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Room-temperature superconductivity?

Posted: Mon Apr 12, 2010 5:34 am
by DeltaV
Anybody seen this before? Hype or Hope? (No, not the Hope diamond...)

Electron extraction from n-type diamond: evidence for superconduction at room temperature

http://www.cathodixx.com/
An explanation for superconduction is given without invoking Cooper pairs. The model is consistent with the experimental findings on “high-temperature” superconductors like YBCO, traditional “low-temperature” superconductors, superconducting semiconductors, with the room-temperature superconducting phase the author has discovered experimentally, as well as with experimental results measured for the Mott transition. The model has none of the theoretical inconsistencies of previous approaches like the BCS-theory; in fact, it is shown that the BCS-model cannot explain superconduction at all. In addition, the model developed in this book explains why charge carriers cannot experience an applied electric field within a superconductor. No other model has been able to give a mechanism for this essential requirement. The model also provides the basis for a logic that enables superconducting devices to be designed, optimised and built. Such devices can be designed to operate above room temperature. In developing the model, new insights into the application and interpretation of quantum mechanics became apparent. It became clear that the Born-interpretation of the wave function as a probability amplitude has to be wrong. In this book it is concluded that waves are the reality while point-particles are abstract constructs which only apply when classical behaviour manifests. The boundary between classical and wave behaviour is determined by a parameter β which relates to Heisenberg’s uncertainty relationship. The presence (or non-presence) of an observer has no effect on the outcome of a physical interaction in nature. Furthermore, a quantum-mechanical entity cannot be in two (or more) states simultaneously, i.e. Schrödinger’s cat is alive and well until it dies for a causal reason. God really does not play dice. Viva Einstein!

Posted: Mon Apr 12, 2010 8:15 am
by IntLibber
I REALLY REALLY hate trying to read scientific papers that are behind a paywall.

Elsewhere

Posted: Mon Apr 12, 2010 8:39 am
by quixote
You can find it elsewhere with some searching, but they really make you work for it. I couldn't find the first part, unfortunately.

http://rtn.elektronika.lt/mi/0304/2prins.pdf

Posted: Mon Apr 12, 2010 12:20 pm
by Robthebob
interesting, how they explain the results of the EPR paradox and related experiments?

Posted: Mon Apr 12, 2010 12:32 pm
by tomclarke
Any new model of superconduction which met the claims here would be eminently publishable (even if it was somewhat speculative) and subject to peer review and comment.

The lack of this, and the overblown style in which the "book" is written, make the claims effectively worthless. Perhaps someone else would like to wade through it and detect the errors?

Best wishes, Tom

Posted: Tue Apr 13, 2010 9:28 am
by Betruger
Received 20 February 2002

Published 7 February 2003

Posted: Tue Apr 13, 2010 10:13 am
by icarus
.... the overblown style in which the "book" is written, make the claims effectively worthless. Perhaps someone else would like to wade through it and detect the errors?
Sounds exactly like how thinking scientists felt about the IPCC's 'Assessment Reports' ...
although the wading is even being done and the number of errors discovered are growing

Posted: Thu Apr 15, 2010 9:29 pm
by MirariNefas
Betruger wrote:Received 20 February 2002

Published 7 February 2003
Publishing journal is SEMICONDUCTOR SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY. They're legitimate, indexed in ISI.

Looks like a regular article to me though, not a book.

Posted: Thu Apr 15, 2010 9:46 pm
by DeltaV
The SS&T paper is legit. The books are home-brewed. He seems pissed:
A Physics Scandal

It has now been six years since Prof. Johan F. Prins reported the formation of a superconducting phase at and above room temperature which forms from electrons extracted by an anode into a vacuum.


Cathodixx announces with pride that we can generate substrates on which superconduction occur at room temperature. They are suitable for the manufacturing of electronic chips. Any electronics-company with the necessary infrastructure who would like to test these substrates can contact Sage Wise 66 (Pty) Ltd. through this website.


The original discovery and subsequent development of these wafer-substrates led to incontrovertible proof that all the presently-accepted models which supposedly explain superconduction are just plain wrong.

Being an optimist Johan Prins wrote a book aimed at physicists entitled “Superconduction at Room Temperature without Cooper Pairs”; which was announced on this website during 2005. In this book the physics of superconductors is explained and modelled by using the accepted mathematics of quantum mechanics. However, it was later discovered that the stupidities inherent in “quantum physics”, which deals with the interpretation of quantum mechanics, need not to have been invoked.

