LK-99: A big deal, Yea or Nay?

[ZeldaFreak | 3,669]

Didn't see any other topics about this, so I figured I'd get the ball rolling since this if proven to be true... could be, uh, kind of a big deal, haha. Just learned about this today, and figured I'd share some (potentially) very very very good news in light of the absolute sea of horrible news we've been having... well, since 2020, really.

So, for anyone who doesn't know what the fuck LK-99 is and why you should care, well...

"LK-99 is a potential room-temperature superconductor with a gray‒black appearance. It has a hexagonal structure slightly modified from lead‒apatite, by introducing small amounts of copper. The material was first discovered and manufactured by a team of researchers including Sukbae Lee (이석배) and Ji-Hoon Kim (김지훈) from Korea University. The team claims it functions as a superconductor at ambient pressure and below 400 K (127 °C; 260 °F)."

OK, so, if you're dumb like me and also didn't immediately realize why this could be a monumental discovery (again, IF PROVEN TO BE TRUE, which tons of scientists are actively working on figuring out,) well... I'll let some people who are definitely infinitely smarter than me explain, starting with the basics:

"A superconductor is a material that achieves superconductivity, which is a state of matter that has no electrical resistance and does not allow magnetic fields to penetrate. An electric current in a superconductor can persist indefinitely.

Superconductivity can only typically be achieved at very cold temperatures (below 133 kelvin (−140 °C.) Superconductors have a wide variety of everyday applications, from MRI machines to super-fast maglev trains that use magnets to levitate the trains off the track to reduce friction."

"Superconductors repel magnetic fields due to the Meissner effect. Near the surface of the superconductor material, small currents flow (without any resistance) that make an opposite magnetic field that repels the field from the magnet."

So... starting to see why this might be, uh, a lil' exciting? OK, so now on to some more details (quoted from various different people, just to give you kind of an overall picture of the potential magnitude of this discovery:)

"Normal conductors at room temperature have a small electrical resistance, which means that when you run electricity through, say a copper wire, that copper wire will 'resist' the flow of electricity by a small amount which will be turned into heat, wasting that resisted electricity and making heat that you have to deal with somehow. So if you were to run 100 watts of electricity though a very long copper cable, that cable's resistance would turn 10 watts of electricity into heat, which means that only 90 watts of usable electricity comes out of the other end of the cable and now you have to deal with 10 watts worth of heat coming from the cable too. If you put enough power through that cable, then the small resistance of the cable will cause so much power to be wasted and turned into heat that the cable itself will burn or melt from said heat. Ideally, you want as low of a resistance as possible so you waste as little of your electricity to heat and are the most power efficient.

Superconductors are like conductors with the main difference being that they have zero electrical resistance whatsoever. Meaning that you can put as much electricity through a superconductor as you want, and none of it will be wasted as heat that you would have had to deal with normally. This means that you can create far more powerful devices than are possible with normal conductors since you don't have to worry about any of that electricity being lost and turned into heat, which could otherwise become a major problem in preventing the device from working.

The problem with current superconductors is that for them to actually work and be a superconductor, you have to either make them incredibly cold (-150°C and lower), and/or exert an extreme pressure on them (over 1,000,000 atmospheres of pressure). Doing either of these to make current semiconductors work limits their uses massively, since ensuring the conditions to make them superconductive costs a lot of money and is very complex to do.

LK-99 potentially has the same properties as other superconductors, but without the need to make it extremely cold or under extreme pressures for it to work as a superconductor. This means that LK-99 can be used basically anywhere a regular conductor is used, so it could be used in a smartphone to make it significantly faster and more power efficient without having to do anything complicated and expensive like liquid nitrogen cooling. It could also be used to replace current power cables and power lines so you're no longer losing electricity to waste heat and are instead 100% power efficient."

"...If it's real, it can be used to make things like wires and computer chips that can be used in many different applications from medicine to fusion energy. My husband is specifically working on wires that can be used in magnet engineering or things like MRI machines, which currently use helium (a very expensive single use element) to keep the conductors cool enough to use. If someone can manage to make a room temperature super conductor and make it affordable to use in everyday applications, they can make a ton of money off of it, and it has incredible implications for our energy infrastructure."

