It is rare for materials science to make headlines, and practically unheard of for it to become a viral success. But in July this year, that is exactly what happened when a group of researchers claimed to have created a superconducting material that operates at room temperature and ambient pressure. While the claims probably don鈥檛 hold up, the tale of a material called LK-99 showed a new way of doing science. Forget peer review 鈥� this was meme review.
Two papers authored by members of the Quantum Energy Research Centre in South Korea and published on the arXiv preprint server ordinarily would have gone unnoticed by most people. While superconductors have long held the promise to revolutionise the way we use electricity, the past century has seen failed attempt after failed attempt at making them work at anything other than extremely low temperatures and high pressures. As such, LK-99 was met with scepticism from experts.
It was a post on X (at the time, Twitter) eventually seen by over 30 million people that turned the material from a would-be superconductor into a would-be superstar: 鈥淭oday might have seen the biggest physics discovery of my lifetime,鈥� wrote user , who works at a Massachusetts coffee firm, before going on to describe some of the sci-fi advances that could be made possible by such a material.
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As LK-99鈥檚 popularity rose, professional scientists who might otherwise have stayed silent felt the need to react. at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign says that researchers conducted experimental and theoretical studies impressively quickly and shared their insights in a measured and accessible way after interest in LK-99 skyrocketed.
Within days, social media was overflowing with theories and details about LK-99, as well as updates on efforts to synthesise it and test its properties in laboratories and even a few . 鈥淚t almost became a meme,鈥� says at the University of Oregon.
Some of the most debated evidence around LK-99 was videos that showed chunks of the material , seemingly exhibiting a signature of superconductivity called the Meissner effect. By following the recipe for LK-99 laid out in the research papers, amateurs were able to create the material and film similar videos, fuelling the online excitement.
But after a few weeks, almost a dozen experiments had failed to reproduce any of the other hallmarks of superconductivity originally reported, and many observations were revealed to be less exotic effects stemming from other compounds present in LK-99 samples, like copper sulphide.
Now that the dust has settled, all the researchers who spoke to New Scientist agree that it is unlikely that LK-99 is any sort of miracle material. 鈥淭he method of synthesis is clear, and it is possible to synthesise the material, but we could not see any signatures of superconductivity yet,鈥� says at the National Physical Laboratory of India.
But equally, all of the scientists expressed the sentiment that, for a few weeks in 2023, LK-99 exposed the scientific process, and the nitty-gritty of what it takes to do materials science well, to millions who had never seen it so up close and personal before.
鈥淭he fact that people did attempt to replicate and were able to figure out, in a very short amount of time, what was actually going on, is an example of how science works,鈥� says at the University of California, Davis. What was unusual was the speed. 鈥淚t鈥檚 very rare that science works in two weeks.鈥�
