Gizmodo
Cornell researchers are working on a way to make hovering vehicles a reality. By pairing superconductors with permanent magnets, they've figured out a way to get objects to hover with complete stability without any power necessary.
The only catch? The superconductor needs to be at a temperature below -300 degrees Fahrenheit. That means that this tech will be used to keep spacecraft tethered together without touching rather than to build a real model of Luke's speeder from Star Wars. Pity. So wait, how exactly is this going to work?
Magnetic pinning works by placing two modules — one with an unpowered, but supercooled, superconductor and the other with an ordinary permanent magnet — near each other. The permanent magnet induces currents in the superconductor that are persistent and exactly opposite to the fields generated by the magnet. By strategically placing the magnets and superconductors, the orientation of both modules can be pinned at any orientation. In essence, one "grips" the other with an invisible magnetic glove, and will resist any movement. Even in the presence of outside forces, magnetic pinning will hold the two modules in place. The effect is so intense that is very difficult to move them, even when physically pushed from the outside. According to Cornell, it is almost impossible to force the modules to touch one another, making the technique a fail-safe system for preventing spacecraft modules from colliding with each other.OK, well that is awesome. Now if they could only figure out a way to get this working at room temperature we'd officially be living in the awesome version of the future we all dreamed about when we were 11. Let's make this happen, scientists! [EE Times via New Launches]
Comments
want want want want want!!!!
However, the question of degaussing remains to be addressed...
I haaate manure.
this picture is in my physics class text book created 4 years ago. Are you sure you got correct info Giz?
Scientists have been working for decades to make superconductive material at room temperature with very little success. It took a major jump in the early 90's (I believe) when they discovered a ceramic-type of material with superconductive properties at a fairly high temperature (I believe that high temperature is -300 degrees), but that is the closest they have come that I am aware of.
All of which is to say, this is really nifty for those people who plan on riding a land speeder in space - were it not for the fact that everything already floats in space.
Fuck the hoverboard, I want the self fastening high tops. Or is it possible to have both, with out being Michael J. Fox?
@Monty:
and like any other kind of maglev (it appears) it needs to be paired - true hover technology will have to be gravity based.
@xanderjanz: Interesting thing is I remember showing a video to a Physics class about 2 or 3 months ago, about the race to reach absolute zero and Bose-Einstein condensates and they had a part on magnetism and superconductors. It was a PBS special a few years back.
What a rip-off! I totally had this idea like, 5 years ago.
I just never collected enough beer cans to finish my superconductor. Also, I have no real understanding of physics.
Nevertheless, I want a cut of that Nobel Prize!
A balmy 88.7 degrees kelvin. So much for hover boarding over the Caribbean.
Hoverboard, check.
And Nike where the hell are those shoes; only 7 more years until 2015.
-300 degrees, huh? Well they could get it to work over Paris Hiltons heart I guess.
Will this work with higher-temperature semiconductors? Trans-Siberian low-power hover trains will really cut down on shipping from Russia (maybe even Europe) to America...
I guess supercooling and object to -300 deg f requires no power?
I read about this several years ago. They were specifically working with a compound of mercury, barium, copper, and some other things that I forget. But yeah, the energy required to cool it down enough to do that has always been too great. I don't see why this is news now, since the situation seems to be exactly the same as when I first read about it a few years back...
The hovering aspect is fine but can it go? There is no force to make it move forward yet.
My mother has been able to hover without electricity or magnets for years.
@nutbastard: But even 'gravity based' indicates a 'pairing'. Force is needed to keep an object hovering. 'Force' as a property of physics denotes two entities are present, one acting on another. There will always be a 'pairing' for hover technology if I'm understanding your use of that word. Even hovering itself is a spacial term indicating one subject is in close proximity to another subject without touching. A 'pairing' would always be present.
Fuck Luke Skywaker.
I want the hoverboard from Back to the Future, yo.
@riqgeez: Just point a fan backwards?
I dunno, sounds more like a tractor/repulsor beam to me. Shoot a sticky superconducting magnet on the enemy then use a permanently mounted magnet on your own ship as a tractor beam to pull it in. Sure distances would be severely limited but with enough power, maybe?
BTW, I claim all patent rights to this idea...
@riqgeez:
hoverboards dont work on water!! you need POWWWWERRRR!!
/biff quote
@thechansen: Those two episodes are two of my favourite NOVA episodes. I thought they played for the first time just a few months ago?
