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pleco
SFN Addict
USA
2998 Posts |
 Posted - 08/06/2007 : 08:26:07
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Source
Professor Ulf Leonhardt and Dr Thomas Philbin, from the University of St Andrews in Scotland, have worked out a way of reversing this pheneomenon, known as the Casimir force, so that it repels instead of attracts.
Their discovery could ultimately lead to frictionless micro-machines with moving parts that levitate But they say that, in principle at least, the same effect could be used to levitate bigger objects too, even a person. |
If this holds out, I wants the lev boots...
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by Filthy
The neo-con methane machine will soon be running at full fart. |
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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 08/06/2007 : 11:32:44 [Permalink]
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Fascinating!
There's also this shorter article from the BBC.
And there's yet another physical force I had never even heard of. Here's the Wiki article for the Casimir force.
I suspect, Pleco, those boots (or at least Version 1.0) would just levitate us enough to make us slip and fall on our asses. High-tech quantum banana peel soles.
Someone correct this thought if it's wrong, but isn't the normal working of the Casimir force analogous to how two floating sticks in a pond with ripples will tend to line up parallel and then push together due to the difference between the pressure of ripples all around, and the lesser pressure in the sheltered area between them?
I noticed the watery analog of that effect as a kid in the bathtub.
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
| Edited by - HalfMooner on 08/06/2007 12:33:01 |
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BigPapaSmurf
SFN Die Hard
3192 Posts |
Posted - 08/06/2007 : 12:30:01 [Permalink]
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| I dont think this is strong enough to overcome gravity for anything heavy, though it may be useful on a microscopic level for small components. |
"...things I have neither seen nor experienced nor heard tell of from anybody else; things, what is more, that do not in fact exist and could not ever exist at all. So my readers must not believe a word I say." -Lucian on his book True History
"...They accept such things on faith alone, without any evidence. So if a fraudulent and cunning person who knows how to take advantage of a situation comes among them, he can make himself rich in a short time." -Lucian critical of early Christians c.166 AD From his book, De Morte Peregrini |
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pleco
SFN Addict
USA
2998 Posts |
Posted - 08/06/2007 : 13:11:04 [Permalink]
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| Ah, but with lev boots, you could float just enough to turn solid ground into something like ice skating, thus I could "skate" to work, stores, etc. and not use my car! |
by Filthy
The neo-con methane machine will soon be running at full fart. |
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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 08/06/2007 : 13:19:35 [Permalink]
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Ah-hah! I was not the first to notice that watery analogue of the Casimir Force:| I discovered a few years ago a wonderful nautical version of this force. Back in the 1820s, the French Navy produced a handbook of advice to their sailors, and one of the pieces of advice to captains is rather extraordinary. There's no reason for the advice, it's just based on experience, and the experience was that if you had two large ships and you were sailing in a strong swell but there were not high winds, then if the boats were to come quite close together, 30 or 40 yards close to one another, then the captain should set down small boats full of 20 or 30 men, and they whould attach lines and pull the boats apart, because experience showed that once the boats which were gently swaying together got closer than about 30 or 40 yards, they would be pulled together and their riggings would become entwined and there would be disaster. If you calculate this, you find that it's exactly the same effect in the large, that you get an out of phase generation of waves between the boats, so the crests of one wave match the troughs of the other, so it's in effect there is no wave motion between the two boats, but the waves coming in and rebounding off the outside push the boats together. Mathematically, it's exactly the same type of effect, but not with quantum waves, just with classical waves. In fact, a little mathematics shows you, if you have two ships that weigh about 700 tons or so, then a couple of small boats with 20 or 30 men will be able to overcome the force that pulls them together, so it's a nautical Casimir effect. |
The above quote is from "Much Ado About Nothing," a wonderful article about vacuum, by Professor John D Barrow FRS.
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
| Edited by - HalfMooner on 08/06/2007 13:23:18 |
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Baza
New Member
United Kingdom
47 Posts |
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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
 Posted - 08/06/2007 : 16:14:24 [Permalink]
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I actually read about this a fairly long time ago. It took me a while to remember where and a little longer to find it.
The oriential gentleman with no apparent means of support is one Chizuo Matsumoto, founder of the Japanese Aum cult. This is the pack of lunatics that released sarin gas into the Toyko subway system some years back, and he has been a guest of the state in the hoosegow ever since.
A pity that he has not yet achieved death as he'd fit my signature nicely.
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist! 
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Science solves levitation
