It is still too early to celebrate, but this would be such a huge deal, holy fuck.

  • Thordros [he/him, comrade/them]
    ·
    1 year ago

    Once again, wake me up once it actually does something practical. In real life. Not a lab.

    We've been superconducting cold fusion perpetual motion machines on the 10th planet since I was a kid. And I am extremely old.

    • ImOnADiet
      ·
      1 year ago

      I get not wanting to get too hyped, but this is a weird take imo. This isn't near the same in-feasibility as cold fusion or perpetual motion machines. Everything starts in a lab, if this ends up being real it doesn't need to be super useful, it gives us a place to start actually looking to find stuff that does work for us.

      • KFCDoubleDoink [any]
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        "Big breakthrough" stories are a dime a dozen and 99 percent bullshit to secure more funding. Can't really be mad at them for being skeptical.

        • ImOnADiet
          ·
          1 year ago

          are they really? most of what you're talking about is the media over-hyping papers from scientists, but this paper would actually deserve the hype if it's true. And this would be such a dumbass way to secure more funding, this would ruin your reputation if you had to retract. It's not being skeptical that I'm "mad at", it's the comparison to cold fusion and perpetual motion and a 10th planet. This is more in the realm of "we got fusion to give us net positive energy input" level tech

          • somename [she/her]
            ·
            1 year ago

            It’s more than that really. Net positive fusion reactions have been done. Making an actual, usable reactor is another thing entirely. There’s a ton of things to still work out.

            This would be way more of a huge impact, very quickly. Even if this particular compound ends up being non-viable in an industry sense, it would be a paradigm changing discovery. It’s a thing with inherent value, and that doesn’t need huge amounts of new engineering solutions to come with it to be useful, unlike fusion. If it’s a room temperature, normal pressure, superconductor, and you can make half-decent wires out of it, the world is changed.

            • ImOnADiet
              ·
              1 year ago

              my understanding is that we still spend way too much energy in like containing the reaction, I was aware we had managed to get more energy out of the specific fusion part (idk how to word what I'm trying to say). But yes I'm aware of how massive this is, I'm more trying to say I think it's at the same tech difficulty of trying to get fusion to work, not something ridiculous like cold fusion

              • somename [she/her]
                ·
                edit-2
                1 year ago

                Well, there has been net energy created, in the sense that a reaction was made that generated more energy than the apparatus driving it used.

                Just, doing this is hell on the machinery it’s done on, so it’s not really a viable power source yet. There’s a bunch of engineering problems to solve first.

                • ImOnADiet
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  yes, like we got more energy from what we actually used to ignite the fusion process, but we use a ton of energy to actually be able to keep the reactor running is what I'm saying (like all the shielding and shit)

          • KFCDoubleDoink [any]
            ·
            1 year ago

            I was coming at it from a media perspective. There is a reason nobody takes this crap seriously.

            • ImOnADiet
              ·
              1 year ago

              but the problem with media isn't hyping up cranks, it's hyping up shit when the paper they're hyping doesn't even make any claims close to what the media is saying. This really would be worth the hype like I said

    • GorbinOutOverHere [comrade/them]
      ·
      1 year ago

      We've been superconducting cold fusion

      not at temperatures that don't require liquid helium level temperatures

      • uralsolo
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        deleted by creator