I remember these guys making the talkshow circuit several years ago. They had a ceramic disk, a metal ball and a tank of liquid nitrogen. They set it up and the crowd oohed an aahed. BFD
@pantsonfireliarliar: thats not how fields in superconductors work. This idea for levitation with S.C. isn't new, but the application to satellites I guess is new though. S.C. toy train http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfUWDYm0ewI
What if one of the objects is moving a high rate of speed relative to it's opposite?
mmmm...magnets...
Also....I still don't understand the conservation of energy behind this, as no physics professor of mine ever had the balls with which to explain. Where is the energy coming from to hover the magnet? Is it merely from the energy used to cool the superconductor? Pardon my poor physics fellow Gizmodo readers/physics geniuses.
@WilCon: that's freakin hilarious...
Seriously, though- wasn't this on the discovery channel like ten years ago? I don't see where the advancement is but then again I never went past my first physics class so maybe I'm too dense for it...
The hovering magnet thing is cool, but does anyone look at those nikes and think ouch? They look like they hurt
@Discofunk:
They did talk about that guy who fucked up at the Nobel Prize ceremony, that was 03 I believe, I thought they filmed it around the same time.
This trick of floating a magnet on a superconductor is as old as superconductors themselves. I read about this like, in popular science or something back in the 1990's. Magnets floating on superconductors won't get us hoverboards, unless all sidewalks are infused with room-temperature superconductors.
Wow, this has been around for a while.
Futurescience used to sell kits that allowed you to demo magnetic 'pinning'
They don't anymore, but they have directions on how to make your own superconductors:
[www.futurescience.com]
why are there 2 sets of knee pads on the back of the Nikes?
How is this different from the floating pen I have on my desk, which is at room temperature? I don't say that sarcastically; I just don't understand how this effect is different or better in practical terms.
the picture got my hopes up only to be smashed upon reading the post.
Damn you, Frucci
@CSX321:
i think stability...
@CSX321: The difference is that with a superconductor the magnet is held in a 3d position inside the field. With your floating pen the magnet in the pen is repulsed from the base magnet. If there isn't anything on the other side keeping the pen from shooting away from the base it would eventually get far enough away that the repulsion has no affect anymore. (Short Version): Superconductors can lock magnets into their field at a specific location, magnets can only attract or repel each other.
@jrghoull: McFly, you bojo.
@N@tedog:
Semantics - the advantage of gravity based hovering is the fact that one half of the pair already exists exactly where we want it.
i find i get the same effect after 10 beers
Wow. 1987 called, they want their "news" back.
[en.wikipedia.org]
[en.wikipedia.org]
@nutbastard: What like antigravity? I'd agree that using one pair that already exists in nature to substitute one side of the equation would simplify things. Though, one could argue that 'magnetism' (in this posts usage) and your usage of gravity are congruent forces when applied to hovering. So gravity is just the medium in your example as magnetism is the medium here and not necessarily entities doing any acting on one another.
@warhawkfanboi: The fact that you even took the time to look them up clearly shows your a nerd, and siting wikipedia is sooo 2007.
@Joewithay, thechansen
hey if u want those shoes to happen (McFly2015's) sign up at [www.mcfly2015.com]
@N@tedog: @nutbastard: the problem with antigravity is that it would (in theory) require some large amount of antimatter, which then raises the question of how to stop the antimatter from just going poof from interaction with normal matter? CERN is only able to produce tiny amounts of the stuff and it requires huge amounts of resources. Then you have to consider the negative mass, which is theoretical, put out by that antimatter in order to overcome the gravitational field of earth. All in all, science fiction mumbojumbo.
@N@tedog:
Yes, like antigravity. I'm talking hoverboards here. The pairing of superconductors and magnets is fine if you're just gonna slap some of em on the outside of a space vessel, but for ground transportation such requirements for an as yet unimplemented pair would be a deal breaker.
@thechansen:
antimatter does not repel matter - it obeys conventional gravity laws the same as normal matter. in fact, because of the positrons it's actually highly attracted to normal matter.
It doesn't have negative mass, either. I 'm not sure what you're thinking of but it's not anti-matter.
I think you're talking about negative matter...???
slight correction:
"Virtually every modern physicist suspects that antimatter has positive mass and should fall down just like normal matter. That being said, it is thought that this view has not yet been conclusively empirically observed."
My apologies CERN has only created, which they believe they have but considering the incredibly short life spans of the material they are not able to prove it, theoretical exotic matter a limited number of occasions. which could in theory have negative mass. Physics does allow for negative mass, but there is none known particle which has this characteristic.