What is Lk 99 Room Temperature Superconductor?

LK-99 is a copper-doped lead-apatite material that Korean researchers claimed in a July 22, 2023 arXiv preprint could superconduct at room temperature and ambient pressure, a combination long considered a holy grail in physics.

Where did Lk 99 Room Temperature Superconductor come from?

The material was described in two arXiv preprints posted on July 22, 2023 by a Korean team including Sukbae Lee and Ji-Hoon Kim, and it went viral three days later through a thread by @alexkaplan0 and a widely shared video from @AiBreakfast.

What does Lk 99 Room Temperature Superconductor mean?

As a meme, LK-99 is shorthand for a burst of online science hype about a supposed breakthrough, wrapped in Oppenheimer jokes, prediction-market bets, and shaky levitation clips, that mostly deflated once replication attempts failed to reproduce the effect.

How do you use Lk 99 Room Temperature Superconductor?

People typically invoke LK-99 to mock or celebrate speculative science news, often by reposting the original levitating-pellet clip with captions about quitting their job or by comparing a new preprint to the July 2023 frenzy documented on Twitter.

Is Lk 99 Room Temperature Superconductor still popular?

The peak virality was late July and early August 2023, with a smaller revival around a January 3, 2024 Chinese follow-up paper, and it is now cited mostly as a cautionary reference point in science-Twitter discussions.

Lk 99 Room Temperature Superconductor

2023eventclassic

Published August 5, 2026

LK-99 is a modified lead-apatite material that South Korean researchers claimed in July 2023 could superconduct at room temperature and ambient pressure, sparking a viral wave of Twitter threads, kitchen replication attempts, and meme edits before independent labs largely debunked the finding.

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Overview

LK-99 is the name given to a slightly modified lead-apatite crystal that a small Korean team claimed showed superconductivity at room temperature and ambient pressure, a combination physicists had chased for decades1. A working room-temperature superconductor would in theory enable lossless power grids, cheap MRI machines, and floating maglev transport, which is why the July 2023 arXiv preprints detonated across science Twitter almost immediately2.

The meme side of LK-99 is less about a single image format and more about a two-week burst of tweets, explainer threads, prediction-market bets, and shitposts. Wobbly video of a grey pellet allegedly levitating above a magnet became the visual shorthand, remixed alongside Oppenheimer references, I Should Buy a Boat edits, and Ice Cream So Good jokes about a suddenly post-scarcity future3.

Gallery

Origin & Background

Platform

arXiv (paper) / Twitter (viral spread)

Creator

Sukbae Lee and Ji-Hoon Kim

Date

2023

On July 22, 2023, a group associated with the Quantum Energy Research Centre and collaborators tied to the Korea Institute of Science and Technology posted two preprints to arXiv describing LK-99, a copper-doped lead-apatite they said achieved zero resistance and partial magnetic levitation up to 127°C1. The name comes from the lead authors, Sukbae Lee and Ji-Hoon Kim, plus the year 1999 when they say the work began4.

The claim mattered because prior room-temperature superconductor announcements had a rough history, including a high-profile 2020 Nature paper by Ranga Dias that was later retracted amid data-integrity concerns5. Skeptics on day one already suspected LK-99 was showing diamagnetic behaviour rather than the Meissner effect a true superconductor requires3.

How It Spread

The story went viral on July 25, 2023, when the Twitter account @AiBreakfast posted a video of the levitating LK-99 pellet, and Princeton graduate Alex Kaplan wrote a long thread walking non-physicists through what a working superconductor would actually change, racking up more than 128,000 likes over the following month3. Within hours, meme accounts joined in, with @Brad08414464 posting an I Should Buy a Boat edit on July 26 and @netcapgirl reworking the Ice Cream So Good format the same day3.

On July 29, soil scientist and Twitter user @iris_IGB started a thread narrating her attempt to replicate LK-99 in her home kitchen, and on July 30 she posted photos of a tiny black speck she said was being held up by "superdiamagnetism," which onlookers dubbed the "Russian Catgirl replication"3. Two days later, on July 31, Berkeley Lab physicist Sinéad Griffin dropped a Department of Energy supercomputer simulation on arXiv suggesting LK-99 could, in principle, superconduct if the copper substitutions landed on the right sites, and her tweet with a Mic Drop GIF cleared 8,100 likes in a day6.

Betting followed the hype. Manifold Markets ran a widely shared market on whether LK-99 would be confirmed as a room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductor before 2025, with the odds swinging between roughly 30 and 40 percent through early August 2023 before collapsing as replication attempts failed7. A January 3, 2024 paper from a Chinese group hinting at a similar candidate briefly revived hope, but posters like @pronounced_kyle greeted it with jokes about being willing to "get hurt again"3.

How to Use This Meme

The LK-99 format is typically used as a shorthand for premature science hype, often pairing the shaky levitating-pellet video with captions about buying a boat, retiring early, or otherwise reorganising one's life around imminent utopia. A common convention is to react to any new science preprint with "LK-99 all over again" or similar phrasing, and edits often riff on the Oppenheimer film that opened around the same weekend3.