"LK-99 Endgame: What Happens Next & Market Size

If LK-99 is a room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductor, there are three distinct possibilities depending on its eventual engineering properties.

Here is a straightforward explanation of each scenario and estimated total market sizes in ARR:

The two limits on superconductor performance are:
- How much current it can carry
- How much magnetic field it can withstand

If either of these limits are exceeded, superconductors stop working. The scenarios are high/low field and high/low current, but you can't really get high-field without high-current, so only three scenarios

Scenario 1: Low-field, low-current ~$1.5 trn:
LK-99 saturates at relatively low fields, like 0.3T, and relatively low current densities, of ~1 amp / mm^2. It works in delicate electronics, small packages, at high efficiencies, with extremely high sensitivity.
It revolutionizes the following industries: - Telecom hardware $650 bn; Cellphones $450 bn; Electronic Sensors $200bn; Satellites $70bn; GPUs $40bn; CPUs $20bn; Antennas $20bn.

Scenario 2: Low-field, high-current ~ $2 trn: LK-99 can carry large current densities, on the order of >1000 amps / mm^2, but can't stand strong magnetic fields. It gains relevance in power transmission, switches, relays, and larger electrical equipment.
It revolutionizes the following industries: Power transmission $320 bn; Wires + cables $200bn; Switches & Relays ~$25 bn and many others.

Scenario 3: High-field, high-current ~ $4.5 trn: LK-99 can operate in high fields of several Tesla and high currents of >1000 amps / mm^2. It revolutionizes fundamental industries by replacing motors, generators, transportation equipment, and unlocks new energy sources like fusion.
It revolutionizes the following industries: Power generation $1.8 trn; Electric Motors $300 bn; Rail freight $250 bn; Energy Storage $200 bn...

...with time, engineering, patience, and concerted effort, if TK-99 is a superconductor then Scenario #3 is highly likely within 10-20 years."

Phew... so, uh... yeah. Now, of course the question of the hour:

Is this all total BS?

Well, that's what scientists all across the world are currently trying to figure out. We're only a few days in to this so it's still EXTREMELY early days, far far too early to come to any definite conclusions one way or the other at the time of this thread initially being posted, and right now the general consensus seems very split. Some people are adamant it's probably bogus:

"Several other labs have failed to replicate this. That does not suggest to me that this is real but a form of pathological science where shoddy science is the result of optimism combined with lax scientific rigor. A lot of things about this raise alarm bells that remind me of fleischmann and pons (cold fusion), wolfe-simon (the arsenic dna paper) and the long list of others (in this part of the materials science field) that have made claims that were later shown to be either outright fraud or run of the mill garbage science.

I would in no way trust these claims. Good science requires that alternative explanations be entertained and there appears to be zero attempt to do that by these labs. This is fishy as all hell and the lack of skepticism from media outlets is disheartening but not surprising."

While others are a little more optimistic:

"In 2 days there are have been 4 studies that help explain LK-99's potential superconducting abilities. These simulations converge on key properties that suggest a new class of SC materials, and help explain quirks of LK-99 we've seen so far. Here is the easy-to-digest summary so far: (Reminder: still no experimental replication yet!!)

All studies converged on the fact that LK-99 has interesting electronic properties, formed by these 'flat energy bands' that can enable superconductivity through several different mechanisms.

- This effect relies on copper replacing lead atoms in the crystal, but it has to replace very specific lead atoms for the bands to appear, meaning it may be hard to synthesize with high purity (paper 1)

- The conduction pathways in the material may be one-dimensional, meaning they aren't equal in all directions, and this could be why it doesn't act as a perfect magnetic levitator but rather a semi-levitator. Also, other metals like gold could make LK-99 perform even better (paper 2)

- TK-99 appears to be much more robust to disorder, or randomness in the crystal, while retaining its superconducting properties. And, it appears the overlap of copper and oxygen electron orbitals might explain why this occurs at ambient pressures (paper 3)

- The most dramatic result of all is by the most distinguished author: the appearance of diamagnetism without superconductivity seems unlikely (paper 4)...

...I'll reiterate that everything depends on experimental verification, but it is fascinating to read and share this rapidly developing scientific breakthrough.

My personal odds keep going up."

