Amusingly, some friends asked me about it shortly after the original announcement. I'm not a superconductor person, but I am a materials person.
My response was, basically, the biggest risk (after toxicity) "is that they got lucky and there are subtle things they did that aren't in the recipe which will turn out to have been critical."
I've done a lot of materials research. It's pretty likely that they got lucky on a small percentage of the samples and spent years trying to figure out what on earth was different. I am excited that 10,000 other labs will stand a very good chance of finding out.
Exactly my take. The big question for me is whether or not they haven't accidentally included some contamination that makes all the difference or whether or not the geometry of the placement of the atoms is controlled tightly enough and whether either of those is going to make a huge difference in the outcome. And then there are a hundred different process errors that could have similar effects. This could take a while to be nailed down.
My response was, basically, the biggest risk (after toxicity) "is that they got lucky and there are subtle things they did that aren't in the recipe which will turn out to have been critical."
I've done a lot of materials research. It's pretty likely that they got lucky on a small percentage of the samples and spent years trying to figure out what on earth was different. I am excited that 10,000 other labs will stand a very good chance of finding out.