Into the Impossible With Brian Keating - The Discovery of The Century or BUST? High Temperature Superconductor | Inna Vishik and Jorge Hirsch (#335)

Episode Date: August 6, 2023

See the video of this episode here: https://www.youtube.com/live/qQnDatnAWP4?feature=share Breaking news! A team of scientists in South Korea has made an extraordinary claim: they have discovered a room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductor. This means that they have found a material that can conduct electricity perfectly under everyday conditions. This is a huge deal. If it's true, it could revolutionize many technologies. We could have perfectly efficient power grids, levitating trains, and commercially viable fusion reactors. The possibilities are endless. But the scientific community is taking this with a grain of salt. There have been many claims of room-temperature superconductors in the past, and they've all turned out to be false. So we need to be careful before we get too excited. The researchers behind this latest claim say that they've done their due diligence. They've repeated their experiments multiple times, and they've had their results peer-reviewed. But until their work is published in a peer-reviewed journal, we won't know for sure if they're right. So tune in to this thrilling chat between experimentalist Professor Inna Vishik of UC Davis and my colleague Professor Jorge Hirsch, a theorist and past guest here at UCSD. This is one is a must-watch. Jorge's previous appearance regarding the Ranga Dias Paper  • RED FLAGS! Superconductor or FRAUD? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAMSoAUo288&t=0s Superconductor Showdown video:https://youtu.be/hbER0AnwXD4 The paper being discussed from South Korea: The First Room-Temperature Ambient-Pressure Superconductor by Sukbae Lee, Ji-Hoon Kim, Young-Wan Kwon here: https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.12008 Please join my mailing list 👉 briankeating.com/list for your chance to win a real meteorite 💥! Join me and ⁦Lawrence Krauss for an Onstage Dialogue ⁦at the San Diego Air & Space Museum Tuesday, Oct 17, 2023 at 7:00 PM: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/live-onstage-dialogue-brian-keating-lawrence-m-krauss-tickets-699430514497 Support The INTO THE IMPOSSIBLE Podcast by supporting our sponsors: Post your free listing at LinkedIn Jobs https://www.linkedin.com/impossible Thanks HelloFresh! Go to https://www.hellofresh.com/impossible and use code 50impossible for 50% off plus free shipping! As an Into The Impossible listener, you can get 15% off a MASTERCLASS annual membership masterclass.com/impossible Subscribe to the Jordan Harbinger Show for amazing content from Apple’s best podcast of 2018! https://www.jordanharbinger.com/podcasts  Please leave a rating and review: On Apple devices, click here, https://apple.co/39UaHlB On Spotify it’s here: https://spoti.fi/3vpfXok On Audible it’s here https://tinyurl.com/wtpvej9v  Find other ways to rate here: https://briankeating.com/podcast Support the podcast on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/drbriankeating  Become a Member on YouTube- https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmXH_moPhfkqCk6S3b9RWuw/join Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My first reaction was no. The reason being that if you're in this field, there are these so-called unidentified superconducting objects, like new plane, high temperature, room temperatures, that pop up reliably every year or so. The upshot is not a room temperature superconductor. My feeling about it has sort of evolved into a caution, cautious curiosity.

It's a very open question in my mind whether this will ever be superconductor that can be useful for anything. But I certainly do not discount and I think there is a very strong possibility that there is traces of superconducting materials in these samples that are doing these remarkable thing. Welcome, dear listeners, to this superconductor update episode of Into the Impossible. The field of condensed matter physics has been heating up, with recent claims regarding the discovery of room temperature superconducting materials. First, the controversial publication by Ranga Diaz and his team at the University of Rochester, New York, about their end-doped lutecium hydride. And now, a team of scientists in South Korea has claimed that they too have discovered another room temperature ambient pressure superconnector, a material called LK-99, a modified lead-apotite crystal.

Could this be it? Are we truly at the precipice of a technological revolution in electronics, power transmission, transportation, and much more? Prepare to geek out with your host, physics professor extraordinaire Brian Keating and his skeptical guests, professors Inna Vichick and Jorge Hirsch. If you love getting your science firsthand and going behind the headlines and hype, please keep into the impossible in your feeds by subscribing and following and pay it forward by sharing with like-minded friends. Jump over to our YouTube channel at Dr. Brian Keating, that's DR. Brian Keating,

where you can see the video version of this and our other episodes with Professor Hirsch and on condensed matter physics of superconductors. Please let us know what you think of the show in the form of a review like this one. On Apple Podcasts from Buddy Warrior Cece. Big Bangor Podcasts. Brian has a gravitational pull on an audience and students. I've observed greatness more than once, listening to this show, especially with Brian and James Altutcher.

Keep shining your light. And now, let's go beyond the superconducting headlines and hype into some first-hand science with Brian Keating, Inovicic and Jorge Hirsch. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Open the pod bay doors, please, hell. We are live on the Into the Impossible Podcast Network, joined by a very special guest. It's not so often you get a.

a guest who's a friend, who's a fellow experimentalist, who's an inspirational person to me personally, and someone who rejected me and didn't take our offer to come to be a professor at UCSD that hurts. We will have to get over it, but it's Professor Inna Vichick, who's a professor UC Davis. I know, how are you doing today? I'm good. Wow, calling me out. So I'm a longtime viewer of your pod, so happy to be here. Yeah, that's great. And I hope to get in person again. I think, well, one of the last times I saw you, I know, was at your wedding, but the other time was at MIT when you took me around and gave me a tour there. It's so gracious of you. And I hope to visit you up at UC Davis if they'll have one of us Southern California types up there. But you're an expert experimentalist. And you do research into the physics of superconductivity along with a large team of researchers. You've written many, many papers.