My personal opinion? I'm reserving judgment for now (we should pretty definitively know whether or not this is as exciting as it looks like it might be within no more than a few weeks, from what I've seen) but I'm cautiously very optimistic, just due to the sheer implications on humanity as a whole if this were proven to be true. I mean, hell, tons of shit we think of as firmly sci-fi would very quickly become not so sci-fi within our lifetimes, put it that way, haha.

And, as one last overall point to share:

"As of 2 August 2023, the experiment had not been successfully replicated, despite the initial experiments being completed in 2020. After the July 2023 publications release, independent groups reported that they had begun attempting to reproduce the synthesis, with initial results expected within weeks. However while positive results can come quickly, negative results are slow, as "falsification needs to verify all possibilities, and it will take a lot of time."

So, again, if (big if, literally) this is all true, then in summary, at least as far as I understand it...

1. LK-99 is a superconductor (a material which has no electrical resistance whatsoever, and which is very strongly resistant to magnetic fields)
2. which works at room temperature and ambient pressure
3. made out of extremely common materials
4. which would be a discovery on par with (maybe even surpassing) the invention of the transistor
5. and it would totally revolutionize virtually all technology as we know it within no more than maybe a couple decades, possibly less.

And scientists all across the globe are actively, frantically, trying to independently verify whether or not this discovery is legit, as we speak.

So...

discuss!

......The 2020s are shaping up to be a very interesting decade in future history books, haha.

[docile tapeworm | 4,211]

Will I still be able to use my original nes via 110 ac?

[Tulpa | 3,582]

3 minutes ago, docile tapeworm said:

Will I still be able to use my original nes via 110 ac?

"This new tech will let you play NES games in your own mind! Any game! Even ones that haven't been made yet! Just think of them and you're playing them!"

Skinny: "NO! ORIGINAL HARDWARE OR NOTHING!"

[docile tapeworm | 4,211]

1 minute ago, Tulpa said:

 

Skinny: "NO! ORIGINAL HARDWARE OR NOTHING!"

it’s true!

[docile tapeworm | 4,211]

5 minutes ago, Tulpa said:

"This new tech will let you play NES games in your own mind! Any

[doner24 | 1,204]

I voted yes, because even if it’s not the crazy breakthrough that we hope, the things we will learn from its synthesis, will probably lead to a crazy breakthrough. 

[Reed Rothchild | 9,683]

Imminent superconducting AI terminators confirmed

[docile tapeworm | 4,211]

12 minutes ago, Reed Rothchild said:

Imminent superconducting AI terminators confirmed

I order you not to go!

I know now why you cry. But it’s something I can never do.

Edited August 2, 2023 by docile tapeworm

[docile tapeworm | 4,211]

31 minutes ago, Reed Rothchild said:

Imminent superconducting AI terminators confirmed

 

[MrWunderful | 2,927]

As the resident electrician, I can safely say this will never replace copper and aluminum conductors. 
 

NEVER. 

[FireHazard51 | 2,073]

4 hours ago, ZeldaFreak said:

Didn't see any other topics about this, so I figured I'd get the ball rolling since this if proven to be true... could be, uh, kind of a big deal, haha. Just learned about this today, and figured I'd share some (potentially) very very very good news in light of the absolute sea of horrible news we've been having... well, since 2020, really.

So, for anyone who doesn't know what the fuck LK-99 is and why you should care, well...

"LK-99 is a potential room-temperature superconductor with a gray‒black appearance. It has a hexagonal structure slightly modified from lead‒apatite, by introducing small amounts of copper. The material was first discovered and manufactured by a team of researchers including Sukbae Lee (이석배) and Ji-Hoon Kim (김지훈) from Korea University. The team claims it functions as a superconductor at ambient pressure and below 400 K (127 °C; 260 °F)."

OK, so, if you're dumb like me and also didn't immediately realize why this could be a monumental discovery (again, IF PROVEN TO BE TRUE, which tons of scientists are actively working on figuring out,) well... I'll let some people who are definitely infinitely smarter than me explain, starting with the basics:

"A superconductor is a material that achieves superconductivity, which is a state of matter that has no electrical resistance and does not allow magnetic fields to penetrate. An electric current in a superconductor can persist indefinitely.

