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Comment by bcl | Hacker News Reader

I'll believe it when it's peer reviewed and reproduced.

It has been reproduced and journallized by Sharif University in Iran.

It looks legit, but his spec sheet does indicate that there are problems with commercialisation. http://www.superconductors.org/276K.htm indicates how to reproduce and what results to expect. A regular freezer can sustain -5C to 5C. An ammonia freezer can go as low as -27C, so 3C is easy to hold.

And the fact that he has been known for good results in the past shows, at least to me that this is the real thing. But of course, always the skeptic in these kinds of claims. At least it's not cold fusion, yet ;)

Other claims that the author has previously made have allegedly been reproduced/explained by a group from Sharif University in Iran.

A regular freezer can go a lot lower than -5c, -20c is easy, every home freezer does that.

And ammonia can go far lower than -27, it can easily go below -60c.

> It has been reproduced and journallized by Sharif University in Iran.

I see. Well I'll just wait for additional confirmation from the Great Leader's University of North Korea.

The chair of Electrical Engineering Department of Stanford University has announced that: "Without a doubt the finest university in the world preparing undergraduate Electrical engineers is Sharif University of Technology in Tehran" -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharif_University_of_Technology...

That's interesting, but what does it have to do with world-class physics research?

Which large scale science project in the US had the highest number of "graduates" who went on to win nobel prizes and make gigantic contributions to science? The Manhattan Project.

Which countries are currently working on their own versions of that project? Uh, North Korea and Iran.

You can be DAMN sure that some of the best scientific minds outside of western main-stream are at the moment toiling away in Iran and North Korea.

Nobel Prizes aren't awarded for brilliancy. They're ostensibly awarded for contributions to science. Since that generally involves discovering something new, it's really no surprise that members of the Manhattan Project (who were working in a previously unexplored area of physics, with gigantic resources at their command) would make some momentous discoveries.

Contrary to this, the Iranians and North Koreans aren't working on anything new (at least not under the auspices of the nuclear energy/bomb project). So don't expect many Nobel Prizes to come their way.

They're rehashing a tried and true path, with a lot of information (both in the public domain, along with probably a good deal of stolen classified material) available to them that the members of the Manhattan Project did not have.

That isn't to say that there aren't any brilliant Iranian and North Korean physicists working on the project. I'm sure they've got the cream of the crop in Iran and North Korea. But just because they're working on this doesn't make them world class physicists.

> And the fact that he has been known for good results in the past shows, at least to me that this is the real thing.

It means that the claims should be taken seriously, since he's competent in the field, but he might have made a mistake somewhere (even though, from what I understand of his report, the results seem clear. But since I'm not even a physicist, my opinion is worth peanuts).

The peer reviewed confirmation of his previous discovery can be found here: http://www.superconductors.org/SDARTICL.pdf.

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