And this is sort of partially, well, I should say this, it's way more in your ballpark. I'm getting emails and texts from my brother, from David Friedberg, who's a big time billionaire investor, one of the besties on the All In podcast. He's asking me, what do you think? What do you think? And I'm getting, you know, hints of people like, what should I start shorting Nvidia stock? You know, is this the end of semiconductors? The stakes are really high, as you know. this could really transform the world.

I made just a small list as a hook to the listeners and the viewers out here, and I want you to add your own as well. But we're going to put up a link to some of your tweets that have been really helpful to me and knowing how to assess these counterclaims and claims. And we may be lucky enough to be joined by past guests, Jorge Hirsch, down here, who is not so sanguine that this is a real effect, and I think we'll be back with him later on. I'll put a link to our previous chat earlier this year.

These reports of room temperature superconductivity are coming faster and more furious than the Padre's hopes are being dashed at getting into the playoffs. But here's just some of the things that I've been thinking about that high temperature, room temperature, ambient pressure superconductors could give to us.

And I want you to add your own and pick your favorite energy transmission. Zero resistance transmission could revolutionize power transmission, making it more efficient, reducing global warming effects. That's a certain benefit of an ambient temperature and pressure superconductor. Transportation, levitating trains, we've all seen that. And that will be key in what we get into with the Meisner effect, which you know. You've forgotten more about most of this stuff, Ena, than I'll ever know.

Healthcare, we had recently had an MRI, and we use one of those. Oh, Professor Hers is joining us. Let me add them in. All right, thank you for joining us. We're talking about all the potential technological breakthroughs that could be enabled from healthcare to energy transportation to the power grid, reducing global warming, quantum computers. I'm also getting asked questions about, you know, is this going to impact the stocks of semiconductor manufacturers, Chamath Apalipatia, who's a bestie along with my friend David Friedberg, past guest, who's very interested in your thoughts in this, and mine are less. knowledgeable than yours. Let me first start with, with Ena, as an experimentalist, how did these results strike you? We've all been let down before, and we've all been accustomed to this kind

of dream, kind of dissipating. But how did it first strike you? What were the first things you wanted to know about this sample? I guess, what should we call it, LK99? Is that the, is that what you cool kids are called? Okay. Sure, or copper dope lead appetite if you're more technical, but LK99 works. Okay. So I'm happy to hear that you're also a fan of the all-end pod. I listen to it on my commutes. I love it.

Yeah, so my first response or my first reaction was no. The reason being that if you're in this field, there are these so-called unidentified superconducting objects like new claimed high temperature room temperatures super connectors that pop up reliably every every year or so so you know you kind of build up a thick skin to be critical about them but I guess reading more into it the upshot is and we can go into more details why I think this is the case. It's probably not a room temperature superconductor.

Wow. However, my feeling about it has sort of evolved into cautious curiosity. So that's not the same as cautious optimism, but I do think that there might be something interesting there. and I am cautious because curiosity still requires mental resources and time. I guess as far as the potential impact on the world, that's another place to be cautious.

So what I can say definitively is that material science and materials physics and materials chemistry has had a, tremendous impact on the world throughout human history and especially in the 20th and 21st century and it will continue to do so whether that impact will come from room temperature superconductivity or other innovations in that research area I think the other innovations are more likely so I think at this point we probably do not have a room temperature super connector we might have one in the future. There's nothing that strictly prohibits it. But what nature has shown us so far

is that superconductivity shows up in many different materials. So when a room, when slash if a room temperature superconductor does show up, we don't know what properties it will have. So among super connectors, we know some of them can sustain a large current, some cannot. Some Some really expel all their magnetic field. Others have a lot of trap flux. Some are ductile and can be used to make wires. Others, not so much. Some have good native oxides,

which is important for making devices for quantum computing, and some do not. Some are made of earth abundant materials and can really be deployed worldwide, and others are not, and so on and so forth. So without knowing a material, it's hard to know potential impact. So Jorge, are you able to hear us now?

I can hear you. Okay. Yes, now I do. And yeah, you don't need to call back in. If you don't see yourself, it's just because I'm focusing on Ena or myself, as I often like to do. So Jorge, you and I talked back a couple months back on the announcement of the previous, you know, claim of a room temperature superconductor. Now I want to ask you, when you heard these claims, they're quite different than the types that we talked about. back in February March, around the time of the APS March meeting,

when all hell broke loose in this group by Ranga Diaz. And all, this is a totally new group. Apparently, I've been working on this for at least 24 years, maybe more. And it has a lot of people convinced that it's not only room temperature, ambient pressure, but it's been replicated. In fact, it's being replicated online on Twitch and other venues that I'll display. Jorge, how did this result shock you and what do you make of it? What's your immediate take to it?

Well, that's an interesting question. The answer is, as I told you by email, when I first saw the preprints an archive and even the video that they first posted, I said, this is not right. This is not superconductivity. The graphs look really crappy. the resistance drops like a rock. It's not what superconductors do. The theory arguments they give make absolutely no sense to me, so this is not right and in fact the first video was totally consistent with this just being magnetic, ferromagnetic, which you would be able to kind of put it at an angle like that by just a repulsion of the same pulse of a magnet

And so I was totally convinced this was an interesting and surprised people were paying so much attention. Now, I actually changed my mind. I actually, when I saw the second video that the Chinese group posted, then it is very clear from that video that this is not thermagnative. So this is clearly either diamagnetism or superconductivity. I don't think there is any question. That's a very tiny particle that does show this property that it repels magnetic fields no matter what is the polarity. Superconductors do that and diamagnets like graphite also do that, but it's much, much weaker.