Superconductivity can only typically be achieved at very cold temperatures (below 133 kelvin (−140 °C.) Superconductors have a wide variety of everyday applications, from MRI machines to super-fast maglev trains that use magnets to levitate the trains off the track to reduce friction."

"Superconductors repel magnetic fields due to the Meissner effect. Near the surface of the superconductor material, small currents flow (without any resistance) that make an opposite magnetic field that repels the field from the magnet."

So... starting to see why this might be, uh, a lil' exciting? OK, so now on to some more details (quoted from various different people, just to give you kind of an overall picture of the potential magnitude of this discovery:)

"Normal conductors at room temperature have a small electrical resistance, which means that when you run electricity through, say a copper wire, that copper wire will 'resist' the flow of electricity by a small amount which will be turned into heat, wasting that resisted electricity and making heat that you have to deal with somehow. So if you were to run 100 watts of electricity though a very long copper cable, that cable's resistance would turn 10 watts of electricity into heat, which means that only 90 watts of usable electricity comes out of the other end of the cable and now you have to deal with 10 watts worth of heat coming from the cable too. If you put enough power through that cable, then the small resistance of the cable will cause so much power to be wasted and turned into heat that the cable itself will burn or melt from said heat. Ideally, you want as low of a resistance as possible so you waste as little of your electricity to heat and are the most power efficient.

Superconductors are like conductors with the main difference being that they have zero electrical resistance whatsoever. Meaning that you can put as much electricity through a superconductor as you want, and none of it will be wasted as heat that you would have had to deal with normally. This means that you can create far more powerful devices than are possible with normal conductors since you don't have to worry about any of that electricity being lost and turned into heat, which could otherwise become a major problem in preventing the device from working.

The problem with current superconductors is that for them to actually work and be a superconductor, you have to either make them incredibly cold (-150°C and lower), and/or exert an extreme pressure on them (over 1,000,000 atmospheres of pressure). Doing either of these to make current semiconductors work limits their uses massively, since ensuring the conditions to make them superconductive costs a lot of money and is very complex to do.

LK-99 potentially has the same properties as other superconductors, but without the need to make it extremely cold or under extreme pressures for it to work as a superconductor. This means that LK-99 can be used basically anywhere a regular conductor is used, so it could be used in a smartphone to make it significantly faster and more power efficient without having to do anything complicated and expensive like liquid nitrogen cooling. It could also be used to replace current power cables and power lines so you're no longer losing electricity to waste heat and are instead 100% power efficient."

"...If it's real, it can be used to make things like wires and computer chips that can be used in many different applications from medicine to fusion energy. My husband is specifically working on wires that can be used in magnet engineering or things like MRI machines, which currently use helium (a very expensive single use element) to keep the conductors cool enough to use. If someone can manage to make a room temperature super conductor and make it affordable to use in everyday applications, they can make a ton of money off of it, and it has incredible implications for our energy infrastructure."

"LK-99 Endgame: What Happens Next & Market Size

If LK-99 is a room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductor, there are three distinct possibilities depending on its eventual engineering properties.

Here is a straightforward explanation of each scenario and estimated total market sizes in ARR:

The two limits on superconductor performance are:
- How much current it can carry
- How much magnetic field it can withstand

If either of these limits are exceeded, superconductors stop working. The scenarios are high/low field and high/low current, but you can't really get high-field without high-current, so only three scenarios

Scenario 1: Low-field, low-current ~$1.5 trn:
LK-99 saturates at relatively low fields, like 0.3T, and relatively low current densities, of ~1 amp / mm^2. It works in delicate electronics, small packages, at high efficiencies, with extremely high sensitivity.
It revolutionizes the following industries: - Telecom hardware $650 bn; Cellphones $450 bn; Electronic Sensors $200bn; Satellites $70bn; GPUs $40bn; CPUs $20bn; Antennas $20bn.

Scenario 2: Low-field, high-current ~ $2 trn: LK-99 can carry large current densities, on the order of >1000 amps / mm^2, but can't stand strong magnetic fields. It gains relevance in power transmission, switches, relays, and larger electrical equipment.
It revolutionizes the following industries: Power transmission $320 bn; Wires + cables $200bn; Switches & Relays ~$25 bn and many others.

