes, please. Okay. You you have read my right top, so maybe maybe you can explain what's going on.

Okay. So I'm I'm just gonna I'm just gonna just to preface everything, I I'm writing a work of fiction. So all of you guys are just participating in an experiment. So but I'm trying to keep everything to kinda, like, factual and trying to interpret what what is kind of happening on the ground. Right? Shyam is much more factual, and he he has actually been doing a primary source work. So he's been actually digging up the actual Korean language science papers. He's been sitting down with friends They've kinda, you know, summarized and kind of tried to understand what's going on.

And he's really the one that's, you know, put together this that that the you know, the the the mentor, you know, whose name, I think, in some transliterations comes out to TS's chair, some Donsick He the mentor was basically in superconductors in this idea of this kind of 1 dimensional super and he had this theory.

That so the name is che. che. Oh, sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He was a a professor in the Korean University's Department of Chemistry.

Yeah. And and so he he had this idea, this theory, and he had graduate students. and one of those graduate students was Lee, and Lee kind of took up the mantle of this this theory. And then they, you know, tied up with who was an experiment list.

And then they kinda discovered this trace this coast of a trace of a material in 1990 And at that point, what happens is having discovered this trace, their path kind of diverge this, and Kim, the experimentalist, goes on to do a masters, not in superconductors. So he does his masters in something else, and then he does the battery materials kind of PhD, and he graduates in 2008.

while Lee continues on the superconductor path, does experimental any when he publishes his PhD. It's both a theory and synthesis of superconductors. And then he graduates, and then he he goes to work as a science adjunct professor, which we which we just found out. Like, a computer science adjunct professor, and he's there for about, you know, 4, 5 5 years. He doesn't publish. And and I'm guessing at this point, he kinda gets, like, you know, cashier out of out of academia completely, and he sets up a consulting firm, basically, Q Center.

And they start taking on consulting work. And and then, again, the timeline is a little bit unclear on whether or not they continue to work on on the on on the product on what they discovered. And what happens then is in 2017, Chey Dongksik passes.

And as he passes, he he gets his former students together, and he asked them to finish off what they started to find this superconducting material that they saw a ghost of a trace of in 1999. And he passes, and they have no money. basically. Song Young has done, again, primary source research, and, you know, the the office space is basically, like, like, a two story building, you know, somewhere in the you know, in in Seoul. It's a very modern kind of office. They don't have much money.

My guess my guess is that they need Kim. because KIM is the experimentalist, and I'm guessing also that none of the theory works at this point. The only thing that they have to go on is that they actually did find something in 1999. And Kim, I'm guessing, is also quite practical because he didn't do he didn't pursue the superconductors for the PhD. Right? Because he's quite practical, he's like, dude, you get me money. I'll join you. You don't have money. I'm not joining you for your wild goose, Jason. Right?

So Lee goes out and he recruits Kwan. And Kwan is kind of like you know, he's he's a US PhD. He has a research university, you know, position. recruit them, and they get funding. And I think I think Sam Young, you were you were saying that Kwon is the one on the, you know, National Science Foundation of Korea's like you know, list, like, grant. Right? I I think that's what you said.

So the paper mentions the public grant from South Korea. called the National Resource Foundation, which is like National Science Foundation in United States. And Korn is listed as a primary invest mitigate our PI, if then.

Right?

Mhmm.

Yeah. Yeah. That's right. Okay. So he he's the PI. So they recruit him as the PI, and Jade Kim, who is, you know, Lee's partner, basically leaves his very comfortable position as a research director in a hearing aid test.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yes.

Yes. Yeah. Hearing aid Yeah. I Or the eye test there? Yeah. Yeah. For the ISER tech and in manufacture, the battery is specialized for the hearing aid. code. It is a medical device. They have a different standard from other batteries. And company a small business in South Korea, but seems competitive worldwide.

So he leaves his let me let me -- Yeah. Go ahead. Just real quick and to give folks a quick summary. The main paper that we saw the explosion from that was published on July 22nd, so a week and and almost a day we're, like, almost 8 days into this. The three people that you you just said, besides the first professor, Choi or chair or Troy and or several places write it separately. So the the three people, SoftBank, Jihoon Kim, which is the LK in LK 99, right, Lee and Kim. And the third person you just mentioned is Young Wan, Kwan. Yes.

Those are the the 3 authors on the paper that kind of was published on our side out of the blue. 8 days ago. Please continue.

Right. And then so at this at this point, they're in 2017, And, you know, Lee goes out and does the fundraising. He recruits Kwan, who's the research professor, Kwon is basically he's on the paper. He he's he's the principal investigator on the grant, but he's still a professor at university. So he's basically, I'm guessing, like, a day a day in the, you know, in the office at Q Center, very modest place. I think the grand size is pretty small, and they get this ESR machine.

And again, from what I can tell, the ESR machine only came knows how to use it. Because none of the other people are actually synthetic, you know, synthesis people. They're all like theory guys, Kuan is a physicist. And Kim himself, JH Kim himself, he's looking for something which you have to know what you're looking for, right? Because that's what he says in his LinkedIn. He's like, I'm looking for some if you don't know what you're looking for, then forget about it. Right?

But he he knows what he's looking for, and they refine, they refine, and they refine, and he keeps doing experiments. He keeps refining the experiment, and he goes through, like, a 1000 iterations. And somehow, starting in 2018, somehow, By the middle of 2018, they find it. So that that's a surprising thing for me because they've I I I suspect they they've been working on it you know, before or, you know, Jay and Lee had a breakthrough on their theory, so they knew how to narrow the workspace down. But somehow in at the end of the day, Kim is the one grinding.

Through that 1000 experiments, finally, to get, you know, a sample that works.

And then they start by -- No. No.

No.

No.

No.

No. No. No. No. No. No? So so besides the two papers, there is a paper published in April written in Korean. And In their own words, they describe what what prompted their breakthrough in 2018.

and it said that so so they are putting the material in a quartz tube And because they called it to pass Quartz tube [...] and broke, And the material left after the breaking of the glass was had the property they wanted. So so it was an accidental discovery.

So can can you repeat that? Like, they what what happened? They put it in the quartz tube, and the quartz tube broke accidentally?

Yes.

Yes. Yes.

I see. And and And that what's the breakthrough in 2018? I see. It's what I'm saying.

Yeah. I just wanna confirm what I hear. The breaking of quartz tube that led to the incidental discovery. This is this is the the breakthrough as it's written in the first paper in Korean? Yes. Yes. Okay. So I'll just call ASAP, I'll just give it back for some logistics. Folks, if you look up on on top of the space, there's a few tweets we're pinning. And as we go along, we're gonna add some information on top of this. The 3rd the third we pin from dystopian breaker has a link to the original kind of Korean paper. So please go ahead, Datapai.

So so quick -- Okay. point.

Yeah.

Go ahead. Go ahead. This this could be important because, you know, as as soon as you expose it to the atmosphere, your getting hydration. And hydration, you know, might be harmful, might be helpful. From this, like, little account, it seems like it it it either didn't do anything or was helpful. But, like, knowing what temperature it was at when it broke, and and things like that could could actually be really pertinent.

Yeah. So, absolutely, like so it's not they he does do the 1000 experiments, but the 1000 experiments, whether that gets him there or not, at one point in the experiment, the quartz tube breaks, that gets them there. They get lucky. Right? So they get they get lucky. And then after that, things proceed pretty quick They isolate they isolate it, and then they they get the crystallization. They start working on the papers. They start on the patents, and they start also trying to figure out the chemical vapor deposition process. They seem to have made some way some headway on the chemical vapor deposition process.

And then, you know, sometime around September 2021, something start happening. Quant takes a position, sabbatical at, I think, Seoul University at that point. I'm not sure whether that means he's putting more time in the office or not. And then that fast forwards to yeah. Go go ahead, Sunggham.

No. No.

No.

You go ahead. Okay. So that fast forward about March 2023 when basically the international patent has been filed. And Kuan leaves the team at this time. I'm not sure when Kim comes on board. That's not very to me at what point Yum Tuck comes on board.

So I'm guessing it's after the nature, the nature paper gets dinged in 2020, And and and, you know, the the other thing that strikes me also is that every single person on the team is very aware of every single hoax in superconductors to date. Right? They they they all know the space well, They've seen every single hoax before. They know they know what the hoaxes look like. They know what to look for. They know what diamagmatism is. So I I I don't think yeah.

Go ahead. So the date is So the day before the yesterday, Andrew McCully posted on his Twitter the translation of the Korean paper at Doctor Lloyd. Is that correct? And can can you so so how did you translate and can Can you say something about it?

Andrew, I think he's Frank to you. So I can just ring to you. You posted a translated paper also. Right?

Yes. Now that was just a machine translation from Google. That was just a very cursory translation.

Okay.

So in basically, quantity is team in March, and then you have the kind of papers being released, you know, haphazardly. The next the next point that of them is that they had started releasing the papers app as early, like, late last week.

And and then and then we have -- And by the way, I think it's it's important to highlight by Kwan, the guy who's no longer affiliated with with QCenter. Like, this this sole endeavor a business venture that's funded for for this for this purpose. Kwan is no longer affiliated with that. We've seen Sankyo posted an interview in Korea from Friday where I think both of the and Kim say that Kwan, the guy who published the first paper, is no longer affiliated.

there were some speculation as to maybe the limit of three people on the paper is the limit of the Nobel Prize or 2 or 3 authors. I don't have this confirmed, but this is speculation going around. And it's important to note like, both of them say that the paper was not ready when it was released, and it was released by Juan, the guy who left the first paper. 2 hours later, 2 than 20 minutes later, another paper gets released in the in the same archive with, I wouldn't say, 5 authors. not including Kwan. Right?

So Lee -- Yeah. And -- The user the the user name is TumTuk team, the the college professor from, you know, Virginia is the username who who pushes the r archive paper at that Yeah.

Chantakim is a big name with the 18 days of 45, and If you look at the paper, there is an error message in Korean saying that Bloomberg could not be found. It is a neutral error message when you did the some of the typesetting wrong.

And You just don't probably see the room temperature, sugar conductor paper with the error deaths that had to bookmark cannot be found if you are following if you are in not in emergency.

So so it does feel to us at least from the summary so far that the paper that Quang released has different information than than the second paper, and the second paper feels like it was released in the Harry and included more people that currently work at Q Center, including Hyundai Kim. And Sonja, owner, you this question. You mentioned his h h score or something score. Can can you explain the importance of that score for him talking?

creates someone else to the explanation.

Okay. So so the h score is, you know, because we have a web web savvy audience here. It's kind of like a page rank for, you know, researchers. It shows you how influential how influential the researcher was, and so a higher score means that more people have been citing your paper.

Go ahead, Ben. Yeah. More precisely. So, like, an h index of, say, 40 means you have 40 papers that each have 40 citations or more. That's a little tricky to understand. So, like, if I get another paper that has only 30 citations, it won't affect my h index at all. I have to get a 41st paper that has 41 citations to to to make it rise.

So I think it's it's safe to say HUNTAKIM, the guy who submitted the second paper, potentially haphazardly. Correct? Like, we're we're we're saying there's 2 hours after the first one. So likely prompted by these events is a well well sighted very well sighted scientist with a very high kind of confidence score. It's not like a random person of the street that decide that there's now a superconductor of room temperature and, you know, verified it.

Okay. Sorry for being side tracked, but I just checked the the motion related to Korean paper or not to talk through it by Andrew. And on the page 5, we clearly said that the quartz tube was destroyed due to internal pressure during rapid cooling of reaction and etcetera. So I think, in fact, nobody really read ready carefully. It is it is just there about the quartz tube once destroyed.

