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#1 2007-08-06 10:15:24
- MathsIsFun
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- Registered: 2005-01-21
- Posts: 7,713
Levitation in the Lab
Levitation is apparently possible by manipulating the "Casimir Effect": http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/08/06/nlevitate106.xml
(But the photo is probably of "magnetic levitation")
"The physicists defer only to mathematicians, and the mathematicians defer only to God ..." - Leon M. Lederman
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#2 2007-08-06 11:41:28
- Ricky
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- Registered: 2005-12-04
- Posts: 3,791
Re: Levitation in the Lab
I agree MIF. The Casimir effect (or force) drops very quickly in power over short distances. Even at 10nm it is only equivalent to 1atm. But we'll have to wait for more developments on this. It happens all too frequently that some discovery is made just to find out that it is either false of useless in practical applications.
"In the real world, this would be a problem. But in mathematics, we can just define a place where this problem doesn't exist. So we'll go ahead and do that now..."
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