It’s been a fun few weeks.
The internet — and more than a few scientists — got their hopes up a couple weeks ago when a team of physicists from South Korea announced that they had created a room-temperature superconductor from a slew of common yet unlikely materials.
LK-99, as they called the material, could be made from things like lead, phosphorus and copper, and the procedure didn’t even require particularly exotic equipment.
Claims of discovering a room-temperature superconductor have almost become a cliché in the physics and materials science spaces at this point. (How many clichés can you count in this article?) LK-99 is the second high-profile claim of room-temperature superconductivity this year, and we’re not even halfway through August!
As candidate superconducto …