Okay, so I then, you know, changed my mind as I said and I'm very open to the possibility that this is real, even though now what does it mean it's real? It means that they have, you know, in the individual regions of it that may in fact be superconducting. Now there is an inherent competition between between lattice stability and superconductivity. So it's very possible that this particular structure is very unstable, so it can only be stabilized within small regions of a larger sample. And so it's a very open question, in my mind, whether this will ever be like a bulk superconductor

that can be useful for anything. But I certainly do not discount, and I think there is a very strong possibility that there is traces of superconducting materials in these samples that are doing these remarkable things. And if it would... Let me just add one thing I would like to say. For the hydrates, I was always very convinced that they are not superconducting and certainly Rangadias work, I think. It's clearly not right. That's because they relied on light elements, which I do not believe have anything to do with superconductivity. This is different. This is different. This is.

doesn't have light elements. I guess oxygen is not very heavy, but most of it is lead and copper. So in my view of superconductivity, this material could well be a superconductor because it's somehow similar to the copper oxide materials. In particular, it has anions, like oxygen minus minus or even phosphorus minus minus minus could be in there, and those could potentially be given you the physics that I think is responsible for superconduct. So I'm very open to believe this may be right.

Wow, that's a huge change and very, very high integrity to admit that you could be, you know, kind of led to be persuaded that this might be real. I've known you as a cautious, you know, as an optimistic pessimist, but this is, I should say, the most optimistic I've heard you about such materials. I'm going to ask, Ina, what if this is partial, you know, kind of, it's superconducting, I happened to have a sample. I smuggled it out of Korea last night. No, I didn't.

This is just a meteorite, which you can get when you go to my website, Briancateen.com, but especially dot edu addresses, students, and so forth. But let's say this is a superconductor, but only part of it is maybe it's almost like a one-dimensional, you know, Vortex or would that change the magnitude of this discovery? Let's say we could only get it in a very compromised state. It wouldn't be, you know, superconducting for miles. like niobium titanium we use it and every application in our lab what would that mean if it's just kind of a

almost like a topological singularity within a bulk material would that cross your hopes or dreams or how would that affect you um i was so excited that you had such a large chunk you got me there so um the the scenario you describe is actually um something that that happens quite a bit in the in the discovery of new superconductors or has historically. So I haven't been a synthesis person since my undergrad days. But the general story is when people are looking for new superconductors, the first result is often something, a phase impure specimen. So you have like a little pocket that is superconducting and the rest is not superconducting.

connecting and then you maybe you see a blip in the resistivity doesn't go all the way to zero or a blip in the magnetic susceptibility suggesting a little bit of expulsion magnetic field and then the people that are experts in this they find ways to single out which which minority component is actually superconducting and make more of it. So if that is what's going on, that's kind of a tried and true path to getting a larger scale super nectar. So we have the brightest audience in the known universe.

Here's a question immediately from someone on the name of SlamRN, which I was going to call my second child, as you guys know. The South Korean team claimed that a compound of lead, copper, phosphorus, and oxygen is a superconductor at temperature above 400 Kelvin and ambient pressure. Was that a, did that raise your attention at all, Jorge?

I mean, now it's not just a superconductor and ambient. Now it's superconducting when it's on fire. How do you react to this question by SlamRN? Yeah, I do not have a problem with the critical temperature being 280 Kelvin or 300 Kelvin or 400 Kelvin. I mean, we're talking about factors of less than two. And I mean the coop rates are superconducting at the 150 kelp. And once we know that's possible, then I am not, you know, I mean, I believe that superconductivity originates from a delicate balance that involves very strong forces, Kulam interactions. And so some small change in that balance can easily change temperatures by a lot. Now, it is true that there is a lot of competition with. other things and with that stability, as I said, and so on. But no, the fact that it's 400 Kelvin, rather than 300 Kelvin, does not really...

And Ina, my friend, Memes of Destruction, which is also my daughter's name. He asked, would it make sense to search for other compounds by replacing similar atoms in the Peerock table column, namely copper atoms with silver, et cetera? Thank you, guys, he's adding. What if you replaced it with other elements in the same column of the Peerock table? Would that bear fruit in a certain sense? I mean, if that's how you want to spend your time, then, I mean, in historical searches and optimizations of superconductors, there were some elements of serendipity.

There were some elements of, like, deep chemist intuition built up over decades. I would say the first order of business would be to, try to replicate the present results and also just be very clear about what they show and what they do not show. Like for example, a characteristic of a superconductor is zero resistance. In their graph of resistance, it's not really zero. The Y axis is it's actually not a small resistivity. Yamava Resort and Casino at San Manuel is California's number one entertainment destination for today's superstars. Catch the Jonas Brothers return to the Yamava Theater stage on April 30th,

the powerful vocals of Demi Lovato on May 17th, and the signature Southern Country Rock of Eric Church on July 19th. Tickets on sale now at Yamavatheater.com. only a Yalava resort and casino celebrating its 40th anniversary. U.N. must be 21 to enter. How do these compare Jorge with the coup rates or with the previous record holders? I mean, isn't it substantial, almost of different quality to have superconductivity, you know, raised almost doubled in temperature?

