Superconductor

Origin

In July 2023 researchers at the Korean firm Quantum Energy Research Institute announced a material called LK-99, claiming it was a superconductor that worked at room temperature and ambient pressure. The name combines the initials of Lee Suk-bae and Kim Ji-hoon with 99, the year the material was first made.

A superconductor is a material with zero electrical resistance. Because it had only ever been achieved at extreme cold or extreme pressure, a room-temperature version promised to change transmission, transport and energy altogether — which is why the announcement drew an immediate storm of attention at home and abroad.

Spread

The meme grew out of that attention overheating. Claims that Seoul would float, or that global warming was solved at a stroke, piled up, and jokes leaning on national pride outran the science. On the other side, scepticism circulated that compared the unverified announcement to the Theranos affair.

It became a meme abroad too. On July 29th, 2023 a soil scientist posted a Twitter thread documenting her attempt to reproduce LK-99 in her own kitchen, and a run of home superconductor experiments followed.

The ending arrived faster than the meme. Within weeks laboratories around the world had failed to reproduce the results, and the scientific consensus settled that LK-99 is not a room-temperature superconductor. The meme is now cited more often as a case of expectation inflating without foundation.

Usage

• Overheated reactions to unverified news
• Mocking ‘if only this works, everything is solved’ hyperbole
• Naming a story that was enormous and then quietly disappeared

The word carries a completely different temperature now than it did on announcement. In the summer of 2023 it stood for expectation; today it also calls to mind how that expectation ended.

Sources

• Know Your Meme, ‘LK-99 / Room-Temperature Superconductor’ — the online spread after the July 2023 announcement; the kitchen-reproduction thread of July 29th, 2023; the Theranos comparison
• Namuwiki, ‘LK-99’ — the Quantum Energy Research Institute announcement, the origin of the name, and the conclusion that it is not a room-temperature superconductor
• Scientific Reports, ‘Perception and argumentation in the LK-99 superconductivity controversy’ — an academic analysis of the online debate