Yeah. So I think I think it's yeah. Definitely, like, probably the the rest of us are are are not very close readers. of of that paper.

So so We can we can continue on after the upload to the archive.

Indeed. So okay. So they they they it goes into our our archive, and then all of the events of the last week happen you know, I don't think any of us expected any of the events to happen. So we've all just been kind of, like, following along and seeing what happens next. I had no idea that there was a metallics conference in South Korea, and I I definitely had, like, no idea that you know, one of the authors would show up there, and it gets posted on Twitter. And so and then and then Seung Young points it out on the FM Korea Football message board.

And so we translate, you know, what the audience reaction was in in in a bad translation to get -- So -- -- whatever message was across.

-- mind let me interject here because this is around the that I found out about this. Alex, frozen coffee. Alex, I forgot his nickname. We invited him here. He posted a a very long Twitter thread that got the attention of the algorithm and then boosted of this room template ambin pressure, superconductor paper from Korea. I think he only started talking about the first paper, and then after the second paper also came out. And I think at this point, or somewhere around there. Andrew, you found out about this. What what did you first hear about, you know, Twitter drama around LK 90 Right?

And, Andrew, feel free to at least produce you know, introduce yourself officially and BARDA and how you're interacting with this.

Yeah. So I was just cruising the Internet at night, and this came across. I think my my Twitter feed And so I I'm incredibly curious. This is something that has been a bit of a a hobby for me. And so I was always interested in superconductors, so it it caught my attention. I'm a mechanical engineer. So full disclosure. I am not a subject matter expert. I am simply an aerospace engineer that has a lot of curiosity and some assets at his disposal.

And so reading this paper, it it struck me just the simplicity of of the process. And so I realized that I probably had the ability to replicate with full fidelity, the process that was described in the paper. And so that within about 30 minutes, I I realized I should simply start down this road that Twitter was already picking up at the time.

There's some conversations going back and forth and the it was the classic scenario where on every superconductor discussion, there is the same conversation that happens over and over again. And this synthesis appeared so simple that it seemed that the most expedient thing was to simply test it physically. And so my my work is very receptive of of after hours projects. I'm I'm known as the the guy that has really aggressive hobbies, let's say.

And so I'm always in the back doing something interesting with materials or automation. So within 30 minutes of reading the paper, I had ticked off orders to various chemical suppliers. I've reached out to overseas vendors. to try to procure a couple of the the elements. And so it was just kind of an offhand comment that I made on Twitter and and then the ball really started rolling, and I realized that everyone wanted to see this this made.

And so it was just supposed to be a a a fun little project, but I was really overwhelmed by the the response. Everyone wanted to to see this done. I think there's this incredible curiosity, there's this incredible drive. People wanna see, like, incredible things happen for the the the human race. And so something if this magnitude pops up, everyone's motivated to drop everything and investigate. And I think that's where we're at.

And I think you met the algorithm at the right place where folks were excited about the future and think this could bring a lot of changes around the future, and you started saying, hey. You know? Here's a here's a direct approach. Let's try to replicate this. And I I wanna just highlight the fact the the materials involved in creating this. And the process, some folks say and please talk about this. Some folks say that has been an attempt at a hoax, it wouldn't be as simple. They wouldn't have released a simple instruction manual kind of quote, unquote simple that many labs around the work they replicate given the materials and and the right equipment. Right?

So -- Yeah.

So -- -- straightforwardness of this potentially shows some stuff.

So this this is a good time for for a PSA. I mean, I know that that Andrew is well aware of this, and and and many of peep of the people who've been following it. But in case anybody who's listening isn't. The these compounds in vapor form at any rate are are highly talked music, and you you have to know lab safety. If you're gonna start trying to experiment with them, you need things like, a glove box and, you know, all kinds of PPE, a fume hood, everything else. Taking risks with this kind of thing is just really not worth it.

I I I can't stress that. Absolutely. Don't try this at home.

kids definitely. Yeah. Absolutely. There's a lot of chatter in the beginning in the first couple hours about this can be replicated in a garage And, you know, I thought it was interesting. I thought maybe we've got the opportunity to to do it safely. we've got all the right equipment. We've got, you know, the the 1,000,000 of dollars of equipment that support our spacecraft business. that allow us to do some of these things safely. And so I thought Twitter wants to live vicariously through somebody why not do this?

I ended up being in sort of an interesting middle ground because I'm not in academia. I'm also not trying to commercialize any part of this tech. really just doing it for fun because it's incredibly interesting. So I've got no skin in the game except for making this work in a transparent manner. and then getting the materials into the hands of the experts.

So I thought if we can leverage some of our equipment and some of our, you know, very smart people that we have, to speed this timeline up, I didn't see anybody in the United States being vocal about trying to do replication there are so many stories coming out of other parts of the world that all the labs, there must be thousands of furnaces burning right now trying to replicate this. But I wanted to get material into the hands of some local experts in California.

And so that's really our our goal is, you know, can we can we sort of be the face of of the Internet do this experiment in a safe manner and then help advance the science and be sort of a forcing function to to doing this replication.

So, Andrew, just before just a a small pause before you continue, I want to ask the other, Andrew, here. The Andrew code, if if you're able to unmute and and and talk us if you're available about the potential reasons why all of Twitter jumped on this. Andrew Kot, you had a thread on room temperature superconductors. About 2 weeks before this, like, almost a permanent is kind of a threat. And could you give us some summary first of all, feel free to introduce yourself, but also some summary of what this means if this replicates, what this means for the world.

Applications, you know, give us, like, some excitement of what happens if this is an actual ambient pressure in room temperature superconductor? Andrew? Does not look like Andrew is Oh, hey.

Sorry. My my audio cut out for a second. I I missed the prompt. Oh, here you are. Let you only -- Sure. Yeah. Thanks. Thanks very much.

So so folks so so I I explained to folks your thread about MBN, you know, pressure room temperature superconductors that you've offered, what, 2 weeks before the paper came out. And then suddenly, this dropped. And I wanted you to highlight some of the potential applications of superconductors and give us some of the highlights of what happens in this replicating. This is an actual, you know, real thing.

Yeah. Sure. So it's kind of a funny thing. Yeah. I put that thread out there 7 weeks before this story broke. You know, just I have worked with this kind of stuff in in a few different areas now, so it's very, you know, superconducting radio frequency cavities are standard technology in accelerator physics to fill these to work in.

Like, my first job in physics was actually in a condensed matter lab using a a scanning tunneling microscope to look at, you know, electronic structures of potential high temperature superconductors So this has always been sort of like a holy grail of material science, like sort of a holy grail of applied physics. It's one of these properties it's one of these materials where the bulk properties come from its quantum mechanical behavior. And and, you know, when quantum mechanics and its effects escape the realm of the very tiny, it can really manifest as as magical phenomenon at our scale in the world of the kind of the bulk matter or the big stuff.

So, you know, superconductors are used currently today, You know, it's it's they've reached engineering applicability through decades of continuous refinements and improvements. And and some of the biggest things to think about in what lets these things get used in industrial applications is their ability to superconducts at higher and higher temperatures And, also most also importantly, is to operate at higher and higher background magnetic field strengths. And so the way to think about this is that a superconductor, it's allowing current to move through it with zero resistance, but it also perfectly spells magnetic fields.

And there's an operating point of these materials where it's basically the current density and the temperature and the magnetic field kind of put the bounds or the performance envelope on the material. So some conductors can carry tons of current, but they can't exist in a very high field. And so, you know, those are hard to make as useful. You can use them for carrying, like, electricity, which is awesome, but often what you really wanna do is generate very strong magnetic fields. So I think maybe the most familiar to the most people here would be, like an MRI machine. Right?

Magnetic resonance imaging. So the idea there is you're generating very high strength field, and magnetic fields are measured in Tesla, for example. So just for just for context, you know, 3 Tesla is a is a pretty strong field, and that's what is about the strength using an MRI. So, you know, MRIs use these cryogenically cooled magnets, or or they're not I don't think cryogenically cooled. They're actually often just copper, but they do have cooling. But they generate this high strength field, and then, you know, it kind of sets all these little protons in your body spinning and dancing in a little, you know, kind of radiating energy.

And then you have a pickup coil, which is like an antenna, and the antenna is trying to pick up that energy and kinda reconstruct what's going on in your body. And this is how we can get, like, a really high detailed, high fidelity, three-dimensional image of what's going on inside someone without any invasive surgery. So it's, like, you know, MRIs are a real kind of amazing breakthrough in medical imaging. Superconductors if they could work without cryogenics would really simplify and make cheaper and more available, high resolution, high fidelity, three d images of people's bodies.

not just for making the magnetic fields, but also for picking up the signal emitted by the protons that get put into motion by the field in the first place. So it's kind of, like, one sort of off the shelf example. I think another one that's kind of under the radar, we don't think about it's not just in carrying electricity without resistance, which is useful for long range, like energy transmission, that kind of stuff. But if you look at the national grid, I mean, only 5, 7 percent of energy total, which is still significant, but it's, you know, single digit percentage ends up, you know, burning as weight You're suddenly muffled.

I don't think yeah. You're suddenly a voice like your -- Oh, better.

Now it's better. Okay. Sorry about that. Yeah. So just gonna say so, you know, National Grid Scale Energy Production. Right? So trans transmitting the energy to its endpoint consumption, there's a bit of waste heat along the way. But what's what's also important to think about is how that energy is produced. It's produced also using high strength magnetic fields. And I was looking into this. There's a a experiment where these guys used sort of more modern high temperature superconducting tape to, you know, retrofit a large DC generator then it had, like, a 36 percent power improvement, right, which is pretty substantial. That's that's a that's a serious win.

Yeah. So there's there's, you know, sort of thousands of places this stuff could be used that would really just, like you know, it would either greatly improve the performance efficiency, reduce the cost, increase the accessibility of what we think of as, like, high technology like MRIs or particle accelerators. But it would also just decrease the cost of basic things like electricity generation and distribution And that's just the beginning. Right? So, you know, this kind of stuff there's a really good analogy here actually with the transistor, you know, for for years, scientists, then electrical engineers and physicists, they had this idea of a transistor. Right?

If only we could have some kind of simple, reliable, current model supplier. We could design all these wonderful things. We could design all these different kinds of logic functions and so forth. And so there was this search for the transistor people were searching for something that could do that, and they had anticipated all the places it could be used ahead of time. And it wasn't until at Bell labs, you know, a very kind of funny crossover here. One of the guys that's on the patent for the transistor is John Bardine. and John Bardeen's actually the only guy to win 2 Nobel Prizes. 1 was for the transistor. The other was for the theory of superconductivity, right, which is Barting Cooper Schiffer Theory, BCS.

So, again, it's one of it's one of those things where, you know, physicists, scientists, engineers kinda thought about this for a long time, realize this be amazing. And there's been this, you know, really complicated random walk through the configuration space of possible materials, right, which is so high dimensional. There's so many things you can construct. So I think it's I'm very optimistic about the field in general. I think one thing to think about with this particular result there's so much artisanal craft and and mastery that goes into producing these materials in a reliable, consistent way You know, science people don't often recognize. It's a lot of art involved too. Right?

Like like, things that are reduced to expert practice us and know how. And so I'd I'd just be cautious on, you know, jumping to conclusions either on this particular result, if it's if it's valid right now. But, also, if some labs can't fail to reproduce it, it doesn't actually rule it out entirely. I I think there's scientists that have traveled to Korea to work with the original authors. I look closely at that. You know, I'd also you know, I my internal odds are kind of like a 1 in 6 chance, this pans out, and it and it could be big.