I mean, aren't these things fundamentally different? Or is it possible that these are just sort of a perturbation in some materials phase space away from one another? Yeah, no, I do think that if these are superconductors, which as I said now I'm inclined to believe they are, they are not qualitatively different from the cooperates in the following sense. What I think is essentially in the cup rates is that you have an insulator in the current state, and then when you change one element by another one, you are doping holes into the copper action planes in that case. And in this case, you're replacing, you also have oxygen, you have copper, you have lead, and you're replacing lead, which could be like a 4 plus ion by copper, which is 2 plus, and that would also dope holes.

And when you don't have copper, it's an insulator. And when you do the replacement, it does these things which suggest superconductivity. So I do think it's entirely possible that it's kind of the same physics that's going on in the coup. So on screen, I'm illustrating, this is a Richard Beheel friend on Santa Barbara's got his own YouTube channel, where he's showing the kind of sine qua non of a superconductor, which is this resistance dropping versus temperature. And it starts off, and there's a phenomenon where it drops below what's called a critical temperature, which is not a delta function or a step function. There's linear resistance as you cool it down,

then dropping to zero resistance when it's in the superconducting state over some small range in temperature. Jorge, when we talked last time, you had me convinced about D.S. as superconductor, that it was, I don't want to say, kind of fraudulent or misrepresented,

but the fact was that the magnetic susceptible, was really, that was the hallmark. And I want you to talk about that. But before you do, I want Ena just to clarify, could this just be very, very small resistance and just not possible to measure the difference, even in a four-wire measurement? Can you nerd out a little bit for my brilliant audience? Could this not just be very low resistance? I mean, is it truly convincing that it's zero resistance? So let me clarify. what I said a little bit. So the,

these papers are intriguing, but they're, sometimes they have issues with the Y axis. So the- We try to bring up the paper. I'm going to try to bring up the paper too, is there a figure that I should look at, figure five or something?

Yeah, figure five. Okay. Okay, so yeah, go on. I'll try to get this up. Okay. I'm looking at it myself and I probably won't be able to see your screen. But in any case, the y-axis of resistivity is 10 to the minus 2-oam centimeters. So typically for metals, we measure resistivity in micro-oam centimeters.

So this scale is about four orders of magnitude, larger. than we would customarily do. So in the so-called normal state, I guess above 100 Celsius, this resistance is gigantic. It's orders in magnitude larger than kind of a limit that is typically seen in a lot of metals. I mean, not in all materials, but that

is a very large normal state resistance. And then if you go to where the resistance kind of plateaus, they drew a red guide to the eye. And if you trace that to the right-hand y-axis, you can see that it is not quite at zero. It's like a little bit above that zero line. and it's also drawn a little bit optimistically through the lowest temperature data. But Jorge, talk about the magnetization and that phenomena.

We'll get into the Meisner effect in a minute, but what about the magnetization? And why couldn't it be a diamagnet? I mean, the Ena pointed out like most of us are diamagnetic. Yeah, let me just add to the resistance comments of ENA. I mean, it is true. It doesn't show zero resistance, and it looks very rich. weird and I totally agree when I first saw that graph I wasn't convinced at all but as I say sometimes samples are in homogeneous and you know it can it can be that there is not a continuous

path it won't go to zero resistance even though they are super compacting now going to susceptibility you asked me about the rangadillas situation and there it was a combination of things that made me believe that that wasn't real and so the story there as I told you last time is I asked for the underlying road data because there had been some subtraction of two different measurements made and so the authors kind of didn't want to share the road data and that was a big red flag and so when they finally shared the raw data it was clear that the data had been manipulated and fabricated but from the graphs themselves you know you couldn't say for a fact this is not superconductivity of this.

is superconductivity. So, you know, you look at the whole picture, but the point is, superconductivity is a very unique phenomenon, okay, either it's there or it's not. It's macroscopic quantum physics at work, okay? So there's no such thing as very small resistance, okay? If it's a superconductor, it's a superconductor, and the resistance, if you have a homogeneous or sufficiently connected sample, is exactly zero. And you put in a supercurial, and they will be there next year when you come back. So it's a qualitatively different state of matter. So as I say, you know, when you look at the totality of evidence so far,

it's conflicting, but, you know, there is something like the levitation that I think is very hard to explain. And I do not think that normal diamagnetism, it's true, you know, a lot of things are diamagnetic, but not with the necessary. say strength to explain, particularly the first video that only showed partial levitation, it looks like a quite thick sample that with normal diamagnetism of lead or graph idea, then you wouldn't get it. I will have to go now. Okay. Well, Horace, thank you very much. It's wonderful to get your impression of this.

I really appreciate your time, and hopefully we can do another interview with Lena together in person with you. That would be great. Thanks, Jorge. Thank you. I got the paper up and I was looking at the red line that you were talking about. One of the things that's always interesting to me is when somebody comes up with some novel claim, which is, of course, wonderful, but then it also, they come up with an explanation for an alternative effect. In other words, they solve a problem, or they point out a problem in the existing model or paradigm. Then they reinvent it or come up with a new invention. I'm thinking about people in cosmology that say want to reject the Big Bang or or, you know, confirm some other model of theirs and they come up with the new model. We just had a live stream

with Allison Kirkpatrick of Kansas, University of Kansas, about this very issue where a scientist in Canada claims that the web telescope results are not consistent with the age of the universe. In fact, he comes up with the universe that's 26 billion years all twice as big. And that's always kind of interesting, not only point out a problem in an existing theory, but, but, but, you know, come with a new theory. What do you make of this, that the theoretical results are, I heard, and I tweeted to you, you know, for confirmation because you're my thread girl, you know, now there's too many thread boys out there so that there's a thread girl now.

