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There's 3 main parties to LK99.

L&K, are two PHDs taught by their now dead former professor. Their research into LK-99 is inherited from their former professor but they lacked funding, hence it was a hobby project for a long time, and they needed funding to work on it full time.

The Korean professor: A professor who started taking interest and sponsoring the project for the last few years. However, he likely didn't participate directly in the research much.

The American professor (Ethnically Korean): A professor who was brought in rather recently (Maybe last 1-2 years?), to help bring credibility to the team. He is probably the one with the expertise to perform measurement and ascertain that it is a superconductor.

The Korean professor got kicked out from the team for unknown reasons. This was evidenced in the April paper published in Korea, which lacked the Korean professor's name. Quantum center also removed him from the website.

4 months later, he was back with a vengeance, and published the paper, with only him, and L&K on it (ie, the 3 man paper). The Korean professor possesses no sample, and also lacks the original data for LK-99.

A day later, the american professor hastily rushed out another paper (The 6-man paper), with L&K, himself, and 3 irrelevant lab assistants.

Since the earlier Korean paper in April got 0 attention and was treated like a typical troll paper. They probably assumed posting on arxiv was just good material for later legal battles, but they could otherwise continue happily researching and patenting their material. However, interest in LK-99 exploded like a nuke, because the first signal for credibility: That two professors were in a bitter battle over authorship, did not escape people's eyes.

2 days later, the Korean professor had a presentation at a Korean conference, but attendees were disappointed by his data and lack of samples (Prediction markets hit a low of 15% at this point).

However, the American professor took control of media communications, and quickly dissociated with the Korean professor, yet he completely stood by the claims of LK-99. Now the American professor has talked to numerous Korean media and directly sent an exclusive video to NYT.

Its interesting why L&K chose the American professor over the Korean one. Needless to say, if this works out, the interpersonal saga will end up in a Netflix documentary, and probably many court cases.

I should also note that the nobel prize is likely a secondary concern for the group. They aren't in a comfortable academic position where money is only a bonus. They were struggling PHDs for a long time. Nobel prize money is too little, and will come way too late to make a difference for their lives. L&K and the American professor are likely trying to maximize the value of their patents and know how to sell to investors, rather than to make public verification ASAP, which would be optimizing for a nobel prize.




For people who start the comic in the middle, can you provide the real names of the various superheroes mentionned here ?


The names are not helpful at all, because of Korean's overlapping surnames. But here you go.

L&K = Sukbae Lee, Ji-Hoon Kim

Korean professor: Young-Wan Kwon

American professor: Hyun-Tak Kim

Former (Long dead) professor: Tong-Seek Chair (Sample paper: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02697404)


> because of Korean's overlapping surnames

This is why you list the full name, rather than just the surnames. As you've listed them they are quite helpful.


> The names are not helpful at all, because of Korean's overlapping surnames.

Well, you have to provide the full name. Bummer :D

I assume the news would also be much shorter but slighly more confusing if we just called all "Joe"s "Joe" ?

Whereas they would be much less ambiguous but slighly harder if we all had a uuid assigned at birth. (Or maybe a checksum of our DNA ?)


USCIS stores a hash of your face when you enter and exit the United States. It's why they make you look at the camera.


A hash like a trapdoor, impossible to get properties of the face back? Or a hash in the sense of not a picture but just some important parameters, but still reproducible?


Checksum wouldn't work for identical twins


Would work for many using whole genomes. CpG methylation patterns could also work.

"Despite the important role that monozygotic twins have played in genetics research, little is known about their genomic differences. Here we show that monozygotic twins differ on average by 5.2 early developmental mutations and that approximately 15% of monozygotic twins have a substantial number of these early developmental mutations specific to one of them."

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41588-020-00755-1


This comment has the names and links to the papers: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36953050


Thank you for the excellent wrap-up. I couldn't keep up with everything, but with the attention this is getting - this is just excellent.

Now to learn physics.


This is a fantastic rundown of some very confusing events, thank you.


Wonder if the "their former professor" will recive meaningful credit


This is already in the 6 man paper, that's how the internet deduced their story:

"ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS We acknowledge late Prof. Chair Tong-seek for initiating research of a 1-dimensional superconductor of over room temperature at atmospheric pressure. In particular, his enthusiasm on superconductor study impressed many researchers. "

If this works out, this will be by far the biggest invention from Korea ever. They will be remembered in every Korean textbook to the end of time.


Thank you. I think I finally grasp what's going on now.




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