British students invent antigravity machine

How to float like a stone

David Adam, science correspondent
Wednesday May 11, 2005
The Guardian

What goes up no longer has to come down. British scientists have developed an antigravity machine that can float heavy stones, coins and lumps of metal in mid-air. Based around a powerful magnet, the device levitates objects in a similar way to how a maglev train runs above its tracks.

Peter King, a physics professor at Nottingham University, said: "We can take an object and float it in mid-air because the magnetic forces on the object are enough to balance gravity."



The device exploits diamagnetism. Place non-magnetic objects inside a strong enough magnetic field and they are forced to act like weak magnets themselves. Generate a field that is stronger below and weaker above, and the resulting upward magnetic force cancels out gravity.

Scientists have used diamagnetism to make wood, strawberries and, famously, a living frog fly. "That force is strong enough to float things with a density similar to water, but not things with the density of rocks," Prof King said. To make their machine more powerful, the team added an oxygen and nitrogen mixture, a paramagnetic fluid. Inside the magnet, the mixture helps objects to float.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1481009,00.html

just really strong magnetism.

To levitate, do you need to have a magnet sitting on the ground underneath whatever is being levitated?

So is this how Ed Leedskalnin built Coral Castle?

http://www.coralcastle.com/home.asp

many institutions in the 90s. What is special about this?

All I heard of is playing music with some sort of wooden instrument and asps (snakes?) doing their thing for the yogis in India. But I am sure I was behind the times.

Whoops, nevermind. I was thinking of Flubber.

POLTERGEIST!!!!

:eyes:

I invented an anti-gravity device too! It depends on a conglomerate of tiny muscle cells working together to stiffen a jointed body, so that it rises in defiance of gravity. Two of these working in concert can lift hundreds of pounds!

I'm going to call it a long elevating gravitator, or "leg".

Seriously, just because you oppose gravity doesn't mean it's an anti-gravity device. For that, you have to manipulate the force of gravity itself.