Everyone should follow Ianavishik on Twitter and elsewhere. I tweeted, like, what is this really confirming? I mean, it's a theoretical simulation. But I should say, again, reminding the viewers, we, you are not convinced. Jorge is convinced. So it's actually the opposite of what I expected. So you're not convinced this is superconducting, and that's wonderful to hear the strong opinions. But tell me what would convince you?

What would you like to see besides raw data and a huge sample? And I'll sell you this one if you let me, you know, babysit your kids or something. I don't know. Tell me, you know, or you babysit my kids. How about that? So tell me, what would convince you or what would make this more plausible? Is it the simulations? Is that adding to believability?

Um, so there's, uh, I guess, uh, believability or a verification. It's, uh, it's not a singular thing. Um, it is a process. And I think in the process will continue, I think, beyond the current, uh, hype cycle. Um, so I, I want to see, uh, replication. Um, and, uh, it should be noted that replication, um, and, uh, it should be noted that replication will take time. And if it's not replicatable, that'll take time.

Like if your students do something for a week, I don't think you'll allow them to claim success or failure, as I will want either. So it'll take time, even though in the paper, they lay out the synthesis procedure. But from anecdote, when you follow the procedure in a different lab in a different location, oftentimes you need to make modifications.

This happens all the time when people move to another university and another climate, another humidity, believe it or not, even though the synthesis procedure might be rigorous. It does need to be kind of modified in a new environment sometimes. Yeah, so I'm just waiting for replication, for I guess more different types. types of measurements maybe.

So I am, like I said, I'm cautiously curious that something interesting might be going on. And in particular, one of the ways that this material sort of quacks like a duck is that it's diamagnetic response, how it magnetizes opposite to the applied field. It does have some dependence on if it's cooled

a magnetic field versus not cold in a magnetic field. So I'd be curious to see other types of measurements in a magnetic field, like even the crystal structure or something like that. And talk about this, the simulation that, you know, I kind of asked you about the other day on Twitter, at least. They claim at LBNL using Superconductor to obtain, you know, confirmation of superconducting pathways when you replace, you know, atomic substitution. What goes into such simulations, although you're not a simulator, perhaps,

yourself, you must be familiar with the both outcomes and also the potential systematic effects of such simulations. So what did you make of those simulations and how should a layperson like me in this field apprise themselves of what to believe based on those simulations? Yeah. So I guess I'm, like you said, I'm not an expert in these either. You should ask Shnade Griffin to be a guest. But what I will say is that these sorts of calculations are pretty standard. And let me just back up and say what was posted.

So the calculation was not directly something to do with is this material superconducting. How does it superconduct? Why does that superconduct? What was calculated was something called the electronic band structure, which it tells you how electrons move around in a material in the normal state when it's not superconducting.

So to, there's sort of, these are pretty standard calculations. However, there are in this system, I believe, some approximations that need to be made, given the fact that you have some of the lead being replaced by copper. You have sort of a non-stoyceometric as it's called compound. So some approximations have to be made there. So the results of these electronic structure calculations

was something that is currently a very hot topic in condensed matter physics. And what was reported was a flat band. So what that means in more common speak is that the electrons in this material in the way that it was simulated are predicted to move much slower than expected. So that means that the kinetic energy of electrons is small. And there's another energy scale associated with electrons in a material, and that is the fact that they're charged particles and they have cool on repulsion. amongst themselves. So every electron repels every other electron. A lot of the time, amazingly, we can just ignore it

because the kinetic energy is so large, but in this case, we cannot. So having a flat band does not tell you that you have a superconductor, or that you necessarily have a propensity towards a superconductor. What it tells you, what we do know is in flat bands, you get a lot of interesting things

kind of reliably happening. Sometimes you get superconductivity. Sometimes you get exotic type of magnetism. Sometimes you get the charges arranging themselves in weird ways. So it just is a fruitful platform for surprises and materials. Okay, great. So we have a bunch more questions from the audience. What's the current status of replication, if you're aware of it, more than I am, perhaps?

So there have been a number of papers posted on the archive and maybe more as we're having this conversation. So I don't want to comment too deeply because I haven't read them. But what I can say is that replication attempts are underway. And I can also say that you should not expect a definitive answer in such a short time period. Because in experimental research, if you start doing something today that you haven't been doing for years prior, you're not going to probably reach the conclusion in one week. All right. One of my listeners or viewers, T, is asking if it's not

not a superconductor, but instead has a tremendous, humongous diamagnetic constant. Could that still have technological uses? It could. So like, for example, magnetic levitation, it relies on this effect. So potentially just having a very good diamagnet could have uses. And then we didn't get to really share your personal kind of thoughts about the technological implications or the cultural implications. This is like discovery of the transistor. I mean, if it's true, let's just say it's true, which you're currently, and I think rightfully so,

still skeptical waiting for more replication data, evidence from accredited individuals, backing from laboratory, from theory, backing, etc. But I should say sometimes that doesn't occur. I mean, Jorge has told me that he's not really that persuaded by BCS theory is the correct description and of adequately describing the Meisner effect, which I should show you on the screen because Richard Beheel put so much beautiful effort into it. I'll put that up in just a second. But anyway, talk to me about, you know, the technological implications and cultural or, yeah,

how it will affect you? Admittedly, we're both nerds. But how would it affect the world potentially? Yeah. So I guess, first of all, in bringing up Jorge's thoughts, you bring up an important point that we can have a superconductor without understanding why it becomes superconducting without understanding the mechanism. And we can still, you know, go through the process of engineering it,

optimizing it to carry more current, optimizing it to be more phase pure and so on and so forth. So a lot of progress can be made without understanding, as has been the case with the copper oxide, high temperature superconductors, which at present day are the highest transition temperature at ambient pressure confirmed. But yeah, as far as technology,

