Most of the time, claims that a scientific discovery changes the way we see reality are hugely overblown. But the Bell tests done by John Clauser, Alain Aspect, and Anton Zeilinger really did. Here's my day two story on this year's Physics Nobel.
The two Chinese labs working on replicating LK-99 appear to have found a room-temperature superconductor.
At first blush, here's what's different from last time:
• it's more like "room temperature" than room temperature, the paper says 250K which is -10 F or -23 C. That's
NEW: We have the University of Rochester's 124-page investigation report. A committee of external reviewers made an unequivocal finding: Dias falsified and fabricated data, and he committed serial plagiarism—including in his 2020 NSF proposal.
When extraordinary claims don't replicate, researchers often have to shrug. But in the case of LK-99, rigorous scientific detective work got to the bottom of what was going on. My reporting on the (probable) end of the LK-99 saga here:
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 TK-99 we've seen so far.
Here is the easy-to-digest summary
Yesterday, Ranga Dias made new superconductivity claims. I spent the last month investigating allegations of data manipulation in the retracted 2020 CSH paper which claimed to observe the first room-temperature superconductor.
@shamuskhan
@jonathanchait
Your effort is admirable, but IMHO, misguided if you're trying to convince him. Chait isn't concerned about evidence or data here; it's just a kneejerk emotional response he has to excesses on the left, and no amount of receipts are going to change that.
Here's how we spotted the problem of inconsistent data: I managed to tell the difference between the numbers 3 and 4 on the y-axes and Doug managed to count all the way up to 9 to confirm that the data points are the same. A tour de force of forensic brilliance, really.
Ranga Dias is headed for a 3rd retraction—this time, it's the blockbuster Nature paper on LuNH from March. I obtained documents that detail what went wrong, and why his co-authors are asking for a retraction.
@martinmbauer
Eh. Sort of orthogonal, IMO. The discussion on twitter is the way it is because of _who_ is talking, not because of whether the research was peer reviewed. Same thing would have if the RTSC claim in March, published in Nature, had gone as viral on here with the tech crowd.
One year ago today, Ranga Dias published an extraordinary claim: a room temperature superconductor at moderate pressure. The paper was retracted, amid allegations of scientific misconduct.
For Nature’s news team, I investigated how it all transpired.
One of the most interesting developments in particle physics over the past few years is the enthusiasm—and boy is there enthusiasm—around a potential muon collider, especially given that its prospects seemed over a decade ago.
I expected that interest in LK-99 would just die a slow death after no one could replicate it; rarely is a smoking gun found that explains the spurious observations.
But in this case it seems we have a full coroner's report!
NEW: Analysis highlights extensive apparent plagiarism in Dias's thesis—at least 6,300 words, taken from 17 other sources. If confirmed, this pattern of alleged misconduct would further color Dias's claims of room temperature superconductivity.
Last week, arXiv hit 2 million papers—all free, in one place, accessible by anyone with a working internet connection—a tremendous, astounding success that has changed the way all science (not just physics and math) is published.
Ranga Dias will have another paper retracted, this time on the basis of alleged data fabrication and an attempt by his coauthor Ashkan Salamat to obstruct an investigation. My reporting for Nature News:
"So everyone got super pumped about the flat bands but that was actually premature because the DFT calculations for LK-99 assumed an unverified structure, and subsequent simulations show that the bands are localized and can't support superfluidity needed for the Meissner effect."
@AaronRHanlon
Not to be rude but the average American does not care very much about being hated by other countries because they simply don’t think about it.
Last week, after 3.5 years of a long shutdown, the Large Hadron Collider restarted for Run 3. I spoke with a dozen physicists and engineers about the monumental effort to upgrade the collider and how those upgrades will help the hunt for new physics.
For the past three years it seemed that one of Latin America’s most successful economies was lurching decisively to the left. But Chileans appear to have had enough. The sheer size of the defeat is a blow to the president. Read more:
I also wrote an obit for Steven Weinberg, which is finally up. He loomed over so many areas of theoretical physics and, maybe more than any other modern figure, really shaped the way physicists think about their theories.
Instead of another pointless back and forth about "inventing particles," how about we take a look at a sampling of what's actually happening in hep-ph this morning?
I'm also sharing the full text of the cease-and-desist letter here because I think people should see exactly what Dias sent to his graduate students to keep them silent.
As promised, here's a long thread on Rochester's investigation report. The main finding is this: on each of the 16 allegations, the investigation committee concluded Dias—based on a preponderance of evidence—committed scientific misconduct.
My dream bf
-6 to 60 mile circumference
-$10-30 billion total cost
-very ambitious & possibly laser driven
-27-33 yo army of grad students
-loves tunnels
-sensitive (to rare decays)
-good systematics
-ample public funding
-good hadronic jet discrimination
-loves runtime a LOT
My dream bf
- 6ft
- $300-500K total comp
- very ambitious & driven
- 27-33yo
- brown eyes
- loves nyc
- rlly funny but a bit weird
- rlly kind & has a moral system
- not trust fund baby (self made)
- good taste
- good listener & planner
- loves running & reading
- loves me a LOT
@RyanFMandelbaum
GEORGE: ...and so I thanked the guy.
JERRY: Of course.
GEORGE: And he went on the loudspeaker to say he hated being thanked.
JERRY: He what?
GEORGE: But everyone misheard him, so they all thanked him!
JERRY: That's terrible.
