[joefigura]

This comment intrigued me, so I pulled together some information.

The first paper submitted is titled "The First Room-Temperature Ambient-Pressure Superconductor." It lists three authors: Sukbae Lee, Ji-Hoon Kim, and Young-Wan Kwon. Its timestamp is Saturday, July 22, 2023 at 07:51:19 UTC. [1]

The second paper submitted is titled "Superconductor Pb10−xCux(PO4)6O showing levitation at room temperature and atmospheric pressure and mechanism." This paper lists six authors: Sukbae Lee, Jihoon Kim, Hyun-Tak Kim, Sungyeon Im, SooMin An, Keun Ho Auh [2]. Its timestamp is Saturday, July 22nd, 2023 at 10:11:28 UTC, or two hours and twenty minutes after the first paper.

In both papers the first author is Sukbae Lee and the second author is Jihoon Kim, and in both their affiliation is given as "Quantum Energy Research center, Inc." in Seoul. The first paper posted has Young-Wan Kwon as third author. The second paper does not have Young-Wan Kwon as an author, and has four additional authors with various affiliations.

The second paper appears to have been was prepared in LaTeX, and the first paper appears to have been prepared in Word. The title and abstract of the first paper explicitly claim the creation of the world's first room temperature and pressure superconductor. The title and abstract of the second paper don't explicitly claim demonstration of the first superconductor, though they use some terminology that sounds like superconducting properties.

The accusation is that Young-Wan Kwon published the first paper without the consent of the rest of the LK-99 team, listed himself as third author, and left off the other four. Two hours later, the rest of the LK-99 team stuffed as much as they had into the second paper, and released it as soon as possible.

To me that totally seems like what happened. It explains why there are two different papers from the same group submitted on the same subject on the same day, and it explains why the author lists are different between the two. I haven't yet looked in detail, but I'm betting it also explains a lot of the oddities that people have noted in the first two papers.

This also makes me way more excited about the possibility these claims are legit. The information so far is consistent with a research group that was forced to publish early, and who produced a superconductor through a fabrication process that is a bit tricky. There's nowhere near enough evidence to conclude LK-99 is a room temperature superconductor. But one failed replication doesn't prove LK-99 isn't a superconductor - if the fabrication process is finicky we'd expect to see a few dozen failed reproductions and a few successful reproductions

[1] https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.12008

[2] https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.12037

[mellosouls]

Yeah, this in-fighting thing has been proposed before as credibility-supporting. Here's an earlier tweet with some background on the palaver, account worth following on it all:

https://twitter.com/8teAPi/status/1684385895565365248

[rozab]

This is going to make such a great movie

[mellosouls]

Yeah, especially if it pans out as real.

[lucubratory]

Thank you, I made the original comment on a whim after coming to the thread and being disappointed at how everyone was talking about this result as though it immediately exposed Lee, Jihoon Kim, Hyun-Tak Kim etc as frauds. It was also late at night and I was tired ¯ \ _ ( ツ ) _ / ¯ I really appreciate you putting together some more sourcing and explanatory material for it.

Side note, the upvotes on the original comment have pushed me well past the 500 upvotes mark, so now I have a downvoted button on most comments. Which is actually kind of annoying on mobile because God, they are right beside each other and absolutely tiny, with no remaining visual indicator afterwards as to whether you upvoted or downvoted a comment.

[welder]

> with no remaining visual indicator afterwards as to whether you upvoted or downvoted a comment.

A new link appears on that comment with text `undown` or `unvote` depending on which one you clicked.

[_0ffh]

Rushing out the second paper was a mistake and not a good look for the group. It would have been enough to force the retraction of Kwon's paper, and even without a retraction it's very unlikely it would have counted for anything with such weak data.

[joefigura]

idk if it turns out this material is a room temperature superconductor, the rushed second paper will have been the right thing to do. Science happening in real time is gonna be messy

[_0ffh]

If it's about the Nobel, no it doesn't make sense. There's been more than one Nobel where the author(s) of an earlier paper were passed over in favour of a later paper because it was insufficient to conclusively prove the claim. One example would be Randy Hulet.

[chrisjj]

The second paper's "semiconductor" claim is no less than the first.

[joefigura]

In general I'd agree with you, but in this case I think the second group very likely didn't reproduce the first group's material. The measured electrical properties of the two groups aren't even close to each other. I think that strongly suggests the two groups were measuring different materials, and that the structure of the second group's material differed in some way. A more convincing failed replication would find mostly similar electrical properties and reproduce the levitation that the first group found, but explain it with a phenomenon other than superconductors

[Qem]

Was the removed researcher junior to those latter added on?