Scenario 3: High-field, high-current ~ $4.5 trn: LK-99 can operate in high fields of several Tesla and high currents of >1000 amps / mm^2. It revolutionizes fundamental industries by replacing motors, generators, transportation equipment, and unlocks new energy sources like fusion.
It revolutionizes the following industries: Power generation $1.8 trn; Electric Motors $300 bn; Rail freight $250 bn; Energy Storage $200 bn...

...with time, engineering, patience, and concerted effort, if TK-99 is a superconductor then Scenario #3 is highly likely within 10-20 years."

Phew... so, uh... yeah. Now, of course the question of the hour:

Is this all total BS?

Well, that's what scientists all across the world are currently trying to figure out. We're only a few days in to this so it's still EXTREMELY early days, far far too early to come to any definite conclusions one way or the other at the time of this thread initially being posted, and right now the general consensus seems very split. Some people are adamant it's probably bogus:

"Several other labs have failed to replicate this. That does not suggest to me that this is real but a form of pathological science where shoddy science is the result of optimism combined with lax scientific rigor. A lot of things about this raise alarm bells that remind me of fleischmann and pons (cold fusion), wolfe-simon (the arsenic dna paper) and the long list of others (in this part of the materials science field) that have made claims that were later shown to be either outright fraud or run of the mill garbage science.

I would in no way trust these claims. Good science requires that alternative explanations be entertained and there appears to be zero attempt to do that by these labs. This is fishy as all hell and the lack of skepticism from media outlets is disheartening but not surprising."

While others are a little more optimistic:

"In 2 days there are have been 4 studies that help explain LK-99's potential superconducting abilities. These simulations converge on key properties that suggest a new class of SC materials, and help explain quirks of LK-99 we've seen so far. Here is the easy-to-digest summary so far: (Reminder: still no experimental replication yet!!)

All studies converged on the fact that LK-99 has interesting electronic properties, formed by these 'flat energy bands' that can enable superconductivity through several different mechanisms.

- This effect relies on copper replacing lead atoms in the crystal, but it has to replace very specific lead atoms for the bands to appear, meaning it may be hard to synthesize with high purity (paper 1)

- The conduction pathways in the material may be one-dimensional, meaning they aren't equal in all directions, and this could be why it doesn't act as a perfect magnetic levitator but rather a semi-levitator. Also, other metals like gold could make LK-99 perform even better (paper 2)

- TK-99 appears to be much more robust to disorder, or randomness in the crystal, while retaining its superconducting properties. And, it appears the overlap of copper and oxygen electron orbitals might explain why this occurs at ambient pressures (paper 3)

- The most dramatic result of all is by the most distinguished author: the appearance of diamagnetism without superconductivity seems unlikely (paper 4)...

...I'll reiterate that everything depends on experimental verification, but it is fascinating to read and share this rapidly developing scientific breakthrough.

My personal odds keep going up."

My personal opinion? I'm reserving judgment for now (we should pretty definitively know whether or not this is as exciting as it looks like it might be within no more than a few weeks, from what I've seen) but I'm cautiously very optimistic, just due to the sheer implications on humanity as a whole if this were proven to be true. I mean, hell, tons of shit we think of as firmly sci-fi would very quickly become not so sci-fi within our lifetimes, put it that way, haha.

And, as one last overall point to share:

"As of 2 August 2023, the experiment had not been successfully replicated, despite the initial experiments being completed in 2020. After the July 2023 publications release, independent groups reported that they had begun attempting to reproduce the synthesis, with initial results expected within weeks. However while positive results can come quickly, negative results are slow, as "falsification needs to verify all possibilities, and it will take a lot of time."

So, again, if (big if, literally) this is all true, then in summary, at least as far as I understand it...

1. LK-99 is a superconductor (a material which has no electrical resistance whatsoever, and which is very strongly resistant to magnetic fields)
2. which works at room temperature and ambient pressure
3. made out of extremely common materials
4. which would be a discovery on par with (maybe even surpassing) the invention of the transistor
5. and it would totally revolutionize virtually all technology as we know it within no more than maybe a couple decades, possibly less.