I think when you have a, material that changes the world, no matter what its properties are that change the world, it's sometimes hard to predict the applications in such an early stage. So some of the things you described are some of the things that we know how to do with superconductors. We know how to transmit a large current with them. We know how to make a large electromagnet with them. But as an example of what I'm saying, let's go back 100 years to the low temperature superconductors

that were discovered. And then 50 years or 40 years later, they were understood. There was a theory that many people accept about why they become superconduct. And then another 40 years later in the 90s, people had the idea, hey, we can use these for quantum computing. And that is a new application that kind of took off, I guess, 90 years after the initial discovery of the super connector.

So I think the real applications, maybe we can't even maybe we can't even envision them. The ones that we can envision them, maybe it will not be so cost-effective. Right. So I have a couple more questions from the audience in the last 10 minutes or so. Just a reminder, subscribe to the channel,

leave a like if you want to see more episodes like this with friends of mine like Ina, Jorge, and other cosmologists. We're going to have a deep dive with my former professor at Brown University, Robert Boller. Brandenberger is presenting a new description of the early universe called String Gas Cosmology, which does away with inflation using string theory. And we went into a very, very deep dive on perturbation theory and all sorts of cosmological

fun facts of an interview with Richard Ellis, who wrote a book over here about galaxies in the cosmos from an observer perspective. And we have interviews with Dave Farina, aka Professor Dave, and also upcoming ones with Gadsad and other luminaries. So it's quite an exciting summer for The Into the Impossible podcast, especially joined at short notice by my friend and inspiration, Inavishik, professor at UC Davis. And so, you know, I want to show the magnetic levitating effect, which also goes by the Meisner effect. Is this just like a parlor trick? Is this something that, you know, you really think about on a daily basis is like, oh, if it had zero resistance and it was, you know,

this first order fair, whatever, second order phase transition, whatever it has. I won't believe it until I actually see that it has the Meisner effect. Is this, is this just a parlor trick, or is this something that we should all demand of all of our superconductors? Are you talking about seeing a video? Yeah, well, yeah, I mean, or just whatever. Does that have to be, can you imagine a superconductor that's real, legitimate, et cetera, that doesn't exhibit the Meisner effect, or is this a requirement of a superconductor? connector? So I guess there's obscure cases where you don't get Meissner effect, like a so-called

type 3 super connector, but generally you get Meisner effect. It's one of the defining features of a superconductor. As far as like seeing it like in pictures or videos, that's cute. But I guess what researchers really care about is a a quantity called magnetic susceptibility. So basically you have a specimen, you apply a magnetic field, a known magnetic field, and you measure how much that material gets magnetized.

And then you divide the two and it gives you the susceptibility, which as the name implies, tells you how susceptible is the material to getting magnetized by an applied field. So in a superconductor, what the signature is, is you have a negative susceptibility. So you apply a magnetic field, it gets magnetized opposite. And the size of this effect tends to be much larger

than in ordinary diomagnets like us, like hydrogen, like beryllium. There's a lot of the periodic table is diamagnetic. It's very common. But how superconductors differ is that it tends to be larger. And also there tends to be some, so it tends to be larger in a superconductor. And one defining attribute of a superconductor that differs, for example, from a perfect conductor, is so if you have a perfect conductor, which doesn't exist in real life, but, you know, a hypothetical

object, and it is in a magnetic field and the flux lines penetrate your perfect conductor, you cool it down, the flux lines will stay. So it will not do a perfect conductor, doesn't care when you cool it in a magnetic field. A superconductor, If you cool it in a magnetic field, this is called field cooling. At the critical temperature, T.C., when it becomes a superconductor, it will expel some or all of that magnetic field. So you'll get an onset of that right at T.C. And people that are experts at these kinds of measurements

can look at sort of the difference in susceptibility between when you cool in magnetic field and you cool in zero magnetic field and make statements. about, you know, how superconducting is this, what's the shielding fraction, all the stuff that is not my precise expertise. I say, okay, great. You said this place was steps from the water. We just haven't found the steps yet. How much did we save? Enough. Enough to get lost. Or you could book a stay with Hilton. Welcome to your ocean front room. Just steps from the water. The Hilton sale is on now. Book on Hilton.com or the Hilton app.

and save up to 20% to get the stay you expected. When you want savings, not surprises. It matters where you stay. Hilton, for the stay. So now I'm going to show, so I've been showing the, just a magnetic field expulsion, courtesy of Rich B. Heels,

wonderful animations, and you're going to be seeing more of those. We have a video that I made about the LIGO implementation as a dark matter detector. So we're throwing everything together. Aliens, superconductors, and dark matter detection. So now I'm going to show his video that he made of a...

