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22 August 2018
Update 23 August 2018

Physicists doubt bold superconductivity claim following social-media storm

How excitement over claims of a high-temperature superconductor reached fever-pitch — and then died away.

Davide Castelvecchi

Davide Castelvecchi

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It was an explosive claim: the discovery of a superconducting material that can carry electricity with virtually no resistance in normal, ambient conditions. The purported finding — announced by two Indian physicists in a preprint¹ last month — sparked a rush of replication efforts. But independent researchers have grown increasingly sceptical as they have dissected the claim, in a process that played out mostly on social media.

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Nature 560, 539-540 (2018)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-06023-x

Updates & Corrections

Update 23 August 2018: This story has been updated to reflect the latest results on superconductivity at high pressures.

References

Thapa, D. K. & Pandey, A. Preprint at https://arxiv.org/abs/1807.08572 (2018).
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