this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2023
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So, of I understand correctly, just because one, five, or ten reports of LK-99 lacking superconductivity doesn't mean that lk-99 can't be a room temperature superconductor, the issue is that there isn't a lot known about why it's superconductive and the specific configuration of atoms required to express superconductivity under ambient temperature and pressure. The process for creating it isn't an exact process and as a result, it's hard to control and ensure that the final structure is correct.
Am I understanding that correctly?
Edit: this also makes me wonder (as a non-scientist) if most conductors could be superconductive at room temperature with the correct atomic structure, but due to technological limitations and a general lack of understanding, scientists are having to brute-force superconductivity via extreme pressures and/or temperatures. Hopefully, however, even if this is shown to be too difficult to be consistently replicated, it'll lead to the discovery of more easily replicated materials.
My understanding is similar. From what I gather, the theoretical understanding of why superconductivity happens is weak at best - so most (all?) superconductors are found by brute force, accident, or modifications to existing superconductors.
It'll be an interesting middle-ground if this is shown to be superconducting in some configurations, but if it ends up not being reliable to manufacture on industrial scales. If it is confirmed, though, I expect ridiculous amounts of money would be thrown at the problem...
Absolutely, I'd imagine a lot of money in superconductors right now is speculative, in the sense that most of it is academic funding because any real breakthroughs are thought to be far enough in the future to not be of immediate value. Or to put it another way, I'd imagine it's not getting as much funding as it should due to modern capitalism being short-sighted. If this turns out to be successful, albiet inconsistent, it'll suddenly be in range for corporate "money vision" to focus on it.
Edit: I'd imagine the US military will be especially interested in it, which would further assist in development. Since the research is unclassified, it means every decent-sized military will likely be competing in an arms-race behind closed doors to see who'll be able to adopt it first, because they can all use said research as a stepping stone.
I think it's fair to say that basic science in general is underfunded and adding to that academic overhead is absurd.
That said, it's useful to clarify some definitions in there. Basic science is anything but basic, it's "pure research", or projects that aim to better understand some principle and/or phenomenon (a relevant example would be the mechanisms behind superconductors).
That and the academic overhead I'm referencing is the cut that a university takes of grant awards. Most of the departments I've been around take 50% of the grant award, so if you need $100,000 to complete a project, you have to ask for 200 grand (or more if you want to be paid the whole year rather than just 9 months). Now a lot of this is driven by an outrageous number of administrators with insulting salaries for what they provide (does the vice president of insert some nebulous term here really provide 300 grand worth of contributions to a university, especially so when they set the salary of teaching faculty down around 40~50K and expect applicants with PhDs and years of experience).
So what ends up happening is that researchers tag buzzwords and trendy bells and whistles onto research projects that really don't need them just to have a single digit percent chance at getting the finding to make them happen. Oh and if they don't beat the odds, they are shown the door in 5 years. Academia really needs a shakeup.
Jesus Christ, why do they need 50%? I could understand 20%, or 30%, but 50%!?
I thought that while PhD candidates were poorly paid, most professors with actual PhDs tended to start around 70k~100k depending on the school. Do you have any links to articles that talk about professor salaries? Additionally, I'd be willing to accept the VP of a university making $300k if the professors were making at least $150k (around half of what the VP makes), however that's not the case.
I can directly verify this based on my career. I'm not really trying to dox myself, but at a large state university in Ohio (not OSU) PhD candidates in chemistry were paid 22k a year for their teaching positions. I was offered the academic lab manager position (I held the interim title a few times while finishing my PhD) which is a PhD wanted, masters minimum position at 29k. Nontenured teaching faculty started in the high 30s to mid 40s depending on experience. Fresh tenure track hires came in at 60k with little wiggle room. Because these are state schools, all of these salaries are released to the public. Pick a university and find a prof or admin you'd like to know about and plug them in here. https://www.buckeyeinstitute.org/data/higher_ed_salary
Wow. That's horrible. I'll have to spend a bit more time looking at the salary link because I can't find a way to filter out non-teaching roles and I'm seeing salaries all over the place (both professor and non-professor), but it sucks that you've had to deal with that.
Oh it worked out fine for me in the end, I'm making 6 figures for a government agency. It's the adjuncts that got screwed the worst, they had no promise of consistent work and landed I think 3 grand per class per semester with no benefits.