And scientists all across the globe are actively, frantically, trying to independently verify whether or not this discovery is legit, as we speak.

So...

discuss!

......The 2020s are shaping up to be a very interesting decade in future history books, haha.

Sussy

@DefaultGen VOTE: @ZeldaFreak

[ZeldaFreak | 3,669]

1 hour ago, MrWunderful said:

As the resident electrician, I can safely say this will never replace copper and aluminum conductors. 
 

NEVER. 

Out of curiosity (This is coming from a place of total ignorance on my part to be clear, I am very very dumb) what makes you say that?

[ZeldaFreak | 3,669]

7 minutes ago, FireHazard51 said:

Sussy

@DefaultGen VOTE: @ZeldaFreak

You know what's way more sus?

You voting without giving a reason. I've never once seen you do that.

VOTE: FireHazard51

[SNESNESCUBE64 | 581]

I feel like general electrical stuff like your house wiring and whatnot won't change much (at least in our lifetime). Something tells me in order for that it has to be easy to make and cheaper than the copper/aluminum.

Where I see this having the biggest impact is with semiconductors and computing technologies. Anything to improve efficiency in that is a big deal.

Edited August 2, 2023 by SNESNESCUBE64
I am officially incapable of spelling

[ZeldaFreak | 3,669]

Oh yeah, also:

Lookin' preeetty good thus far. I mean, put it this way, even if it's not this holy grail we're all hoping it is:

"They measure 0 resistance at 110K (-163C) using the four-point probe method. 0 resistance at this high of a temperature at ambient pressure is a new discovery in materials science"

[ZeldaFreak | 3,669]

1 minute ago, SNESNESCUBE64 said:

I feel like with general electrical stuff like your house wiring and whatnot won't change much (at least in our lifetime). Something tells me in order for that it has to be easy to make and cheaper than the copper/aluminum.

Where I see this having the biggest impact is with semiconductors and computing technologies. Anything to improve efficiency in that is a big deal.

Well, as far as I can tell that's the thing, it does seem to be cheap and easy to make, at least in terms of just the materials required. I dunno how hard it is to actually synthesize though, that's the real question, and obviously everyone's still trying to work out what the fuck this stuff is right now. I've read a couple places that it seems like it might be a lot more difficult to actually synthesize than people initially suspected based on some theoretical reports on it, but obviously this is still all entirely up in the air currently, who knows where the chips will fall.

[fox | 1,708]

Is it powerful enough to emulate jaguar games?

[ZeldaFreak | 3,669]

1 minute ago, fox said:

Is it powerful enough to emulate jaguar games?

I mean, certainly wouldn't hurt any progress being made on that front, haha

[MrWunderful | 2,927]

1 hour ago, ZeldaFreak said:

Out of curiosity (This is coming from a place of total ignorance on my part to be clear, I am very very dumb) what makes you say that?

The amount of copper wiring in every house, in every building, in every city, in every country in the world is impossible to replace. 
 

Like how flexible is it? What is the bend radius? How do you splice it? Can you drag it across the ground? Can it be procured for under 1$/ pound? Will it work in wet locations? How is it in salty sea air and 135° summers?

 

The entire NEC (national electric code) in USA is designed around protecting copper and aluminum wire from melting or catching on fire. 

 

I could see it being revolutionary on a very small scale, like phones or computers. 
 

But electrical distribution, all the way down to the plug in your wall? No chance. For sure not in our  lifetimes, and It would almost have to be infinitely scaleable. 
 

but good question

[Link | 2,818]

1 minute ago, MrWunderful said:

The entire NEC (national electric code) in USA is designed around protecting copper and aluminum wire from melting or catching on fire. 

This stuff, theoretically, mitigates such risks. I'm not saying we won't need codes. But that is an advantage, if this tech can be made workable. 

We are not going to replace everything with it, no. But it could be phased (heh) in via new construction and building stock attrition. There are still houses with plaster and lath walls, but now we use drywall. I don't see why there is a feasibility barrier or that it would be incompatible with existing wires. See also: fiberoptic comms.

[ZeldaFreak | 3,669]

4 minutes ago, MrWunderful said:

The amount of copper wiring in every house, in every building, in every city, in every country in the world is impossible to replace. 
 

