[bhouston]

Yeah, having another lab confirm the behavior and makeup of that sample would go a long way. I wonder why that isn’t happening?

Does anyone have an explanation on why no one is examining/validating the sample they already have?

[moralestapia]

>I wonder why that isn’t happening?

Because it's been ~10 days since it was announced in a preprint article.

The complexity and resources involved are much higher than "building websites with React", so, things happen on a different timescale.

[peyton]

I mean they already characterized it six ways to Sunday and posted a video of it levitating.

[bhouston]

Independent validation. Physical peer review.

That basically helps rule out scammers or gross incompetence and ensures that even if initial attempts to replicate fail because of the complexity or lack of clarity, people keep trying.

[bluGill]

Any physicist can make up something that sounds reasonable to other physicists. With a little trick photography (or CGI!) you can make a video something levitating that looks like room temperature super conductors.

Don't read the above as an accusation. Only a justification to wait until it is replicated.

[bananapub]

what are you talking about?

the authors haven't given anyone a sample to inspect, so every other solid state physics lab in the world is instead trying to follow the notional recipe and test their own sample.

[bhouston]

> the authors haven't given anyone a sample to inspect

Why not? It would help their case immensely, especially if replication is tricky.

[bluGill]

There are claims that they are going to share, but since it is fragile and they only have a few samples the logistics are tricky. They might not be telling the truth about sharing samples, but I'd wait a couple months before accusing them of lies. In fact if they share too quick I'd suspect it is so they can ship a box of dust and claim shipping damaged the only sample!