So this one, it shows a normal... I saw as a superconductor suspended in a magnetic field by a wire, and then, you know, in a gravitational field. And for a normal metal, that metal does not expel the field, so it goes straight through it. And then I showed when the superconductivity is manifest as the temperature drops on the right below the critical temperature, T.C, that the flux lines get expelled.

Now I'm going to cut the supporting wire and we're going to show the behavior when you have a normal metal or the superconductors in its normal state. Then it's going to be levitated by magnetic field and then we're going to turn it off by taking it above its critical temperature. So you'll be able to see this when you watch the replay and so forth. But here we go on the Meisner Effect Part 2 and this is called Falling Magnetic Field. Okay, so now it's a superconductor. The temperature is going up. It goes above its critical temperature. Normal behavior sets in, and the block of normal material then drops down and falls down. And we've seen, there were several, you know, pictures and videos of this and even a little speck of it from a replicated, apparently replicated sample, which was kind of cool to see as well. Okay, so there's a couple more questions in the last few minutes that Ina is gracing.

us with her presence and that one comes from Andrade Lambda. Cool last name. Hopefully, I'm not butchering your first name. And that is, why does superconducting energy charge associated with magnetic permeability and superconductive materials? I guess maybe why is the magnetic properties of an electrical zero-resistant electrical, why is that so relevant? Why do people care about that, Ena? Why do they care about the expulsion of magnetic field? Well, yeah, why are the magnetic properties relevant for, I mean, don't you only care about, you know, the fact that it has zero resistance, that's going to lead to all the breakthroughs, right? I mean, the levitating trains, sure, that's cool, but the zero resistance, defeating global warming, everything, is that not

going to come from its electrical lack of resistance? Well, as you know, there's a, there's there's a core topic in physics called electricity and magnetism. So the two phenomena do tend to go hand in hand. I will say in the context of superconductivity research, when you have a new proposed superconductor, there's bad reasons something might have zero resistance. Maybe your wire shorted as, you know, has probably happened in some reports.

But when you have the onset of another effect at the same temperature, that kind of gives more credibility to the result, especially if that other effect is a signature of the phenomenon. So generally, in this field of research in condensed matter physics, we like to see lots of things happening to really make us more

sure that we're seeing something real. And in a superconducting transition, a lot of things, things happen, and there's an opportunity for many different experiments to lend credibility. Okay, someone named Temp, which is appropriate, I guess, says, hey, why are you both completely deflecting to mention the two replication successes from two Chinese universities in China rushing to take credit for South Korea's discovery. Well, as you know, I love to wait into culture wars and so we're not deflecting it we're not paid by by china or anything like that temp i don't i didn't see your question but um anything to comment on the replication i mean you did mention it already i don't think there's much to add right you know um yeah i'm not talking about it

because i haven't uh read it and uh this is just because things are coming in uh so fast so yes replication attempts are good and uh we'll see how it plays out in the coming eight months. Okay, my friend Ernesto is asking, are there implications for telescope? So we use superconductors all the time for our billometers that we use for the CMB cosmic microwave background detection,

but they're quite sensitive as they are. Getting to, you know, another type of superconductor would be interesting, but not perhaps as interesting as some of the other technologies like microwave conductance detectors, etc.

Let's see what else we have or any other questions. So let's see. Capability doubles. So, yeah, levitation seems to be on everybody's mind, especially with regard to, you know, UFO disclosure and stuff. I've got a lot of interesting characters that do like this. And actually, I'm on an email thread with Brian Jostasen

and many other UFO aficionados. And I did just do an interview with Ryan Graves recently that you can find on my channel on the F-18 pilots who claims to have, you know, witness data to some events off the coast of the eastern United States. Anyway, any thoughts about advanced technology, maybe not of this Earth, Enah, could we say anything about that in the remaining minutes that this could be, you know, the next great leap for humanity to, on our voyage to become interplanetary? So, no, but I guess you do have a colleague that potentially saw signatures of maybe minute super connectivity and extraterrestrial rocks.

So it's, yeah, that's the connection I have. All right. So, yeah, there's just a lot of really fun questions about the future. and warp drives, can we use the flux tubes to, you know, take us back and teleport us back in time. I'm going to take the opportunity the last two minutes that we have together, the thank you so much, Ina, and refer people to follow Ena on Twitter at Enavishik, and I'll put a link to that in the show notes. I'll put your website in there as well. But, Ena, as you know, as a longtime listener, I always like to ask deep existential questions.

And I want to ask you two, one of which is inspired by Arthur C. Clark. I guess they're both inspired by Arthur C. Clark. I'm honored to be the associate director of the Arthur C. Clark Center for Human Imagination at UC San Diego. And the first one would be the quote that we open all of our podcasts with, which is in Arthur's voice, where he says any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable for magic. And I don't know. Have you seen the movie 2001 a Space Odyssey? No. Okay.

Yeah, you're too young. But anyway, it's a famous iconic movie. But one of the parts starts out. Did you see the Barbie movie? No. You didn't see the Barbie movie? Come on, don't tell me you saw Oppenheimer. Please don't know.

I'm at home watching Netflix with the Littles. Well, when you come visit me, we'll all go out. We'll take our girls out to see Barbie and Oppenheimer. I saw Oppenheimer. I didn't see Barber. But Barbie apparently opens up with the scene that is evocative of 2001 of Space Odyssey where these monkeys or primates are hitting this tablet with a bone. They don't really know what it is.