Both the original breakthrough-discovery and the latter book have been ignored by the physics-community. Even worse, the “priests” in charge of the “physics-church” actively blocked Johan Prins from publishing his results in physics-journals. Not in a single case was any reason based on physics-logic given for the decisions to reject submitted manuscripts. Furthermore, when posting comments in physics forums on the internet Johan was in some instances banned for life. Not in a single case was such a website willing to give reasons why such a decision had been reached.

Over the past ten years the physics-community has thus consistently proved the validity of the advice that one must not throw pearls before swine. Therefore Johan is writing another book; this time aimed at all people who still have common sense. This book is entitled “The Physics Delusion” and will be published this year. It is already 90% complete.

To give a taste of what is in store, excerpts from the book can now be read here by clicking the button entitled:

"The Physics Delusion"

Posted: Fri Apr 16, 2010 9:29 am
by vernes
Interesting.

And a bit disturbing.

Posted: Fri Apr 16, 2010 9:04 pm
by scareduck
"What is your proof?"

Also, the forum (a semiconductor journal rather than any of the superconductor journals) is an odd choice. That may have affected how this guy got this article published in the first place: the review panel wasn't qualified to judge the manuscript.

Posted: Fri Apr 16, 2010 10:35 pm
by Betruger
I pointed out the dates because such a breakthrough ought to have made more echoes in so many years since.

The accusation of scientific misconduct is plausible but doesn't gain any cred when it's worded the same way as the common kook would phrase it. Go to any forum fluent enough in average space-enthusiast joes and you'll find these types who come up with absolute word-salad "revolutionary" takes on physics, and you'll see their response more often than not is more or less the same as this
Over the past ten years the physics-community has thus consistently proved the validity of the advice that one must not throw pearls before swine. Therefore Johan is writing another book; this time aimed at all people who still have common sense. This book is entitled “The Physics Delusion” and will be published this year. It is already 90% complete.

To give a taste of what is in store, excerpts from the book can now be read here by clicking the button entitled:
Ironically enough this social rant of theirs is usually the only clearly articulated part of their ideas.

Posted: Sat Apr 17, 2010 4:04 am
by MirariNefas
Now that I think about it, the dates tell us something else. Received a full year before published. That means it went back for revision a few times. It was either poorly written, or the experimental design was bad and needed to be supplemented in some way.

lurking no more

Posted: Sat Apr 17, 2010 4:48 am
by Gandalf
If you want the full text with figures, here it is:

http://www.4shared.com/account/file/Kv7 ... ltext.html

I cannot speak for the validity of Dr. Prins' claims. However, I can claim to know a bit about the corruption and graft that runs rampant in the peer-reviewed journal publishing business, especially in regards to superconductivity.

Way back in the olden days before the internet, there was this guy that went by the name of Paul Chu down in Texas. He came across a very interesting perovskite that exhibited Tc above 77K. He had been around the block and knew that such a monumental claim in a publication would be a graft-magnet. When he submitted his draft for publication, the claim was made that YbBaCuO produced the desired results. He even processed a batch to be sure it didn't do anything terribly interesting.

Not at all to Chu's surprise, some other journal with some relevance to the subject printed an article with his exact claim, but made by someone else, two weeks before Chu's original article was to be published.

Then, right at the deadline for submitting minor typographical corrections (3 days I think), he 'corrected' his submission to YBaCuO. Hey, what's an extra 'b' ? Yttrium, Ytterbium, no big difference.

The journal(s) had egg on their face, the corrupt 'scientist' was discredited, and hilarity ensued.

And some people wonder why Perelman told the academic world to take their corrupt money and go pound sand.

Anyway, I fried my 2-stage rotary vane pump doing rude things to molecular sieves, and my wife won't let me take the engagement ring I gave her a few decades ago into my 'lab', so I won't be trying to duplicate Prins' work. However, I'm not so sure this paper offers anything useful from a material science perspective that could be applied to the construction of a cheaper, better, stronger field for a polywell in the short term. My take on it is that he's just claiming the current model for 'superconductivity' is more like 'dogma' and needs a bit of a re-think. And corruption pisses him off. I'm up with that, and think his work warrants further investigation. A Dutch guy named Verlinde says some interesting things along the same lines regarding gravity and the standard model.


Cheerio,

Gandalf

Posted: Sat Apr 17, 2010 4:59 am
by rcain
no one seems to have mentioned De Beers yet, yet to me they seem like an elephant in the room...