A professional lab with PhDs and real scientists working at it will report they received a package containing alleged superconducting material from any of the LK-99 researchers or Quantum Energy Research Center.
The report can be a press release, twitter post, blog post, etc. but should be verifiable as being from a real lab.
Before midnight Thursday, August 31 PST
Edit: there is a shorter term version which is currently waiting for data since there are some Korean language claims of this with very weak validation. This market will likely also be hard to resolve.
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Warning: there is a shorter term version which is currently waiting for data since there are some Korean language claims of this with very weak validation. This market will likely also be hard to resolve.
Hopefully we will get clarification. If not I will attempt to wait a bit, to try to reduce the chances of misreaolytion
@StrayClimb update: there is an article from 8/16 from kentech which claims 1) receipt of LK-99 2) studying it 3) have been studying it for a month at that point https://gs.kentech.ac.kr/news/view/250
https://manifold.markets/StrayClimb/a-physics-lab-will-have-received-a
This market, which closed already.
That seems to be the only report we have. Do any of the no holders have a view here? Ideally we'd have a journalist or outlet we knew giving some kind of validated facts. I don't know how reliable v.daum.net is
I mean I don't know much about the state of korean journalism so I've been waiting for someone who does to weigh in, but I still find nothing but confirmations of the same reports when googling.
https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/2023/08/09/business/tech/Korea-Superconductor-LK99/20230809170554936.html
You asked for feedback from NO votes a few times, and no one has ever put up an argument for their side while there's been plenty of people saying this seems like it should clearly count.
I think at this point if the articles were false, we'd have gotten other reporting about someone coming out from KENTECH and denouncing them. Since they haven't and it's been over a week, I don't think that's going to happen.
I don't want to rush you though, ultimately up to your judgement as market maker.
@Joshua Yeah it seems like there are multiple articles about samples being sent out. Not sure how to evaluate Korean news sources though, but I’m not sure why UST would many any comment about the crystallography if they didn’t have a sample.
@Joshua My overall thought is - if we say YES and then it turns out to have been no, will be like "unbelievable, I was SURE it was YES"? I definitely wouldn't feel that way. I think it would be absolutely trivial for any of the journalists or labs involved to announce "actually we never received the sample, there was a mix-up". And if we'd have said YES based on that, we'd have been wrong.
i.e. in the space of "a real physics lab got a sample" we are in nearly the weakest possible situation. A single, unvalidated, foreign language claim from an unknown source with no further data. That is a very little amount of information to resolve a claim YES, to me.
@StrayClimb I agree, this doesn't seem reputable info to resolve it to a YES. If it was a fact then every news outlet would be paying the lab to demonstrate it due the eyeballs and attention they can gather. If it is true then we would see it as trending news for sure IMO.
I think that the media has mostly moved on from the story, but this was a big deal at the time the report broke a week ago. That was at the height of LK-99 news though, so it wasn't any bigger news than all the attempts at replication. Now with LK-99 being mostly dismissed as a non-superconductor, I don't expect us to get a lot more reporting on this. But no one is disputing the reports that came out.
And the report quotes the vice president of the college and shows the business agreement between KENTECH and Q-Centre. I would be very surprised if all of that was fabricated, along with the subsequent reporting about their analysis of the material's structure.
^This is the agreement from the original article, which I also just now translated. I don't trust Google Lens with my life, but I don't see how we could be misreading any of this.
It doesn't change that LK-99 isn't a superconductor, but they definitely sent some to these guys.
@Joshua What's the best original source URL? This paragraph doesn't seem to actually say who claims they received the sample, from https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/2023/08/09/business/tech/Korea-Superconductor-LK99/20230809170554936.html:
Kentech is the only research institute that has been provided with the original sample of LK-99 from Quantum Energy Research Centre, the Seoul-based corporation behind the superconductivity claims. Other research teams have recreated LK-99 with recipes suggested in the papers posted on pre-print site arXiv.
i.e. the CLAIMs are from QERC, and the sentence overally says Kentech is the only one who has received a sample, but nowhere does it say who said that. And obviously the journalist didn't actually see the sample or anything linked.
@Joshua okay, thanks. I emailed the reporter. Also looking into naver. It's a large site, possibly similar to Yahoo, with multiple faces. This is the reporter's page. https://media-naver-com.translate.goog/journalist/001/78043?_x_tr_sl=ja&_x_tr_tl=ko&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp
I'm trying to figure out if he is an employee, a member of a journalism union, his education etc. In contrast to being a poster on the site
Here is a recent article, not sure if mentioned yet: https://n-news-naver-com.translate.goog/article/001/0014126221?ntype=RANKING&type=journalists&_x_tr_sl=ja&_x_tr_tl=ko&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp
It has this interesting comment: "However, the verification committee explained that there was no other contact after the Quantum Energy Research Institute initially contacted that it would provide samples in 2 to 4 weeks."
So QERC has dropped off the map and isn't cooperating with the verification committee. Later on the article mentions failed international replication attempts.
In this one, there is no mention of earlier claimed provision of samples by QERC
@StrayClimb did you hear back?
Given QERC "dropping off the map", it seems that waiting to resolve this was the wise choice, however it pans out.
Related market which has the same resolution criteria but a longer timespan.
https://manifold.markets/StrayClimb/a-physics-lab-will-have-received-a
Overall: waiting for more information in English - resolving will require more research, so I'm waiting for more things to come out.