And then they flip the bone goes up in the area. and the girls in Barbie are hitting Barbie dolls and so forth, as I understand it. I'm going to be doing a video of the physics of Barbie soon. Stay tuned. No, I'm not going to do that. But the scene really comes from 2001 of Space Odyssey, where they're, you know, they find this monolith. And the monolith, we don't know what it is.

It is a time capsule. It is a sentinel. Is it a watch or a lurk or what is it? But I want to ask you in this way, what piece of technology to you is most or least distinguishable from magic? What is the most impressive technology as an experimental physicist that you've ever encountered? Maybe not in your own work. What's the most impressive thing that human beings have ever done?

Wow. That, I have to admit, I haven't really thought of that. I mean, it's hard. to answer because technology is just everywhere. And I mean, I would say that our computers, our silicon-based electronics, it's strange for me to say this because it's sort of related to my field very closely. And I know how all the components its work, but the fact that you have so many transistors in such a small area and so many

steps in the fabrication process, and then it's subjected to all kinds of environments, as you know, you have it in your pocket and drive it around in a hot car and whatnot, take it through an x-ray machine at the airport, whatever, and it's still works. So that is really remarkable when you think of it and the capabilities sort of continue to increase. We have not hit the end of Moore's law yet. And I think this really illustrates just how central and almost magical material science and material physics is in our everyday world. And I'm really happy that with LK99, people are sort of appreciating one corner of this field. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, to find people debating on Twitter, you know, is it type two? Is it type one? And it's pretty, it's pretty thrilling when the alternative is, you know, debating some indictment of a former president or something like that. Okay, you know, last,

last question. As you know, we have a lot of very brilliant technical-minded guests and also audience members. Many of them are men, although not all. There's a good number that are female, and I'm proud that not only have I had on some of the greatest luminaries, but also people that are relatively lesser known, both male and female, of all different, you know, creeds and races and colors. But I want to ask you in a form of the inspiration of the title of this podcast, comes from Arthur C. Clark's, another saying of his, which is the only way to determine the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible. That's where I got the name of the podcast. I want to ask you in the form of advice to your younger self. You can include

your experiences as a woman in a male-dominated field or not. It's up to you. But I want to give yourself advice. You have 30 seconds to talk to your 22-year-old self up at Stanford graduate student or what have you. I want to ask you to kind of let me know. What would you tell that person to give them the courage to do as you've done to go into the impossible? Okay, so many young people like I was as well or sometimes too courageous in a sense. like they can be reckless sometimes. So I'm not sure if courage is the limiting factor. But I guess the advice I would give to my younger self

is to work harder. So in those early days when you don't have other responsibilities, that's really the time to say. set the foundation for your future career. And also, do not throw away your old problem sets and exams. They may come in handy when you have to make your own problem sets and exams as a professor. Well, Ambition comes in all shapes and sizes.

At First Citizens Bank, we roll with your goals because we're built for what you're building. fit for your ambition for citizens back. Professor Inavisich, a distinguished colleague of mine at the University of California System, the greatest university on the face of the earth. Can't wait until we can get our families together and hang out. It's been too long. And I wish you all the best. Thank you for taking our listeners on this deep dive into the physics behind the headlines

and helping to explain and break down where we go from here. And I just want to wish you a great rest of your summer. And like I said, kind of take the kids to see the physics of Barbenheimer. Absolutely. Thanks for having me. And thank you for, you know, having the courage to delve into this thing that I know is far outside your everyday interest. It is. Thank you, I, you know, it's been great.

So, thanks, everybody. I hope you enjoyed this episode, deep dive into physics. No, we don't only talk about aliens on this podcast. Although, you know, as you guys are noting, there are many different possibilities. that technology could be advanced substantially if we were to somehow make contact in the future. But I will continue to discuss the breaking news in science. There are claims of so-called dark stars being observed by my friend Katie Freeze at the University of Texas at Austin. And she's been a guest in the podcast before.

And she and her team claim that they may have detected what are known as dark stars, which may provide new glimpses into dark matter. And there's going to be huge, huge breaking news on this podcast, at least with upcoming appearances by yours truly on some really foundational podcast shows. I've already sort of started to leak out some of that information. If you're on my Magic Monday mailing list, because any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Because my mission is to kind of gather and synthesize a cohort of all of you, the greatest minds on the Earth and kind of help guide you through the process of either high schoolers going into college, college students becoming better at their research and scholastic endeavors, and then

graduate students, postdocs, faculty, et cetera. Because I think the future, you know, of our humanity depends on this. And I think it's great for people like Musk and others to say, oh, we have to become interplanetary, but we have a lot of issues we can solve here on Earth, but only if we have a really astute, educated, erudite listening audience and educated populace. So I'm trying to connect a million minds in my multiverse of minds. And part of the way I do that is communicate through my mailing list, Brian Keating.com. So please do go to that and we'll keep in touch. And stay tuned for, as I said, some huge appearances on at least two or three of the biggest kind of podcast venues

out there. So for now, your fearful host, Dr. Brian Keating, from the University of California, California, San Diego, and the Arthur C. Clark Center for Human Imagination. Signing off for Brian Kitting. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Thanks for listening. Keep in touch, inspired and informed by signing up for Professor Keating's Monday Magic email at brinekeeting.com slash list. And if you have a dot edu domain, we'll send you an artifact older than the earth, forged in the fire of an exploding star in the form of an authentic meteorite fragment. Thanks to all our viewers and listeners for helping us reach 150,000 subscribers on YouTube and putting us into the top 1% of science podcasts.

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