Is Levitation Possible? Exploring the Science Behind Floating Objects

[mrfeathers]

its a rather simple question and would like to hear your thoughts. but i mean like actual levetation, sort of like jedi force but not exactly. i also don't mean like jet pack or giant fans, i basically mean floating with nothing attached

 

[whozum]

So you mean, something to oppose the force of gravity, but not a force. Maybe if you put yourself in orbit, you'd be levitating the same distance from the ground. Otherwise you just negated in the third line what you asked for in the second line.

 

[Pengwuino]

its a rather simple question and would like to hear your thoughts. but i mean like actual levetation, sort of like jedi force but not exactly. i also don't mean like jet pack or giant fans, i basically mean floating with nothing attached

MagLev Trains

 

[whozum]

That would require attaching large magnets.

 

[Edgardo]

http://www.hfml.ru.nl/levitation-movies.html

I found this website by typing "Levitation frog" into google.

 

[Sempiternity]

I think that the best possibility of achieving any sort of levitation would be through superconducting electromagnets, such as those the MagLev trains employ. Eventually, room-temperature superconducting electromagnets may be found, which will make experimenting with more things economically feasible.

 

[eNathan]

I know strong magnetic fields "have already" been used to levetate even objects made out of rubber. But other than that, all you need is some sort of force which will overtrhow gravity. Its not magic; science. Of course it is posible :)

 

[Garth]

I know strong magnetic fields "have already" been used to levetate even objects made out of rubber. But other than that, all you need is some sort of force which will overtrhow gravity. Its not magic; science. Of course it is posible :)

You need an antigravity force.

Now, since the distant Supernovae type Ia seen in distant galaxies are fainter than predicted it has been generally accepted that there is a cosmological antigravity effect - normally attributed to Dark Energy - that causes acceleration of the universe's expansion.

The science of cosmology normally applies the physics 'down here' to explain what is going on 'up there'; but here perhaps we might be able to apply what is going on 'out there' to understand what might be possible 'down here'.

So all you need to do is to 'bottle' some of this 'Dark Energy' and heh presto... antigravity!

Garth!

 

[Sempiternity]

Well, with antigravity, or negative energy (exotic matter), all it does is always fall up. It's repelled by ordinary matter. Trying to use something like this would probably be a little difficult, since it's repulsive against you, the ground, and everything else. Can it be contained with limited amounts so that it can be efficiently used to levitate a mass? Also, how strong is it in its repulsion against ordinary matter? (It must be strong enough for physicists to consider using it in the highly unstable environment of wormholes.)

 

[Jameson]

I know antimatter annihilates with matter when the two come in contact. I haven't read of documented antigravity, matter that repells gravity by nature. Would anyone have a website for me to look at?

 

[Sempiternity]

Antimatter, in any case, is different from exotic matter (negative energy, dark energy, antigravity, etc).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antigravity
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exotic_matter

To learn more, you should check out some books that talk about exotic matter and its usage, such as Black Holes & Time Warps by Kip Thorne and Parallel Worlds by Michio Kaku, both which I highly recommend.

 

[CaptainQuaser]

Simple Levitation

You may be thinking of levitation through councious thought or some such thing. (From the mystical Jedi reference). Because simple levitation is a no brainer, I have a globe that "levitates" picked it up for 20 bucks. It uses an adjustable strength electro-magnet in order to make the "sweet spot" large enough to be plausible. The sweet spot being the are in which the magnetic attraction is enough to hold it up but not strong enough to pull it up. As you may know if you played with magnets as a child on ""steady"" magnets the balance point is infinitely small and therefore unplausible. With electro-magnets its childs play. So yes, of course levitation is possible.

 

[pete worthington]

There is also the levitron which is a spinning "ceramic" magnetic top that levitates above a base with four magnets set in each corner. The "sweet spot" here is created only when the top is spinning between specific rpm's. The price of this baby is around 35 bucks. Super Physics Toy !