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Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 23, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Room-temperature and pressure superconductor discovered. It's not peer-reviewed, published, or replicated yet--what do you guys think the odds are that this is legit?

First publicly claimed partial replication of magnetic weirdness in America. Very small size compared to the input materials, and seems weirdly shiny compared to a lot of other attempts, which points to at least a difference in manufacturing.

There are still non-superconducting explanations -- the magnetic measurements could be 'just' extremely strong diamagnetism, and even the efforts to attempt resistivity and critical current measurements from other groups have not been amazing so far. But it at least drastically reduces the odds that this is a simple fraud.

There have also been some interesting failures to replicate.