But that doesn't mean that it's the end of the search or the end of the race, and I'm and I'm also optimistic that Getting people to understand what the massive long term and large scale social benefits of this kind of discovery could be could help direct a lot more basic science research towards this field. You know, I think we spend a lot of things on, like, how to make smartphone cameras better and not a lot of things on and not as much as we could spend on things like high temperature superconductors. And this is a final example.

I mean, so right now, you know, I work as a accelerator engineer, accelerator is a type of magnetic confinement fusion reactor The reason the company I work for can't exist, and and the reason there is this current burn and boom in nuclear fusion, is because we've engineered these high temperature superconductors to work in higher and higher magnetic fields, at at higher and higher temperatures. And and the big economic breakthrough there came when we can have these superconductors that can work at liquid nitrogen temperatures, right, which is 77 kelvin. And it's a lot cheaper to make liquid nitrogen and run that kind of cryogenics than it like liquid helium at, like, 4 Kelvin.

So, you know, we're already reaping some of the benefits of this sort of tech stack maturing over time. And I think really just getting started in terms of, like, the hunt for promising materials. I mean, I'm hoping this results in positive publicity and more effort, more energy, put into the field. I think if this doesn't pan out as the thing, you know, don't give up hope. Right? I mean, this is a long term game. Science sees by starts and stops. There's no fundamental physics here that's impossible. Right? There's no physical principle that says this can't work. Right? This isn't like a a momentumless or massless propulsion drive like the EM drive.

isn't, like, superluminal neutrinos. Right? Those things kind of break laws of physics. This is very much in the realm of, yeah, physically possible. seems seems very you know, in my mind, seems likely there could be something out there given the complexity of state space of electronic structures and given how you know, how large that space of exploration can be. And, yeah, so I think I'm just kind of you know, this is a great time to be interested in material science to appreciate basic science research and educating ourselves on on how good the future can be. You know, I think there's a lot of narratives right now in society and cultural in general. that kinda say, like, you know, you know, we we can't solve our way out of our biggest problems today. Right?

And and I'm very much on the other side of that debate. I think we can. I think it's through efforts like this. I think it's through people like Andrew at Varda that are willing to do stuff in their backyard or their garage or their fact or their their work workplace on their extra time. You know? I mean, this is the kind of this is the the let's build mentality. Right? And so I think we can build our way out of the world's greatest problems, and I its fundamental scientific advances like this discovery could be that that kind of paved the way out of there too. So, yeah, overall, very optimistic.

Andrew? That that's incredibly well said. That is an incredibly well balanced viewpoint. So how would you advise people to absorb the the next week of the new cycle? I mean, we're very much on a you know, we're we're back dead. We're back type of hype cycle. So how do you advise people to think about the results that they're seeing knowing that this is a a very difficult thing to replicate when it just because it a negative result is shown in a lab that doesn't mean it's not physically possible.

It's very difficult to prove the negative here. So tell us how we should absorb the new cycle coming up in the next few days.

So I I I I I I might I might say something about that. I think I think this is basically tacit knowledge transfer, and you Kim Kim seems to have been this kind of, like, artisanal, like, you know, experiment list. So you need people to actually sit there in the lab with this guy, and he needs to demonstrate to them. And they need to pick up and and there might be things that he does, which he didn't write down. That that's the like, my my take on it given that He is the experiment list. He's the synthesis on on the team.

Given that the team seems to have been only, like, 5 or 6 people, is that this guy is the maybe the only person in the world as of, like, you know, 18 months ago. I'm guessing that, you know, he managed to transfer some of that to the JungTux team. So I'm guessing that at at least one more one more team on on earth has this now. And I'm guessing that this knowledge transfer is now happening to a couple more people. So so you need to see this progress maybe 2 or 3 cycles for, like, a bunch of other people to have learned the skill, and then that's when that's when things get interesting.

I mean, you don't really need to replicate to to verify this. There, the the team can just the team has the working samples. they can adjust the samples to the laps around the world.

Well, that that's that's true. But, you know, this this doesn't help us if it's unobtanium, you know, as far as every other group is concerned.

So we heard rumors that they are willing to send sample to for the serious experimental growth and the impact that they are already shipping samples. that's what I've ordered.

We also we have somebody who's in the audience and welcome to come up as well. Jesus Lars, I think, from Physics of MIT. He had a thread about somebody who's calling who's already over Apparently, there's kinda already folks looking at and as you see, you're welcome to come up. He just DM me. We're going to raise your hand and come up how to find you and and talk to us about your colleague. But, apparently, there's, like, co like, at at at at the point, there's already research happening, and folks are, like, reviewing this. I would also to to to add to what some Kion said.

The the the authors, at least, the the second paper after is not Juan, who's hard to reach, and we'll talk about the the metal con con convention. Sorry. I'm I'm using my words. The metal conversion convention that happened on Friday were quite presented. The this this research could have been the reason why he released the first paper. the the author of the second paper also said they're willing to work with folks. So they do shade on the the kind of the release process, but not the science within the paper. Right?

So it looks like both folks who work there, they they definitely, as I said, both both, they kind of do the 1st paper people, and the second paper people, they all believe in the science. And unlike the previous attempts to superconducting dies or days if I'm not mistaken. This seems like everybody here, some of them are very good like we said, all believe that this is what they have. And I just wanna, like, add additional part, and then I I wanna know some more folks on stage is that some folks are throwing around.

If it's a diamagnet and if the results are everything, like, it's just a diamagnet as a result, I would buff in some folks on stage 2 tell us what this is, but also the the people who work there, based on their credentials, based on the papers, seem to know the difference between just, like, a regular diamagnetic effect and a superconductor because they've been working for a long time.

This does not mean that what they have is what the claim, but it definitely means that this like, you know, we're trying to peel the the onion here from the the layers of the onion based on very limited information that we that we're able to get about whether or not this could be replicate, but at least we we can look in do whether or not this seems like a a a fake attempt or or fraud or something like this. And a lot of the things that we've covered here before the process, the, you know, the two papers. All of them triggered this, like, almost a gut reaction from scientific community. I'm like, well, this is you know, the the papers doesn't is doesn't have all the requirement URLs.

So the paper is not fully fully down, etcetera. We're trying to highlight why this potentially happened. and whether or not it means anything about the actual science or the actual achievement that they have. Sangeat, you had a comment before, and then I want to recognize Jesus, who I started with from about the MAT professor that's over there talking to the folks. So feel free from hacking then, Jesus.

So the Ben raised hand and wanted to speak. Okay.

So -- Ben. -- just before I get to Ben just before I get to Ben, Ben, if you don't mind, I wanna hear from him. I'm I'm hop on saying this right, Jesus. Hey.

Welcome to state. Hey. Thank you. Yeah. You're saying it right. So there's 2 professors that I'm very close with from MIT. One of them is a professor, and he doesn't focus exactly on superconducting. The other one does focus a 100% on superconducting. So when I heard about this, the first person I reached out to was him because, actually, I wanted to try to replicate it, and he told me it was a very bad idea. And then he later told me he was actually in Korea, and he was gonna asked them for and his plan was to ask them for a sample just so he could test superconductivity. And I told him perfect, like, can I share your message about not replicating it, I'll keep you anonymous. And he said, yeah. That's perfect.

So I did that, and I've been trying to keep him anonymous as well. And then I sent him a I told him I would also, like, reach out again to see whether he succeeded or not in replicating, and I sent him some more emails, but he has some responded. So I'm hoping or maybe I'm guessing he has more important things to do this time. Maybe it's actually succeeded, I don't know. But I guess my personal feeling is we can't really know until replication happens or until someone like Kim tests it and it succeeds. So I'll definitely let you guys know as soon as I find out.

Thank you, Jesus. Thank you. I've been calling from before, so go -- Ben, if you're still if you're still here, you can unmute, and we need to go ahead.

And if not, 80 pi, go ahead. Okay. So I I have a couple of questions for anyone who might be in the know. So the the you know, JH Kim mentions using a EESR machine, to find the initial trace in in 1999? What is that? Like, what what is he doing What is he looking for? And he also says later on that he's using this mama, m a m m a process, like and that no one else needs to, you know, knows how to use it. Like, what what is he actually doing?

What what's actually going on there? So I'm I'm not familiar with the latter, but ESR is electron spin resin it's a pretty standard technique in organic chemistry.

Right on. If anyone else has the as as any idea of mama just to up your hand. Maybe Alex can pull you up. The the second question I have is to all the scientists in the in in in, you know, on stage join the audience. The paper submitted to RC, the second paper, the 6th the 6th author paper, has at the very end of it, a kind of, like, you know, a split of credits where they're very, very specific, like, you know, so and so has equal split. So and so led the, you know, fundraising even, you know, so and so, etcetera, etcetera. So and so will support on these items.

So is that is that common in, like, scientific papers in in even organic chemistry or inorganic chemistry in the West or in Korea? Like, how does that work?

It's it's a recent development. You see it in in a lot of places. Some some journals are starting to require it. I I gather?

It's useful for parsing who is like the a PI or one of the, you know, people who runs a lab on the paper and who is, like, actually doing the work. I think that's, like, one of the main utilities in it.

Awesome. And so I wanna go back a little bit in in our kind of research about the timeline. Right?

So what we do know that also happened on-site -- I think maybe also -- -- because the -- Oh, go ahead, Dennis. The like, in inorganic synthesis methods that they were describing. So I I think the general idea behind that, again, it's kind of our using acronyms I'm not familiar with, but you have this material that you've synthesized, and it's not pure at all. It's probably a mixture of of who knows how many phases. and you want to find if you have a trace amount of superconducting material within that, you want to figure out, I mean, do you have that trace? And so what is it? And so they probably just synthesize batches and batch of this stuff and then they run this technique to see if they have any superconducting material in there.

And if they do, they they think, okay, well, I did this synthesis slightly different than the other ones. So what what phases might there be more of in this batch the other batches. And then you could refine your synthesis and get closer and closer to some some batch that has like more of that phase peer material. I I really think that a big problem so I like, I'm on these email chains of people trying to replicate this from the superconducting quantum materials and systems center, which is at based around Fermi Lab and Oregon National Lab And Northwestern.

And the inorganic chemists seem very skeptical that the material that they say they made is indeed what they made. Basically, they think they have they think they they don't are not making any value judgments on whether they do have a superconductor, but they don't think that based on the synthesis they described, they would get that structure. They just don't think it's, like, physically possible to get that through the synthesis they described. And, simultaneously, the theoretical people don't think that the mechanism they've described makes sense given the synthesis and that it's superconducting or supposedly superconducting.

So whether or not, they have, what they think they have it, will I think people will kind of see it. I think it's important if they give these samples to people. I think the to do will be to just put it in a microscope and do basically diffraction to completely index structure. Currently, they've only done x diffraction. And that can tell you what the space group is. It's a little too technical, but it can tell you, like, what the structure of the materials, but it doesn't tell you what type of element is in each of the decisions. And that's, like, crucial crucial.

So so just a a follow-up on that. Like, how much was the the grant from the Korean National Science Foundation for this project? Like, how much money did they have to work with here?

So so if you are a researcher in South Korea, you can search for the grant number and get all the data. And I have numbers, but I don't have it that hand. Like, I don't have access to the system from my friend ahead, so I I received everything about to Grant, but it's not a lot of money, but I don't know the exempt exact number right now.

I want to talk about the updates after the two paperwork downloaded to archive, you know, chronological order when -- When when we before before we go on because, you know, we just touched on this point. There was the notion of of, like, you know, trying to enrich for for the right phase from from everything else that you've got. I didn't you know, I could have missed it. I didn't see any mention of it in the paper, but on JH Kims LinkedIn, one of the slides that he has alludes to it.

He talks about separating stuff chromat chromatography and spreading it out as a film and analyzing that, and and that's that latter method. And that actually is probably going to be critical to identifying the the right phase at least early on as anybody is to optimize their synthesis. And I'm actually, like, kind of multitasking right now, and I'm looking at papers where where people are are separating out superconducting particles.

And, definitely, folks, following you, like, for for updates on this. go ahead. You you wanted to to -- Okay. Okay. -- some more dots.

So the paper so so I found about the this room temperature a conductor from Hacker News on Wednesday. It was on the 31st item on the front, 84 hours. And I was especially interested because the researchers were from South Korea, and I'm from South Korea. So, like, everybody else I started to search with the search engine.

And the thing with the search engine is that Today, motion translation works very well, and you can read for the materials in other language, but If you don't know the language, it is hard for, say, people who only know English to search for the Korean web, So so I so the material was named the l k99, so I immediately searched it for the Google Square and the core hesitation index, it is that every 70 bond paper published in South Korea is indexed, and I immediately found the paper previous paper published in April.

and I read the three papers. And the next day, I kept searching for the media report. in both Saint Lucia and Korea. And on the on I think it the Wednesday. On 1st day, a new scientist to interview the contact team. And the next day, the first South Korean media to interview the team is a Chousan Pizza. They say that the reporter went to the office and met with.

And on 3rd day, on the Friday, Talkoli again talks with the autumn news. It is like the associated priest press in Korea. And the very peculiar thing about this interview is that Soft Bailey is telling different story on the Thursday and Friday.

On Thursday, it it's like that the team uploaded to archive intending to publish, but on the Friday interview, they stated it was not intended to be published yet. So I think the what he said in Thursday is a lie to protect the secret that there is an internal conflict in the group.

I I just wanna add. There's also and I think we've we've covered this briefly, but please, the the way I found you at least on Twitter is because on Friday, there was an international materials like, meeting consortium, which was international, but it it was in Seoul. Right? And we know that on the the list of speakers, nobody talked about any superconductor stuff, but we do know that Kwan, the guy who published the first paper is no longer affiliated with Q Center. He gave a talk on at that at the conference kind of simultaneously with the getting interviewed in the media.

Kwan went to this conference and gave it up. And even I think we have some folks on Twitter who actually kinda took pictures of the presentation to you talk about what you found out about the conference and what was said and what was shown or not shown present or not presented?

So it it was a big conference. So multiple people in South Korea and Alberta attended the conference and witnessed the talk. and many of them wrote about it because it's an interesting story. And the poster on FM FM Korea, football manager, Korea. Even said that he is writing these for Karma because he knows it will be important and he wants to write about that.

And so the what story said in common is that people ask to see the actual sample and the demonstration of meissner effect. And it is a step that one brought brought the sample, and it was shown, but no demonstration was performed. Why is that is the case the zone clear?

There's also something about the translator. Correct? What? There was also something this conference in international and English speaking presentations. However, this presentation was translated with somebody else, and and Juan gave the same Korean. that have you have you also seen this?

Yes. Yes. Yes. Everybody agrees that Kwan gave up talk in Korean and someone translate it for him.

That's really interesting. Okay. So yeah. And then and then you you're watching this news. You're reading the the newspaper. You went also and talked with you some some of your friends. What what marketing it does from from your research, from reading, from the stuff that gets lost in translation that you've picked up on several of the papers?

So this morning, me and My friends are the 2 people. So we are three people who are social Actually, most of the writing was done by who is in the audience. And we discussed how to revise it and publish it. It's almost 3000 words, and It is hard to summarize.

But the main point is that careful reading of three papers and contacts to it publication, we can learn from the various interviews and news articles and the incident to with the international conference is that 3 papers are talking about completely different things like the purpose to mechanical mechanism for super conductivity is all different, and there is no commonality at all.

why that happened is an interesting question, and we I think we arrived at the answer that explained all the all the keys of these papers. So after the space finish that you may want to read about it. I mean, it it is a long story. I cannot memorize it.

So I I I have a unrelated question for, again, again, the researchers out there. you know, again being, like, for me, and I think I've I I've seen it this before. If you really had, like, such a such a wonder wondrous material. And this this stuff will let you see stealth jets. Right? Like, you if you if you put it on your radars, you will be able to see stealth jets. Right? So would there be some national security concerns about, like, actually doing, like, peer review and stuff like that? Would there be would there be, like, a mental intervention to kinda keep it as a trade secret?

So at this level, I don't think this is not I guess if you're working on, like, a patent you know, an an actual techno not a patent, but an actual technology to do that that might ITAR or something, but not at the fundamental science level. That's not a concern.

So -- Hey. Robert, did can you can you introduce his office? Welcome to the stage -- Oh, hi. -- to introduce -- Yeah.

I I work in the in the aerospace -- As much as you can. Yeah. Yeah. I work in the aerospace field. I I got hired out of my my thesis where was working on, like, Kupert superconductors, and I I never finished that thesis. But yeah. So I'm in the in working on, like, aerospace Manufacturing and, like, a material science in that field. So, yeah, I I so I'm a little familiar with that.

Like, if it's at the if it's at the, like, basic science level, like, we're at here, like, definitely not, like, ITAR or EAR. If you're talking about actual, like, high performance materials, maybe. Four folks in the audience. -- samples and stuff.

What? For folks in the audience who are not familiar with ITAR and -- Oh, yeah.

It's like export control, like, you're not supposed to just be able to sell missiles to whatever country if you're in in the US, but that also applies to, like, technology and sometimes really advanced materials. So, yeah, it's just, like, export controls over that. You have to go through, like, you have to go through crazy approval process to to do that. But, yeah, it doesn't apply to, like, really base basic science.

So that's interesting. And And I think the the thing that interests me is because we know that there was already paper published before kinda the ARC side paper that Kwan upload Right? We know there's a paper published in Korean, and he left the company by the point where where he published it. We don't know why, you know, the the the the course proximity to an unknown conference appearance could be one reason. There could be other reasons. The 3 author of the paper and in fighting about novel price.

I think somebody in a group that said that also Chinese media Chinese social media kinda has the same conclusion where, you know, the the the that's smoke, you know, potentially, this fire there, but definitely it seems like smoke because if it's this big, then potentially there's some novel stuff. But we this wasn't restricted information. That's what I wanna say. Right? Like, the paper in Korean has minimum information here, and it was already published, like, for everybody to just find. And, also, there was a patent applied for. I don't know if they granted the patent.

Anybody is correct me if I'm wrong, also around April or even before that, the pattern was was applied, and that's also was, like, restricted.

So so I can talk about patents. There are multiple patents applied, and one patent is granted in Korea. taught the very first one.

Hey, I I have a question for you about about the samples because I I agree with you, like, the the synthesis doesn't actually have to be I mean, we're still just knowing if this is a real thing or not. Like, that's the most important thing now, I think, not synthesis replication. So do you know who the samples are being shared with? because As long as the samples are being shared, it can be verified and replicated like the we can know for sure if this is real or not.

I have no idea.

I wrote I wrote with the just before you enter, maybe you haven't seen this or heard this Jesus told us about potential collaboration in in potentially in the lab. I don't know, Jesus, if you can confirm whether or not the was there for the conference because we just make would make sense. But you don't have to. I know anonymity was promised, but, yeah, we we heard from a potential corporation or at least a request from a you know, from folks for, I think, MIT. And we also know that some folks on the paper said they would collaborate and even potentially share samples with folks who request this.

Additional thing that's pretty much important to to convey to everyone now to get information is out there. We we have somebody in our group chat. I don't know if she wants to to come up, but the definitely worth following the list that that I've kind of talked about, Elsa. She's following Chinese social media, and there's many attempts in China and some them were even life wind wink at Andrew. Some of them were even life stint, I think, today to also replicate, and this definitely goes back to Andrew Cohen.

where even an attempt to replicate, they will not, you know, show the the may masonry effect, masonry effect, or or some properties, does necessarily mean that what they have is not a superconductor. Right? Like, it's not a complete negative.

Yeah. Totally. I I can just offer, you know, some people in the call might be a lot more familiar with how patents work than how 99 publishing work. And so, you know, an archive preprint submission, something that's not pure but peer reviewed. I I mean, just for context, science is hard. Right? Most things are not reproduced. Most finding, those results, are very difficult to reproduce, especially in things like material science and and especially life science, doesn't mean that there's not discoveries, it it just means that the number of free variables is very hard to pin down. And sometimes, scientists can't even reproduce their own results because they weren't aware of everything that happened.

So that that being said, you know, in the patent application process, right, in the United States, at least, there's there's a provisional patent application right, and then there's an actually approved patent. Right? So you can think of an archive preprint submission as like a provisional application. Right? It's there to establish priority there to kind of clean the ground, plant a flag, get your name on it, but it's, you know, it's not it's not the same as an issued patent. Right? So a lot of excitement around this topic. Science fortunately, has a hard time following our attention span and the speed and rapidity of our new cycle. So, you know, it's just gonna be patient. be patient that understand this stuff is tough.

And and, yeah, I mean, I I think other people I could hear, so just repeat it myself. But I'd watch very closely for for people that are collaborating with the original authors that's the kind of proof of the pudding. If if they can you know, if you have people at Visible Ave and say, yes. We tested ourselves or we had other equipment. That's really awesome. Other labs saying that they can't reproduce it, I would expect that. I would expect it's very difficult to reproduce. That's that's true of the vast majority of scientific cases. That's what I'd say there.

Andrew, is it true to say that we basically have two ways to know if this is quote unquote real. One of them is reproduction. If we actually see some of the effects and then, you know, under Microsoft, if everybody's hoping at Andrew's Twitch, we we can actually see, like, the rock levitate. And the other one is if you actually get a sample from their own lab and somebody analyze that like, their own samples. Right? Away by reproduction and away by, like, analysis. Is that is that a fair assessment?

Yeah. That that's absolutely fair. But the the most efficient route is exactly as Andrew has described, the other Andrew, is verifying the physical samples that already exist. It is incredibly inefficient for the other labs across the world to try to replicate this process because like you said, This is arts and crafts. This is it's very difficult to replicate some of these processes. They are subject to a lot of process variables. And some of these process variables were not well described in the papers.

And so there's a lot of ambiguity left to the people that are trying to replicate like myself. So I don't expect any chance of success. I mean, the that I can show it are very, very low because there's still some question marks about some of the finer details. So I would much, much rather see those physical samples that do exist from the original authors make their way into the the hands of people that can analyze them.

And then once we know that it's physically possible that this effect is in fact real, Then it's the job of other groups around the world to do their replication and show it's repeatable in nature. But Yeah. It it's just a matter of efficiency, and I I think that the people trying to replicate without the knowledge of the original authors are going to have a tough time a bit. And we should expect a lot of negatives, and that's okay. Doesn't mean that it's it's fake. It just means that it's very difficult to do.

And and just to time on to that point before, I think, his use goes or someone else. If this doesn't pan out, do not come away from this experience thinking, what a hoax, room pressure superconductors, it's never gonna happen. Forget about it. Not at all the not at all the takeaway here. Right? Not at all the takeaway. I think it's the opposite actually. It's that science science is a collaborative human enterprise that spans generations of research scientists. It's our seasonal knowledge passed down from generation to generation And it's something in which, you know, in the words of venture capital, it's something in which humanity gets a performance fee. Right? This benefits everyone across the board.