Like how flexible is it? What is the bend radius? How do you splice it? Can you drag it across the ground? Can it be procured for under 1$/ pound? Will it work in wet locations? How is it in salty sea air and 135° summers?

 

The entire NEC (national electric code) in USA is designed around protecting copper and aluminum wire from melting or catching on fire. 

 

I could see it being revolutionary on a very small scale, like phones or computers. 
 

But electrical distribution, all the way down to the plug in your wall? No chance. For sure not in our  lifetimes, and It would almost have to be infinitely scaleable. 
 

but good question

Gotcha. Yeah, I would say I personally disagree on how potentially revolutionary it could be, but yeah, everything you said here makes total sense, and you asked a lot of questions that we're likely to get answers to within the coming weeks so no matter what the eventual conclusions are, I'm excited.

[MrWunderful | 2,927]

20 minutes ago, Link said:

This stuff, theoretically, mitigates such risks. I'm not saying we won't need codes. But that is an advantage, if this tech can be made workable. 

We are not going to replace everything with it, no. But it could be phased (heh) in via new construction and building stock attrition. There are still houses with plaster and lath walls, but now we use drywall. I don't see why there is a feasibility barrier or that it would be incompatible with existing wires. See also: fiberoptic comms.

You will always need codes, as cities always want the income from permit and inspection fees. But thats capitalism.
 

I get what you are saying, but splicing fiber is something that requires a super expensive machine and a very specific environment. Splicing copper needs a .03 c wire nut and some wire strippers. 
 

Re: compatibility, you would need everything that is connected to that material to be either the same durability, or higher. The circuit breakers act as the weakpoint in any building to “fail” (trip) before a component catches on fire. 
 

For it to be viable, it would basically need to be the same price, flexibility, etc as copper just “better”. And assume there is no dielectric corrosion like what happens when dissimilar metals touch.  
 

Fuses are literally a piece of copper designed to brake. Would we have copper fuseible links protecting something that theoretically would never melt? If you plug in an inductive load like a space heater, it would just draw power until something other than the lk-99 melted. 
 

TLDR: call me when its sold at home depot for 100$ for 250’ like 12-2 romex. 

[a3quit4s | 4,158]

@MrWunderful can you ELI5 if I replaced all the copper in my house with whatever this shit is, what’s the benefit to me? I live in NY and have radiant steam heat and central air via outside unit and air handler. And ductless heat pump/AC for the basement game room. Main breaker in garage/sub panel in game room. 

Edited August 2, 2023 by a3quit4s

[MrWunderful | 2,927]

2 hours ago, a3quit4s said:

@MrWunderful can you ELI5 if I replaced all the copper in my house with whatever this shit is, what’s the benefit to me? I live in NY and have radiant steam heat and central air via outside unit and air handler. And ductless heat pump/AC for the basement game room. Main breaker in garage/sub panel in game room. 

EL15?

 

To answer the rest, almost nothing. Maybe 10% less on your electrical bill, MAYBE. I can’t provide a lot about the uses for this material in semiconductors and small for applications, but I can talk about it from an electrical construction perspective.

 

Great discussion tho, let me elaborate . Maybe this can add to clarification on scaling of the lk-99. 
 

For general residential/commercial/industrial wiring, having a “theoretical” conductor  that offers true zero resistance would definetly save on material costs for whoever is installing it.

 

Lets take a step back.

 

Every year, across the entire world, there are millions, and millions of miles of wire that are produced. Wires is fine as a human hair, all the way up to wires as thick as a half dollar. For LK – 99 to get anywhere near that the cost to produce would have to be equal to if not lower than copper. So that makes it feel very unrealistic.

 

For it to even exist at a consumer level, it Has to prove itself as superior on a commercial and industrial level.

but we’re gonna need some more information first. Can we put 4000a through something as fine and flexible as a hair? Because then I could see it saving more than what the numbers from the article show. 
 

But when you really look at the practicality behind logistics, supply chain production, etc. it doesnt make sense for it to even exist on a consumer level in our lifetime. We will be using copper/aluminum for power distribution until the day both our grandkids die. Maybe after that?

[a3quit4s | 4,158]

You did ELI5 or explain it like I’m 5 lol