1. The discovery was in a university research context, where publishing results is normal practice.

2. Maybe publication was mandated by the funding source.

3. Maybe it's not yet certain that it's a breakthrough and they want more eyes on it to help validate.

4. Maybe they want to be publicly acknowledged as the discoverers, for future patent/prize/fame purposes.

5. Maybe it's so early stage, or with so many practical limitations, that it is not yet ready to be industrialized.

6. Maybe the recipe is so simple that there's no realistic way to contain knowledge of it.

7. Maybe it's a revolutionary technology that will save the world and the best outcome for everybody, including the researchers, is to get it into as many hands as possible.

No need to invoke conspiracy.

Perhaps his fears were founded. A few hours later in fact his name was suppressed in a second version of the paper.

Also, we have no clue if the US or other military has already discovered and been using this and for how long.

I feel it was going to get out eventually. If you’re using a room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductor for things which require room-temperature ambient-pressure superconducting, unless you conceal that you actually need it, people are going to realize. And once the existence is known, many top-tier labs would be analyzing it and trying to discover the manufacturing process like they are now…

The nice thing about academia is that people don’t hide breakthrough discoveries, they post them publicly and get rewarded for that. If real, these people are on track to win a nobel prize and lifelong fame and probably, lifelong funding (though probably not as much, but more than enough to survive). If real and these people hide how to produce, what would they get? Possibly more money, because governments and businesses would buy what they make for a lot and hire for even more. But governments and organizations would also want to kidnap and extort them, and most people would hate them. Meanwhile many, many labs with as much equipment and as talented researchers would be working on reproducing, and taking whatever samples they can get to do so, so their extra opportunities may not even last for long, but their notoriety would

Why I say this? The events of publishing, retracting and re-publishing the original paper happen over drama among the people involved with the discovery.

It also appears that that the development wasn't a smooth sail as would a conspiracy may theorists like to describe technological innovations. They had hard dime finding funding and people who believe in them, so having this great epiphany in 1999 then working with the governments to develop it is not a realistic scenario at all. Instead, they grinded for 2 decades and finally got something good enough to show for. Even then, their discovery is still under heavy scrutiny and it might turn out to be a dud(Although, at this point I would bet that they are onto something real).

Here is a thread on the history of the development of the substance: https://twitter.com/8teAPi/status/1685641634892128256

But yes, there was a leak in the form of the first whitepaper published by Kwon who was a former member of the group—so perhaps had it not been for that release then they would still keep trying to enchance the process more before releasing.

Like for a decade ;).

When energy flows from one and of a wire made from a superconductor to the other end, then no heat is produced? Where did the energy go then?

If CPUs were made from material without resistance, would they stay cold?

How much of the heat a CPU expells is inevitable?

Could (non-reversible) calculations be done without creating any heat? If yes, where did the energy go? There is no way to compute something like 10+20 without "using up" energy, right?

So many questions...

Assuming it is real, one must consider the perspective of the discoverer. In science, it's a race to publish and this will certainly win a Nobel Prize. That's why scientists publish in communications/letters/preprints.

This is exactly how collaborative, peer-reviewed scientific research should be. Public.

Plus, the initial publication seems to have stemmed from dissension within the group. There's no way they could have kept this secret.

Whenever there's a new piece of information or "news", always stop and wonder who is telling you that, why, and why now. Not enough people do!

Science is never obviously a breakthrough, people like to talk about and get credit for cool stuff they do, and revolutionary technology isn't necessarily of any benefit if no one knows about it.

This is like asking why the US government didn't keep the transistor a secret: because the transistor is of no use to anyone until people made microprocessors with it, and to do that they needed to first make better transistors.