So so this is not the super bowl of superconductivity. Right? This is there's been other previous high profile discoveries that have been later retracted, but the March of Science points goes ever onwards regardless. Right? So, you know, for people who are just learning about this stuff, this is a this is one story in a field that many decades old and has a lot of potential. It could point out some really new interesting lines of investigation. And if it doesn't, then then still a win. Right? Experiments only fail if you don't learn anything, and so our knowledge is constantly growing on this topic. So just take Don't don't don't be too heartbroken.

I wanna I wanna forget to Jesus. I wanna I wanna give Robert a chance to have to this because I know you have something to say on this topic. Robert, if you can hear me and if not -- Oh, yeah. -- also mute them.

Yeah. Go ahead. I posted a thing in the chat just showing kind of the reason progress in superconductors and, like, over the timeline since they were discovered a a 100 years ago. And we're pretty we are very close just with the the hydride based superconductors. And, obviously, they have high high pressures that re are required too, but there's ways to, like, engineer around that. Anyway so, yeah, I I agree with that. And also just improving cooperate superconductors.

We haven't really commercialized that totally yet. Like, we're still be building iter, i t e r, which is a international project to develop the first, like, breakeven, like, Tokamak fusion reactor. We're still building that with the old superconductors. So, like, we haven't fully used even developments from the eighties. It takes even if this is real, it would take decades to fully like, utilize this, and there's still a lot of there's still a lot of ore to mine technically to -- Yeah. -- to deploy superconductors.

Just I can add some color to that picture, or did someone else wanna go first?

I just wanna say something real quick because Alex had asked about it before. So regarding, like, the professor I talked to, I asked him and this is kind of the point you guys were making. I asked him specifically are you planning on replicating this in your lab? And he said, I'm not gonna replicate it until they send me a sample and let me let me actually test the sample first for superconductivity. So that was one thing which I found interesting. And the second what so he kinda seems it seems like he thinks it's not worth the time to try to replicate it. It's like the vibe I got. And the other unless you can test did.

And the other thing, whether I think I'm not sure if he was in Korea for the material science conference, but I emailed him as soon as I heard about which was pretty much, like, almost the night that, I guess, like, I first heard about it from an a 16z investor, I think. But, yeah, I I immediately emailed him, and he was already in Korea. So I suspect that he was just there for the material science conference as well. And one other thing which is interesting not just him, but also the other professor I spoke to, who's a physics professor, both of them kinda seemed, like, really tempered in their expectation. So they weren't as excited as I was or, like, a bunch of people on Twitter about, like, oh, this is the 1.

They were more, like you know, this is better than most but we've seen a lot of things like this in the past that ended up being retracted or not exactly working. And I think even if this is not the one like, we get closer and closer every time. This is a very revolutionary technology.

Yeah. Just to add on to that. So so either the plaz a thing in France since using superconductors, but it was designed in 19 eighties basically, so 19 East technology. Fueling companies today, the one that I work at, and and most of them, like, commonwealthusion. We all use what's called RevCo tape, which is rare earth bearing oxide. And and just to understand you know, how much engineering improvements go into this kind of thing. So that that actually was discovered in the mid eighties as well, won a Nobel Prize. But for a long time, the material was far to brittle and did not did not perform well in high magnetic fields.

And so, you know, there's been a there's been more than 30 years of of engineering improvements to bring Revco HTS tape as it's called to the point where it can be industrially relevant. Right? And so yeah. So I think people you know, did this this hit some virality? I think it has a lot of optimism in it and and deserves attention. But, yeah, I I would second that motion of sort of let's be tempered in our expectations and cognizant of the long, you know, history of progress in this field just for context. I mean, when superconducting superconducting was first discovered, people never thought you could get this anywhere above 4 Kelvin. Right? They were like, okay.

This is, you know, this is extremes of temperatures. This a thermodynamic limit. This is something this is a very bizarre phenomenon in nature.

The fact that we've been able to get this happening at higher temperatures -- -- is just just above the the absolute 0. Right?

Like, it's very, very low just for. Negative 270 degrees. So Celsius. Right? So it's it's almost as cold as you can get. 4 degrees warmer than as cold as possible. So, you know, we this has been a field of defying our expectations again and again, and and people you know? So so now people say, well, look. We've had higher temperatures and just, you know, people see these plots floating around. The big thing here, it's that people reach higher and higher temperatures with these materials, but the most recent one have done so at extremely high pressures. Right? So pressures on the order of, say, a million times the pressure of the atmosphere, which is, you know, difficult to package in consumer product.

So, you know so yeah. So yeah. No. I'm I'm pretty optimistic.

I'm pretty bullish. I'm reserved. So to Andrew.

I wanna get to Marsh. Just -- Really quick point just because it it's always like -- They won't get to Marsh. Yeah. So so I I agree with a lot of what he what he said, but two two things. So first of all, at the same time, it took longer in the past, but right now we have, you know, the way they solve things in the past, as as examples. So we know that that certain things can issues, and we have, like, the way that they were solved, plus all the ways that people tried that may not have worked with those material but could very work well work with these materials.

The the other thing that I wanna mention is one of the things that really caught my attention about LK 99, is that they have a theory for exactly why it works at ambient pressure that makes lot of sense, and that is the copper substitution straining the lattice. Right? And and that to me made it at least potential credible as a theory.

Yes. It's an interesting take.

I think there's one thing in the -- Andrew.

Andrew, could you -- Yeah.

Yeah. Before we could tell you.

We just have Marsh Marshall because Marsha has been waiting to speak. Well, you all can can go on.

I I I can wait. It's fine. Let's let's go we already put up with the flow of thoughts here. Marshall, I wanna hear from you, and then from robot there.

Oh, in sing young, I I just wanted to say yes.

is hand up. Yes. Thank you as well. So, Marsh, please go ahead. Tell tell us your your thoughts here.

Okay. So, I mean, I've been really interested since I first heard about this potential development. And, of course, you know, we all expect to be disappointed but at the same time, it's really, really exciting just because of the incredible potential of this material. I would reading some of the earlier PDFs on archive, and I noticed it looks to me like an error in the y axis labeled on one of the graphs.

So I emailed the email addresses of the the team and area that I was able to find. And I said, you know, figure 5 on page 9, looks like the y axis may be possibly correct. And on that chart, it showed 0.1 times 10 to the negative 2 ohms per centimeter as the superconducting approximately, the superconducting reaches activity. And I and I emailed her and said, you know, that's not really that super of a conductor at all.

And it doesn't match any of the other numbers that they published at the time. And I didn't really expect to hear back. I know these guys would be super busy, but I did hear back from Kim Hintac? I apologize if that's not the right way to say his name.

But -- So Hintac Kim is the author the guy who published the second paper, and also the guy with the credentials who came in with the high score, him. Right? Is there who replied to?

Yes. That that was my understanding as well. He replied, thank you so very much for your good comment. We're gonna check the day one more time. We think in changing the data, the dimensional parameters was messed up etcetera, we would like to show the true data in the attached file. Now okay. I'm not in the habit of, like, forwarding personal emails that that people respond. So I I'm not gonna, like, disclose this this thing, but he attached two slides, and and one of them was already disclosed at the conference in the other day. What was that called?

The MML. MML 2023. Like, I can there was a leaked camera photo, and I see the same graphic. So I'm going to put a a higher resolution version of that in the nest here as we speak. So -- Awesome. -- apologies if I sound a little distracted here because I have to get to work.

Yeah. You have to wrestle with the with the Twitter on, you know, you add it and put it up for us.

Yeah. Yeah. So, like, I'm on my computer, and then I'm on my phone because I can't do this on my computer.

I wanna hear from Sun Yoke. Sorry. Sun Kion, and then please put it up and then feel free to add some more commentary to to the slide after you added this. Jaime, go ahead.

So I want to say two things. The one is that what we say, HTS high temperature fuel conductor, it really happened in 1986. And the group who discovered HP at 1 the Nobel Prize in period is very next year in 1987. So while the surface of probabilities rule, it it did happen in the past.

Like, in 1987, more than 50 groups in the world replicated and improved upon the finding and there was a conference dedicated to it, and it was to call the Woodstock or FedEx at the time. And on the 20th anniversary, New York Times did the recap of the so called oldest Tableau did expect it is a very fascinating reading if you haven't made it you should agree.

Awesome. While we wait for Amar to to put it up.

March, go ahead. Also, also, one more one more thing that So so as I pointed out, it really happened in 1986. So you could have no gain, but I also have the low probability of this dock needing. So I want to propose that all the speakers in the user space share their personal probability of this working out, like, Alex, you can call the individual people and, uh-huh, ask them the probability.

Hi. Before we get to, probably, do you want to come over here, Marsh, put up the slide, and then we can talk about this. And then, definitely, we can get to kind of the juicy bit where folks here with experience gonna give. The there got feelings about this, although it it seems that at least some of it were already gonna get get somewhere is.

Okay. I put the slide in the nest. It's the one furthest on the left right now. It is a graph of measured volts on the y axis microvolts and applied across the lower axis, milliamps. You know, that's a 1000 fold difference in ratio. but it's what you would expect if you were attempting to measure very low resistances resistivities.

But one thing that concerns me about this is there's noise in the data, but most of the data points are below 0.0. So there is a bias to this at the microvolt level. It looks maybe 1 20th of a microvolt, like, half of a a tenth of a microvolt. So 50 nanofold negative bias in their meter reading.

That seems like a reasonable amount of error for a high quality voltmeter to read, but I don't see any signal. What's ever here. I mean, I know it's supposed to be a superconductor, but when the x axis is modulating the current between -30 milliamps to +30 milliamps. I would expect to see some kind of correlated noise there even if the probes were just touching each other and and measuring each other.

Like, In another slide, I I have a picture, which looks a lot like pictures we've seen before of it looks like maybe a semiconductor wafer probing apparatus with a big aluminum disc, like, maybe steel disc mass tech and then 4 gold probes touching the surface of a large square sample of some kind. the probes are are there's 4 probe points in a linear configuration.

So this would be probably a 4 terminal Kelvin type of measurement setup. And if this is what they use to measure the data in this graph, you know, it's not in encouraging to me, to be honest, because this is in this is consistent maybe one of the probes just not touching the the sample. very reliably.

Like, if you had a probe lifted off and the voltage reading was not actually you know, registering the sample, sure. I mean, you could get a very small, you know, manifolds type of noise in the voltmeter. It's not a cryogenic voltmeter, I assume. And and it seems completely uncorrelated with the x axis of, I mean, 30,000,000. This is a lot of current, plus minus, if what you're measuring is in the manifold range.

So, I mean, yes, it looks like an extremely low resistance material, but what it doesn't what would encourage a lot is if they said, oh, well, we used our same setup, then we measured, you know, an existing superconductor or, you know, high purity gold or we touched the probe tips together and and zeroed the apparatus, and then we measured the superconductor, and we saw some some kind of difference. So this that's all I have to share. I I hope it's interesting or or helpful to other people.

And -- I won't say most interesting, and I wanna give folks a stage the chance to react folks who understood much of this, this of it went above my head. March one thing I would love for you to kinda re recap. If you could, this graph is the thick graph. The Jung took emailed you where on the second paper, this graph. Does that make sense? Is that am I getting Right? The graph that they published in the second paper could have been potentially, like, maybe an error or a pasting error, and this is the the graph that you got with, like, the fix. essentially.

And the same graph was presented at the MML conference with the new y axis? Am I am I gonna recap in the stairway?

