LK-99 isn’t a superconductor — how science sleuths solved the mystery

Not even a conductor at all, apparently.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.06256 this group (mentioned jn the article above) synthesized a fully pure crystal, and found that has a resistance in the several megaohms at room temperature. Just a purple piece of glass, functionally speaking. The thoughts of superconductivity was due to random copper sulfate impurities which DO conduct electricity.

Most people have little understanding of actual scientific processes. The media conglomerates like Sinclair love to play on this. They'll have segments like "a glass of red wine a day prevents heart disease" only to later have a segment saying "a glass of red wine a day contributes to heart disease" because of two different competing studies. These studies probably had different sample size, quality, and of course tons of unknown variables, but they drive the traffic either way and the media doesn't care.

Yeah, this both highlights the issue, but also shows the scientific process works. As independent researchers were able to disprove the hypothesis the Korean team of researchers had proposed.