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On July 22nd, 2023, a preprint paper, The First Room-Temperature Ambient-Pressure Superconductor was submitted to arxiv.

It has the potential to be the most groundbreaking discovery of the 21st century. According to the authors, they have successfully synthesized the world's first room-temperature superconductor, capable of operating at ambient pressure.

While this discovery could be a turning point in science and technology, I am seeking the insights of the skeptical community to critically evaluate the legitimacy of this preprint.

Are there any red flags or potential methodological issues that stand out in the paper? Is the proposed mechanism of superconductivity plausible based on our current understanding of superconductors?

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    Typically, such a paper would be submitted for peer review by a journal (or conference). I doubt this forum is the place to comment on such papers before that process is completed.
    – GEdgar
    Commented Jul 27, 2023 at 1:43
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    Welcome to Skeptics! The scope of the site explicitly excludes "research level" topics. We don't normally enforce that strongly, but this is a situation where it will take the research community some time to evaluate the claim. We aren't a suitable forum of quantum mechanics researchers. We can wait until they make some pronouncements and popularise them when they do.
    – Oddthinking
    Commented Jul 27, 2023 at 3:18
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    @NacibNeme the first link you mention is a question about an interview of Al Gore, citing apparently a TED talk from a decade prior (which calculates its numbers based on a paper around the same time). The second link is a question about a year-old paper which had time for peer review and time for scientists to write rebuttals. Conversely, the paper this question is about was only just uploaded to Arxiv four days ago. If that’s not “current events”, then I don’t know what is. Give the scientific community time to confirm or reject the findings and this could be reopened later. Commented Jul 27, 2023 at 3:53
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    @NacibNeme Here's a relevant meta discussion - or rather, community consensus, since there's no actual opposing position to "we are fact checkers, not researchers, and to-be-reviewed research is out of scope for Skeptics". Also note that most mainstream media that did pick up on the article mention that other researchers are skeptical towards its findings, so it doesn't pass the "it is widely believed" notability check. Commented Jul 27, 2023 at 3:55
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    @Laurel very true, but this one sounds like the way to reproduce it should be significantly easier than the complicated ultra-high-pressure setup in that one. Ambient temperature and pressure is pretty simple to replicate, and in theory the authors could simply make & send chunks of their material to others to test in their own labs … Commented Jul 27, 2023 at 18:20

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