There is a very similar graph. Actually, this graph looks like it's So in the 12008 PDF paper, the the first the 3 author paper. It it looks like Fig one b, and and this is what I just can't reconcile, like figure 1 a, looks with the applied current measured volts, it's showing a phase change. Now I'm no physicist. I'm not even a DE. I'm just a really interested experimenter with a with a 6 and a half digit DMM.

who who's played with these kinds of measurements a little bit, but I can tweak that just for reference. But in the 230712008, the 3 author paper, figure 1 a. How is that not evidence of a superconductor? I don't I don't care about the my or effect or, you know, all these are the what was it? A a density change or or something like that.

I mean, if it has, I think, a very strong kind of step response to temperature and applied current, where it literally flatlines is varied, it's hard to say what that would be other than they're measuring a superconductor. So -- Great. there's there's a lot of, you know, hope and, you know, conservative, you know, not going to be disappointed.

But I just don't some of the charts that they've published, it's it's hard to explain those any other way, then they are seeing some kind of superconductivity or material phase change that is dramatically impacting the conductivity at this material.

Hey. This is Ken Condon. I'm one of the sparkies here at VARTA Space Industry by Sparkyoming and electrical engineers. And I was curious why you think the current source source steps should be correlated with the voltage measurement. A lot of times those are I'm not familiar with their particular setup, but, additionally, if you're measuring, like, something with a really, really low source, I mean, you're gonna have noise on your reference of your current source, and that's gonna be statistically independent from thermal noise on your amplifier for your voltage measurement response.

So I actually wouldn't normally expect like, increases in your current step to be correlated with kind of, like, noise changes on your voltage, if that makes sense.

I yeah. I get it. And but let's say you took 4 probes. You you know about the the Kelvin four wire measure connection. Very, very familiar. Let's say you took that setup and you just connect touch the tips of all four pro together. So, you know, there should be the no sample at all. There should be zero resistance. I think in those circumstances modulating the applied current, plus minus 30 milliamps would probably show something on the nano volt scale.

On the other hand, I may not have used equipment this high quality enough to not show some type of correlated noise. I'm just relating my feeling. that if you're measuring down at nanivolts, gee, I mean, sometimes you just move the wire of the probes itself a little bit and you get big changes at the manifold level. That's my experience. But, again, you know, I've never used what looks like a a wafer testing set up, and who knows how accurate. What kind of what kind of shielding did they have around this measurement?

So, you know, if somebody has more experience with, you know, fancier equipment than I have access to, please please I'd like to wrong about this?

Marsh, I wanna slide in here, Ken, before before you continue to react, folks, it's an hour 40. We've covered the human drama with our kinda the events as much as we found. We had Sandeep here going and translating the right places. So we've tried to give you as much information as we were able to sleuth around the Internet in this kind of one summary. So we'll definitely summarize this. now we're going into, like, a similar world, and I'm here for it. A 100%. Like, the space won't stop until we have folks debating in discussing, and, hopefully, we'll find some stuff. But if it's not for you, obviously, that's understood.

I just wanna shout out to folks who are currently on stage need maybe some of them won't have the the the the the interest to stick around, which is fine. But, yeah, please let's go ahead. Let's to find, you know, if if there's fire beneath the smoke, can go ahead and then enter code. I think you had a reaction.

Yeah. totally. I I would I forgot who said that, but I think it was a well reasoned statement of, you know, trepidatious optimism, but also some confusion over the measurements. I I think figure 1a in the 3 author paper I'm looking at right now. You know, the measured volt is a millivolt and the the scaling, interesting choice of scaling, you know, maybe maybe a log like, a logarithmic scaling on the y axis would would show a lot more interest stuff here just because, yeah, there's some stuff missing there. I I would also so in terms of, you know, things in the paper that's are a bit off or whatever.

Here's something that I I haven't heard a lot of people talk about, and it's mainly their measurement of heat capacity as a fun of temperature. So a very consistent result with superconductors is that as you cool them down and and here, they'll just give some background first. So so he could capacity refers to how much energy something can absorb for its temperature to go up by one degree. And and, really, what doing. It's measuring the available states that electrons can occupy in that crystal lattice. Right?

And you kinda think of it like as you get colder and colder, those available energy states become frozen out of the of what success and so you have a declining heat capacity. Now a really consistent result with superconductors is that as you approach the transition temperature from a high temperature cooling down You're cooling it down. You're measuring the heat capacity. How much energy does it take to cool it down by another degree. As you approach the supercritical temperature, you get a like in heat capacity.

And and what that people usually interpret that as meaning is that, suddenly, there is this energy state that tons of electrons can fall into that can absorb energy and fall into, and and and that's kind of like, very much tied in with this sort of canonical theory of superconductivity, which is called DCS theory. Right? And it's all about electron electron coupling. So in the 3 author paper, something to kind of just point out for people, is that they failed to measure that important result showing the increase in capacity as you approach a critical temperature. And they didn't take that to say, does this call into question whether this material is a superconductor?

Rather, they said, this is a support for an alternative theory of superconductivity that does not involve electron electron coupling in the crystal lattice, but electron photon coupling. And and so that's in the weeds a little bit. But just to point out, you know, so there's some measurement issues. There's some some data visualization issues for sure, as we mentioned, there's this other, we didn't measure this super important property, and we choose to interpret that as supporting a alternative theory of superconductivity. And so that's another kind of, like, a strike against this, and that's one reason I think you might be fine scientists that just dismiss us out of hand because they're like, oh, well, these guys messed up. they're trying to push some, you know, not as popular interpretation.

So, yeah, there's that's another thing I just put on the table of, you know, what are the pros and and cons in this in this result?

So so one thing that jumped out at me and I you know more about this field than than I do, but I I was interested in knowing what the carrier mobility would be. I don't know if that's what people go for first or or early in terms of characterizing, and you superconductor. But the the fact that they're talking about electron phone on coupling, it would be quite remarkable if the carrier mobility turned out to be related to the speed of sound.

Yeah. I'm I haven't seen anything in this paper on that in particular.

Can I ask for the audience, what would the speed of sound have to do with anything.

That sounds like it's something that would come out of left field. Well, speed speed of sound in in the medium because that relates to phone ons. And Phonons are quantized Mechanical vibrations. Yeah. Quant generally quantized.

I'm not as familiar with that being a a sort of key figure of merit in in measurements of superconductivity.

No. Not not at all for for things. And that that would be, like, a remarkable thing, and that might explain why they didn't talk about carrier mobility because they're probably still working on it if there's anything to that.

Alright, folks. The nerd discussion, the the one that goes way above head. I very appreciate it. This is recorded. We're gonna put it up, and we're gonna analyze it. I think I wanna thank Marsh for the absolute alpha here. Right? We we'll have email correspondence with the team. We have some unprecedented cover discovery about, you know, the a potential of this being actually true.

I wanna say that one of the things that Sungghout and we talked about is going around the room by speakers and just, like, giving some amount of probability, given all we've heard, given the the very weird way those papers were published multiple papers. Given the missing pieces that we're now collecting together, there's not, like, 3 papers or different measurements. However, there there's a bunch of stuff given some folks on stake here who actually try to replicate and some other folks follow other application attempts, given some folks who who talk with the researchers in MIT.

I wanna go around the stage and to give folks a chance to kind of put their chips on the table, if we will, and give maybe some amount of probability of whether or not l k99 is actually is a room temperature ambient pressure superconductor. Feel free to go on mute yourself and and say. Otherwise, I'll just gonna go out some names. I think San Keon, let's have it go first after you recession you're talking with friends and and doing, like, on the ground translation. Where does your probability lie in having this be actually a superconductor?

Can you hear me? Yes, sir. Yeah. Okay. So So there is a thing called the prediction market, which is that then you have you should do both about values, but pet about your beliefs. So my belief on whether this will turn out to be successful buried or lot in the last 4 days, but my current probability is a big 10%.

And when I say this, some people around me are surprised because they think it is too low, but to me 15% like 1 in 6 or 1 in 7 charts. So the changing the word is really high. And you think you paid this 15 percent, why are you spending all the time on it? And I don't understand the debt objection. So, also, there is a prediction market on the Internet called the money board. And I note that their current market prices or 15%.

I will say one additional thing about the the prediction markets given that folks have you know, playing money in there, and there's polly market whose actual money, I think, at manifold as well. For folks who wanna follow along with, like, the later various news, that's also a great research. Right? So you can definitely follow the folks on stage, and I encourage you to to do so. Follow Andrew, for 8 to follow March, who's just joined us Jesus, Eli, Andrew, and Sangyeon, and Ken. And everybody here on stage, you know, for follow me if you want. I'll cover this as well. However, the the prediction markets have people who are betting on this.

There's quite a lot of money there, and so they usually also rush out kinda the news first, and that's also, like, a very good research for you to stay up to date. So 15% from Shanghai. wanna get to 8 a pi next because he he was first on stage.

Give us your probability. Alright. So I don't know anything about the science. Alright? I know people and I know academics, and you build a stock credibility, you know, through a lifetime of research and credentials so that you get taken seriously. And these guys decided to incinerate their entire livestock lifetime credibility on this. Right? entire lifetime credibility.

You spent, like, 30, 40 years building this up, and you build up this enormous poker stash, and you decide to put it all on one roll of the roulette wheel, that says something. Right? So I I'm I'm thinking it's, like, 80% that you can detect some form of superconductivity in there. I'm thinking that, you know, to get it into production, like, to get to, like, a thin film material is gonna be tough. And, you know, manufacturing and mass is gonna be tough.

I'm thinking, like, those things are gonna you know, we still we still are gonna have, like, real challenges before we actually see this in product, and for me, the reality of the of the situation is, like, you only know know know something when you get in the product in your hand. So I think that's gonna take a couple of years. I don't think it's gonna get, you know, sorted out. And we're gonna be in this muddy phase for a while. Like and then we're gonna argue, like, it's not really the kind of superconductor that we expected. Like, blah blah blah blah blah blah. I I I kinda think it is. So I think these guys incinerated their stock of credibility for a reason, and all of them did it at once. Like, you know, it's done. It's done. Your your credibility is done.

You've you've put all of it down on this roll of the dice. And so if that's there yeah.

That's a very passionate 80% from 8 to 5. Andrew Cote, I wanna hear from you next if you don't mind, and then we'll we'll go.

Yeah. I I I appreciate a sentiment there, putting your reputation on the line. You know, Warren Buffett has this great quote. Reputations are built over decades, and they can be lost in minutes. I went to that these researchers believe they're results and that they're eager to put it up there and and all this kind of stuff, I think that's independent of the results having a high chance of success. You know, I'm I'm personally maybe just because I have seen previous retractions in the field that were quite a high profile time and failures reproduce and so forth, still more in the 10, 15%. You know, people people okay. So people ask, why would you be so interested in this thing if it has a percent chance of working.

because a 10% chance of the world changing is a is a huge deal. The expectation value on that is massive. Right? I would also second them in that, if this does pan out, there's a long road ahead to get this to work, right, in industrial applications. Right? So so having it resilient to strain, having it work within high strength magnetic fields, getting good current density and so forth. But if that happens, I'm you know, that's that's a win. Like like, count that as solved. That's a matter of time. The big stochasticity here is finding the right location in the space of possible materials. And and I think there's some of the good points here.

maybe this isn't strictly a superconductor and and, you know, in the way we think about it. It could still be a very interesting material, and it still it may be very suggestive of types of crystals and material compositions to look into into the future as well. So so it's not an all or thing in my mind. But that being said, it'd still be in this sort of 10 to 15%. You know, this this is gonna hit kind of range.