GEORGE: I know, I can never ride the bus again.
So there's sorta good news and really bad news here...
Bad news: 2016 & 2017 heat waves killed off half of the coral (through bleaching and direct roasting)
Good news: Corals may be able to adapt—not through mutations, but because some corals are already heat resistant.
@opinonhaver
Triage since this has evidently breached phys/tech twitter. New studies:
-two experimental replication attempts find no superconductivity
-one theory paper finds a sign which could be consistent with RTSC
At the end of July, I flew to Seattle and spent 10 days embedded with particle physicists, which was... an experience. Here's my best effort to convey what it was like, and where the field as a whole is going.
Sober analysis of the QC wormhole paper by Kobrin, Schuster, and Yao reveals it doesn't fulfill the criteria for three key claimed signatures: thermalization, teleportation, and size winding.
Editor: Can you write me an explainer about entanglement in 800 words?
Me: No.
It's a fair bit longer, but I think it's a useful addition to the cottage industry of quantum explainers.
The woman sitting on the LIRR trying to sell her boat because her “very nice” husband is going to federal for two years is levels of Long Island I can’t even comprehend.
If you're wondering why more physicists aren't excited about a 4.3 sigma signal at 152 GeV, it's because it comes from combining 8 channels that look like this:
More seriously, after a quick read through:
-Wang et al. do not observe Meissner effect, but weak diamagnetic signals they claim hint at Meissner
-Nor do they even attempt to measure a Tc via resistivity
-Paper does not cite key studies on LK-99 (Puphal et al., Jain, etc.)
Next month is the 20th anniversary of the Schön scandal—arguably the worst physics fraud in history. I chatted with Mac Beasley, who led the investigation of Schön, and had some fascinating things to say.
"Global Room-Temperature Superconductivity in Graphite", peer reviewed and published in Applied Quantum Materials, presents strong evidence for T=300K superconductivity in cleaved, highly oriented pyrolytic graphite, with an underlying physical theory. Check out the data (1/4):
Boy, this latest ambient pressure room temperature superconductor has really reached escape velocity on here. And with basically zero reporting. Just a couple of viral tweets.
NEW: Ranga Dias has lost his court case against the University of Rochester. We have the story, with details about how he attempted to discredit his former students and stop the investigation into his scientific misconduct.
If I were a journalist with half a century of experience I would probably not publicize a failed attempt to hoodwink students about my expertise so they would speak with me.
When protests are not about actually explaining your cause or trying to engage journalists who are there to listen.
@Peggynoonannyc
describes her visit to Columbia before the raid.
@ZachWeiner
You've heard of the Copenhagen Interpretation, but have you heard of the Stockholm Interpretation? The act of measurement affects the system, causing the wavefunction to collapse out of sympathy for its human captor/observer, who is unable to handle the paradoxes of QM.
James Webb Space Telescope pushed back to 2020. Helpful timeline from Wiki shows just how many times it's been pushed back/the cost has risen. Will need to be updated again.
this room temperature superconductor stuff is absolutely insane
I dug around to find out how they work and how the world is on the verge of a complete transformation because of them
read on 🧵
If anything, the FOIA'd email makes the correspondence published in Nature Medicine look much better. The concern was that Andersen et al. _hadn't seriously considered_ a lab leak; email clearly shows they had concerns and were thinking about it.
Once upon a time, I did a bunch of reporting on why Dr. Oz was employed by
@ColumbiaMed
as Vice Chair of the Dept. of Surgery. It never really turned into a story, but here's some fun details from my reporting. (1/x)
@martinmbauer
Most people on here talking about this stuff don't care about the difference between a peer-reviewed paper or a preprint. It's all online; it's all side by side in the same way that NYT articles appear next to Fox News articles on a platform like this, identical but for url.
Hello! Here's the first installation of a new project, which I'm calling 'Physicists on Zoom Without Coffee.' My aim is to release a longform interview every Friday, at least for a few months. First up is
@theory_dad
, on muon colliders.
Important update in the near-ambient, room temperature superconductivity saga of Lu-H-N. Will have some reporting out within the next few days, hopefully.
Alright, full story up. I tried to explain a bit behind why it's hard to get ultrashort pulses of light and what exactly this years' laureates did to solve the problem.
@Lollardfish
Just to pick a word at random, ancillary comes from the archaic Latin “ancilla” which meant/means female slave.
But linguistic drift happens. Damning words by their etymologies is a poor way to practice considerate usage.
@opinonhaver
The theory paper finds LK-99 likely has flat electronic bands, which is interesting, but far from sufficient to prove that the structure is capable of high-temp superconductivity.
So no. Nothing proven yet, nothing disproven. The prudent take remains a heap of caution.
Trying to explain to my son, the cat, that I am awake at this hour not to play with him, but because because the man who invented dynamite was Swedish.
This is the best English language overview I've read about what appears to be massive scientific fraud from a top researcher in China.
Even to the untrained eye (mine) the blatant copying of images and plots is jarring.
Some of the strangest and most exciting fundamental physics is playing out in 2D materials. Here's my stab at capturing what's happening in that swiftly-moving field.
We've included the full report in the supplementary information of the article. It is a striking document, and a testament to how much work went into uncovering Dias's deceptions.
Everything you need to know about this war, in one nuclear nutshell. Insanely dangerous Russian aggression with zero foresight or regard for life while Ukrainians attempt to prevent further catastrophic damage to their country.