A South Korean university has launched an investigation after one of the authors of a paper claiming to have synthesized the world’s first superconductor at room temperature posted it online without the co-authors’ permission.

The academic paper sparked a stir in global markets as investors predicted the discovery could revolutionize electronics and accelerate the move away from fossil fuels, but other scientists have been skeptical ever since. The influential journal Nature said Wednesday that the material, dubbed LK-99, is not a superconductor.

According to a school official, Yang-Wang Kwon, a research professor at Korea University, uploaded an article about the superconductor to Cornell University’s arXiv server for publication on July 22. A representative from Korea University asked not to be named due to the sensitivity of the matter.

The scientific community was baffled by how an unpeer-checked article was made available online. In addition to Kwon, his co-authors were Sukbae Lee and Ji-Hoon Kim. More interestingly, hours later, a second article was uploaded to the same site, in addition to the other four, written by Lee and Kim, but without Kwon.

Kim Hyun-tak, one of the authors of the second paper and a physics research professor at the College of William and Mary in Virginia, told Bloomberg earlier this month that scientists rushed to download their paper after learning that Kwon had shared a version of it. without the permission of the co-authors.

The Korea University supervisory board usually conducts a preliminary investigation before launching a full-blown investigation, but has decided that the case warrants an urgent investigation, adding that a conclusion should be made in about six months, he said. According to the official, Kwon is a lecturer at the university’s Institute of Convergent Sciences and Technologies. Source