That's that's great. Eli, you wanna go next?

Sure. I I have to break it down, though. in a number of different ways. 2 thirds chance that they actually had their hands on actual semiconductor ish materials. In other words, it might not be a classical type 2 superconductor, but it displays at least some of the properties.

1 in three chance that somebody replicates it and a 1 in 10 chance that this is what winds up being a commercial material, but a 2 thirds chance that it leads to if if it ever is at all a superconductor material. So conditional probability, a thirds chance that it does at least indirectly or indirectly lead to a commercial material in less than 5 years.

That's awesome. I wanna hear from let's see who who got on stage. Robert B. went down. Ken, do you wanna you came up? You wanna give us a probability?

Yeah. I mean, I am electrical nearby training, solid state chemistry is definitely not my field. So for a rough probability, I would have to put it at the prediction market value of around 15%, probably a little bit lower because I think people tend to overstate the probability of things that have a positive outcomes, so maybe lowering that down to 5 to 10%. But one thing I will note is when we're in spacecraft Engineering, very often we have probabilities in the 1 in 1000, 1 in 10000 chance. But what we we spend a lot of time thinking about this probability because the expected value of those events is very high.

You can lose a spacecraft. You could cause harm to individuals or capital you could lose your FAA licensing. And because of that, I know that even things that have a low probability of success, are extremely valuable to work on and you really have to think of the expected value. So the expected value of this outcome is extremely high, so it deserves all the attention possible until the probability is driven near 0.

That's awesome. We just had Ben come up, and Ben was here in in the beginning, Ben, have you heard the question, hopefully? And what's your probability? Yes. Give us your thoughts here.

Thank you. Yeah. I'm I love these predictions. markets. I'm heavily on manifold. I tend to agree with Eli that I think there's a pretty high chance that it's superconductor ish because if it's this new, whatever it's a quantum world superconductor, whatever they whatever they define it as eventually. I think yeah. So around 50 to 60% chance that it's that they have superconductor ish material. I would say, yeah. Something closer to 15 to 20% that it is replicated in that sense that a lot of these friction markets want to want to find out that it is replicated as a superconductor as they write it in the paper. So a lot lower.

Those are my estimates.

Who do you would not get to, I think, Jesus? We didn't get to yet. You wanna give us where you stand?

We're so back. Just kidding. I I wanna believe that more than anything, but I I kind of so there's nothing physically impossible about this, which is what I like the most. And even if this one isn't the one, I actually believe that this kind of weird on this unusual theory they have for why it works, and could actually lead kind of they delve further into the theory and and go and kind of follow this line of investigation, I think this could lead to to the 1.

But most of the people who I know that are, like, absolute experts on this, they don't seem super excited by it. 8 of them made an amazing argument, I think, which is, like, why would the reason searchers, like, fabricate this. I definitely don't think it's fabricated. I think they probably believe it, but there may be some you know, issues with the data, essentially. So, overall, I'd probably go for, like, a 10%, not to be a doomer, but something like this, but I actually do think this is inevitable, like, eventually. Andrew, go ahead.

Okay. Yeah. I'll take a a slightly different perspective. Like, a lot of great opinions here. So I think that if it is actually real physics, whatever the percentage is that it is actually real physics, that humanity has realized a superconductor at this temperature range. I think that it is a 99% possibility that we will commercialize it, that we will find a way to make this useful to extract economic value from this material. So it's probably it feels to me like a 10 or 20% chance that it's actually real physics.

Like, I I've done a lot of experiments you know, echoing Ken's statements, it it is easy to mess up the physical experiments. But if this is a real phenomenon, if this is real physics, then I have absolute confidence that the capital markets will grab onto it and integrate it into our our economy. And so let's say 20% that's real physics and 19.9% that we will figure out a way to socialize it and make it useful for humanity.

Everything I heard on stage so far from the haphazard kind of multiple paper release to the scientists involved, and they're working on this for so than 20 years. The professor emeritus, Troy or Chair, I think Troy, who's gonna his on his death that pretty much, like, asked them to to to kick this up again or something like this. 8 of I you're doing a thumbs down?

there is -- Yeah. Yeah. -- great. Be because because you have to understand that there's these, like, little weird scientific cults that build up over time, and And they they often end up in, like, this kinda, like, circular circular motions of, like, you know, getting caught in, like, analytical traps or, local local minimums, and it happens all over the place. That that's the whole reason you have, like, peer review and, like, stuff. You you have to get stuff out of your your local area. get someone else to review it. So I I think I think, like, all of that stuff doesn't matter. Like like, the the whole, like, you know, the 3 person group together from Korea University is completely, like, meaningless.

Like, the people who matter in this are, like, Kwan and KumTek, who came in from the outside, who joined in later, and we're not part of this, like, call movement, basically.

Yeah. And so the fact that so let me let me just, like, change up my thought here. the story about this where, like, it's not just something that they came up with. Like, they've been trying at it for multiple times. Like, some folks had, like, a 1000 different etcetera. The external scientists who got either attached to this or or were were required for money to flow or, like, for actual patents to to land And the fact that those external scientists, like you said, are potentially not part of the scope. Right? It's not part of the name, etcetera. And they're still with to put the reputation online, those are signals of, hey. We we could have something here.

By way of probability, I'm just gonna go crazy, and I'm in the Russo back camp. Let's put it at 40%. because I just I I I wanna believe. Look at how much interest this generates. It doesn't matter if it replicates or not because, you know, we're not putting money. I'm not putting money unless I'm putting some money hold. However, the the potential outcome for this is incredible. the the excitement that this generates is incredible.

The other stuff that humanity kinda progresses towards while we speak and the the the insane pace of innovation that happens over there means that even if this is not, like, fully baked, like, some folks said here, even if they have, like, directional interest, I I wanted to follow-up this with a question about the quantum wells and different type of stuff. However, the the other progresses we're making in computational, a power for minority seems to me that, you know, this could also help us progress there. And so I want I wanna put myself at 40% and just, like, strongly believe.

Marsh, go ahead next, and I think folks we're at exactly 2 hours, and this has been very fruitful. So after this, Marsh, I think we'll do, like, a a a plus for folks on the on the on the staging that will close out. So March, go ahead and talk with also shout out.

Okay. So I asking this, and I don't wanna come across as cynical or jaded or or anything, but I think it's a question that a lot of people have. And that is how is it that there are 6 different PhD researchers on these papers from 4 different institutions, and we're still asking questions about whether the data is accurate, whether we're seeing correct voltage readings, whether we're just some of the basic science measurements Okay.

So I have I have a I have a response to that, which is that they didn't have money. So the the funding was very limited. They may not have had money for all of the equipment that they that they needed. And in fact, like, you know, the the the we have photos of the ESR machines. Like, they're using, like, maybe secondhand ESR machines. They need pull in Quan for the squid machine without without without Quan, they would not have had the squid machine. So they had a very limited budget. Like, these guys were, like, really, like, doing artisanal stuff.

So -- And to this point, I will highlight it Elsa's pinned tweet on top where there's, like, a vendor of ingredients says that they're, like, sudden surge of lead order in China is happening, and so many, many people are trying to replicate and potentially get to some of these measurements. So I Mars yeah. I I hear you, and I think a a to pilot represents a interesting theory of why not. There you know, just materials could not oh, sorry.

They they may have, like, either ran out of money or operate in very limited budget. But now with the world believing and what I've heard heard from all of you on stages, like, you know, we're in the above 12% for most of you at least, which sounds incredible to me. I wanna I wanna start closing this out photo. I'm gonna sign close my horses way past midnight and it's a Monday. I wanna get to some folks. I will start with Sung Sun Hyun, and feel free to, you know, to to tell us what you think and if you wanna plug something, this is the time. And folks definitely follow Suncom.

Also, Ted, I think the archival node may have been the most successful click date in the history of the Internet. like I mean, if they did they were too poor to by the necessary equipment. Now probably The major amount of money is no object.

Alright. So let's go and say our bad by the way, folks. If you wanna plug something in, this is your chance. There's a big audience here. listening. I will say just one thing before we kinda start naming names and saying goodbye is that all of the folks up in here on stage are in this, like, Twitter list that we're trying to to collect, and we will be following different updates in there as well. And if things change, definitely, expect more from this group. I only get to Andrew Andrew quote. Feel free to plug whatever you have in the you know, Barrie thoughts here, and then we'll get to Ben and -- Great.

Thanks, guys. Yeah. Appreciate the space. Yeah. Not gonna plug too much. I'd I'd to just reach out. If you're in San Francisco and you're interested in discussing artificial intelligence, that is it could apply to mutual science in the future amenity, get in touch. I like to host discussion groups once a week on these topics. And, you know, anyway, this shakes out. It's an amazing time to be alive, and the number of miracles that our modern lives are built on that provide con convenience and leisure time abundance and into a world is incredible. And and be thankful that scientists are out there taking these reputational risks, putting their chips on the table to try to get these things out there.

So, yeah, thanks again for the space, and let's let's stay optimistic.

Thanks, Andrew. And, also, folks, Andrew. Right? It's a a staff stack, I believe. So please go subscribe and and and read his stuff. Thanks, Andrew, for the greatest financial stuff. I wanted to acknowledge, Daniel, who we tried to get up here. for a while in a group chat, and I wanna hear your your numbers there. If you wanna speak, go -- Hi, guys.

So, yeah, People started to split out 2 different numbers between, like, the likelihood of something being superconductor ish, which I guess means, you know, significantly better conductor than copper resistance near 0 versus what people call, like, a traditional superconductor. which, I guess, means basically either the strong form of the meissner effect or some flux spending, like, in a type 2 superconductor. And I just wanna make the strong case that, like, the necessary thing for it to be a superconductor in my book that it is a superconductor.

Its connectivity is high. And I think that they it seems more likely than not that they have actually found some thing, but it also seems definitely true that they have never had the the money or the resources to fully master the the baking of this So I've seen so many different people from around the world, you know, being completely ready to say, is it fake? Is it not? It replicates. It doesn't replicate. Oh, it doesn't replicate. Oh, it's over. You know? Like, oh, it's diamagnetism. Like, people don't know, like, how to bake it. make the same thing.

Like, we there hasn't been samples, like, but it seems quite likely, as many have made the point, that they have found something, and that's going to get investigated. And I think that this is this is, you know, way more more real as a matter of physics than than people have patience for in a sort of 1 to 3 day consideration of of, like like like like, attention cycle. But I'm super excited. I think this is one of the most exciting discoveries.

It's likely to be one of the most exciting discoveries in solid state physics ever, and and it and it and it could be pointed towards the direction of of developing a useful superconductor. Although I think, you know, the chance that we would use this without without without changes widely is is is almost nil. Well, this is always just a starting point, and and I'm I'm very excited and still very excited to see what on 6. So that's it.

That's awesome, Danielle. Thanks for coming up and giving us your thoughts here. I wanna get to Ben next. Ben, feel free to to to summarize your point and and feel free to plug in whatever you want and why people should, you know, follow Yeah.

Nothing to plug in particular. But, yeah, material science is awesome. I mean, I I really hope this brings attention to, like I mean, it's kind of a field in between chemistry and physics and a bunch of other stuff, but this is, like, really core material science stuff. So it's it's pretty cool to see people, like, discussing and learn about it. Yeah. I'm excited to see where this goes. I really just hope they send this to somebody who can put it in an electron microscope. I think that's, like, really the first step to figuring out what it even So someone should do that, definitely.

Awesome. Eli, you wanna go next?

Sure. So kind of, like, really on the same wavelength as as a lot of other people. I come at this from from a number of angles. I I I'm material science adjacent. I do stuff in in nanofabrication by a whole wide variety of methods, and I'm kinda looking forward at some point to to trying to integrate parts of this. If if, you know, anything is verified to be here because I won't be on it quickly enough, and I hope other people settled this first into my nanofabrication tech stack.

I I do want to kind of, like, plug that. It it is directed to things that can be part of near closure, self locating systems.

And the important thing about that is that's an that's a technology that once it's established inherently scales, including 2 global sized problems, and one of the really important ones, not the only one, is removing excess carbon dioxide from the ocean and atmosphere because it's becoming clearer and clearer that the risks of climate change have actually on a an underestimated, and we need a better plan that we have, both for that and for supporting civilization re renewably and regeneratively, and we can do that.

And with something along the lines of self replicating systems, we can actually rewild most of the world 90% of the world and have a human population that's probably on the order of 20,000,000,000 plus. Right? So, the future is very different. than most people imagine if we can get through this difficult patch that we're in.

Let's go. It was a great finisher. You know, I think it Jesus ahead.

I think even though I said 10%, I still think that that's kind of like a really high expected value. So to bet because this is a technology that would it's profoundly revolutionary. I think it could change almost everything on Earth. So the the things I'm most interested in is, like, Andrew mentioned that there Andrew Co that there's gonna be, like, a reading group in SF I I live in SF. I think this stuff is super cool, and it could it could maybe be the basis for, like, the next Intel. So I'm also really interested if anybody's actually trying to replicate it or something like this in the city. Yeah. I'm curious if anyone was doing that.

This is something let's get involved in personally.

Alright. If you guys have replication attempts in San Francisco at Jesus there. Marsh, go ahead.

Marsh, if you're still with us -- Oh, yeah. Yeah. Thanks for the opportunity to speak to everybody. This is a really interesting discussion. I I know we're all just really anxious and excited to hear of the first news of somebody who says, you know, I got it to work, or, you know, we tried everything in our, you know, highway professional lab, and it can't make it work. That would be news too.

Yeah. That's great. Andrew and then 8 to 5, and then I'll close this out and go to try to after this. Andrew McAllen. So, Andrew, before before I give you a finishing thing, I I did have a question in the audience asked, what's next for VAR BART replication attempts? Are you gonna keep going? And what what are you working on? And then feel free to to finish, you know, with the final statements or or something.

Yeah. Absolutely. I I I agree with a lot of that of the points that have been made, But I think the the most important thing to emphasize is finding out if this is real new physics. If this is actually room temperature superconductors. The entire economic landscape of humanity changes. This is an inflection point. This even if it's 1% possibility, the expected value is still positive. So to me, the most important thing in the world is to verify that the actual physics are valid.

My replication experiments are insignificant and parison to figuring out if this is a real thing. If if this is a real thing, then the entire the resources of entire world will pile behind commercializing this to we will put resource is behind the development of this idea. But first, we have to figure out if it's valid. So what I'm doing is not as important as actually taking the physical samples from the authors and proving it, we can get to that proof point, then everything else is just engineering.

If we can derisk it to the point where you take it from the science level to the engineering level, then that's the inflection point. So I feel like that's what we have to have to do. My experiments are not likely to result in success in the first or second or 5th try, because of all the reasons stated before, but it does call a lot of attention to it. It emphasizes the importance, the economic value of of the thing that we're looking at.

So if if the the plug is if anyone if anyone in Los Angeles wants to look more critically at the materials that we produce, to do material characterization, We would love to partner with the professionals in the field, put the physical samples in the hands of the people. They can past judgment. That would be wonderful. We'll keep pushing forward. We've got a couple different partners already in we should have physical samples done by Tuesday.

And so at that point, we'll pass them off to people and start evaluating the actual characteristics of the system and start turning these theories into measurable physical samples and measurable numbers.

Quick quick quick quick mention. One sec, please, Elon, one sec, please. Andrew, I know I said like, we're closing down. However, I will be remiss, I think, is the is the work if I won't ask you about space because one thing that excites people about this is the potential for, you know, changing energy, but also one of the things that people look look up to is space, and I personally never heard of larger space before we started this. So pushing back on your attempts as as you kinda try to downplay them. I think there's many people, and we've seen the ment around Twitter who try to follow you, take this thing, and try to kinda run with this in publicly. And I think this inspires a lot of people. And first of all, thank you for doing that.

And second of all, thanks for hopping in the space to chat with us. Please continue. And number 2 is please give us, like, 2 minutes on VARTA space. I wanna I haven't heard before. I think Space is very exciting, and there's plenty of people in this audience who even if the super connector stuff doesn't replicate -- Yeah. -- will definitely wanna hear about.

can you do this this favor? Yeah. Sure thing. I'll I'll try to offer a balanced opinion here is that I'm excited about this because there's there's very little materials that make sense to do an outer space. There's 5 or 6 that really make sense that produce positive economic outcomes, that's what it's all about. At the end of the day, you know, you have to make a profit, you have to push a value into the market to for anything to be worth anything.

And so we will never make these things in space the we should be trying to make superconductors for $5 a pound in the terrestrial market. What we're doing is a very niche market, on on the BARDA side. You know, we're trying to develop technologies to advance humanity into the solar system. We're trying to realize we're trying to figure out where novel physics can be exploited turning off one of the fundamental forces.

So My day job is crystallization and figuring out how to if we can turn off one of the fundamental forces of the universe realized economic value in a particular field. It's a very similar equation on the the superconductor side, but the impacts are much, much higher. So I This is inherently interesting to me because it's humanity level impact.

Now we're we're attempting to make a an impact in a particular market, pharmaceuticals, but this technology has the ability to impact the entire course of humanity. This rewrites some of our basic operating principles about thermodynamics. This unlocks a this unlocks the ability for engineers to operate with a new class of materials So it it is incredibly exciting.

So I think what how I would summarize it is it it's really important to not lose sight of the fact that you have to push economic value to mankind however you do it. When we look at these basic scientific advancements, you always have to think about how does this advancement translate into market value, into an advantage for humanity? And how is how are we going to turn this into a product?

And so that's why everyone is so excited about this because the possibilities are undescribed at the moment.

They are Absolutely.

Huge. Add to the plug. One thing I might say is right now, the space economy is much more fragile than it team as someone who came from SpaceX for quite some time. And there is this chasm of death that the space industry is facing between where we're at right now where standard commercial communication satellites and similar are being launched, and those are profitable, but only up to a degree before they hit saturation.

If we really want to stand our capabilities as a species and really take advantage of the resources in the solar system, we need to expand our space capabilities very dramatically and not just in what we're what I used to do at SpaceX, not just in the launch, not just in communication lights, we need to be able to work in space, return materials, change orbits, all of the above.

And I think BARDA is really attempting to carry us through that chasm in between a society that has a large number of satellites and low earth of it and being able to extend larger into the solar system and really do much more than just have flying cell phone towers, like, really being able to take advantage of the resources in our solar system by first coming up with profitable use cases for all this launch capability we have. So I really see VARTA as us bridging the gap to expanding our resource capability beyond the earth.

That's awesome. Thanks, Ken, for joining me and folks to check out the larger space. for Andrew can at the pipe, finish this off before I say the final kind of goodbyes.

And then -- Okay. I mean, I I I think it's super exciting, and I I like I like the human drama aspect of it. I I like the fact that more people are getting pulled into the science. And, you know, there there's science and then there's production. Right? Like, the science is only the first hurdle. Production is often an even bigger hurdle. And, you know, I'm in I'm in biotech.

like, you know, something like 9 out of 10, you know, treatments, you know, work in mouse models, and they you know, you never even get into, you know, phase 3. So, you know, let's you know, we we have to take it a pinch of salt, but it's still very exciting to see, you know, basic stuff come out. The other thing I'm pretty excited about is for me, I see the the guys coming out of these two guys are basically 100% of their time graduate work was in Korea.

And so one of my theories is that as we all get integrated into the Internet, more and more, we all read the same things, and we all get into this, like, monoculture. And especially in science that's that's terrible you don't get to search out, like, new nodes on the tree if everyone's thinking the same. So I think it's very exciting that, you know, they, you know, they they have maybe the subculture works. Right? The third thing is that I think most of the basic material stuff in this century is probably gonna come out of because I think the US has lost a lot of its, like, basic materials, like, you know, progress.

I I don't even think people are aware of the last big base materials discovery was the high pressure asset leach process for nickel, which basically transformed the nickel market. I don't think most even aware that that happened in the last, like, 20 years, and that came out of China. And no no no bells were awarded for it. And it was really a process improvement in the factoring of transforming, like, low grade nickel or into, you know, steel grade, you know, nickel inputs So I think it's it is it is more likely it's gonna come out of Asia, and I think, you know, it's exciting to see.

Awesome. Folks for Itapide because without his, like, sleuthing, now this would have happened. So definitely definitely for him. I wanna close this off. It's 2 a half hours that we've been here. And some of the other followers of mine would potentially has themselves like, hey. What is Alex who talks about the AI usually? What the hell does he know about superconductors? And I will say this I'm excited about the potential of of humanity. I'm really excited about this. AI was part of the reason why I was excited about this.

If if there's any plugs that I can give, they they are relevant here because I really really got very friendly with something 1. And the the startup that I work at is called, which is allowing remove doing language barrier centralization there. And in fact, when when Sanyan told me, like, hey. We'll have to speak, you know, there there's, like, a there's a culture of different I told him, like, hey. No worries. Like, people need to know what's going on on the other side of the world. I think it's great that we have disability now. I think it's it's collab and, like, a boost in an amplifier. I strongly believe in AI.

I have weekly spaces If you're interested in following that, feel free to follow me and and then come to Thursday, I. And, in fact, part of this research was boosted by AI and stuff that Sankyo sent to me and then translated with with the Cloud, etcetera. And I think those things are connected. Hopefully, there there was somebody who posted that, hey. we won't be able to, you know, computationally figure out this this specific problem. It's gonna take, like, a 1000000 years or something. I don't believe that.

I I've seen progress happen However, if to sum up the space, I'm excited about the potential here as it it will speed up everything else that we're also excited I'm strong believer in, you know, these kind of findings that make the world a better place. We need the solution. We need it quickly. You let talk about this multiple people have experienced this summer. This could help. Whether or not this specifically helps, I don't know. But if the excitement helps get funding into researching more of this, like other people on the stage helped. And we've all here on stage helped even a little bit with the excitement. We've had a few is in the crowd. We had some heavy hitters in the crowd.

If we're able to help the excitement, like, shift the human interest, like, put a spotlight this specific thing that will eventually, you know, potentially unlocks so much, then we've done our job. If we're able to, like, imagination unlock, we had multiple folks here with superconductor experience, and they said, hey. Superconductor is incredible, and we're advancing. Like, it's going higher in temperatures. We just need more work funding. If we're able to do this, also great. And so the for that, I definitely recommend you guys follow Andrew, and he attempts and boost everything he he does for everybody here on stage.

If you if you enjoyed it, give us a like after that. And if is gonna be breaking news, we're gonna come back here. Otherwise, I wish all of you a good night. Attention is one of the most precious things which humans can give. And the fact that all of you gave us, like, the 2 hour half attention means everything to me. It means everything to the host here. I really appreciate your time, and, hopefully, we'll meet again, and we'll talk about how incredible this is after it did happen. With that, I bid you all good night. Thank you all for Jummy and see you soon.

Cheers. Alex. Thanks, everyone.