Researchers use Casimir effect to levitate objects

Two researchers at the University of St Andrews report that they have "worked out how to turn the normally 'sticky' quantum force of empty space from attraction to repulsion using a specially developed lens placed between two objects."

[T]he University of St Andrews team has created an 'incredible levitation effects’ by engineering the force of nature which normally causes objects to stick together.

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.

Link

[#1 posted by Anonymous , September 7, 2007 10:19 AM]

When do I get my Back To The Future hoverboard?!?!

[#2 posted by Anonymous , September 7, 2007 10:22 AM]

When do I get my Back To The Future hoverboard?!?!

[#3 posted by Anonymous , September 7, 2007 10:50 AM]

they just say "we use a lens to reverse the Casimir force." what does the lens *do*? light or some electromagnetic waveform is shone through it and focused on the thing you want to levitate? this is like saying to someone who has never seen a car "I use this liquid called gasoline to travel hundreds of miles in a day." One might infer you drink it with only that information.

[#4 posted by wastrel , September 7, 2007 11:06 AM]

#3, the lens is a "metamaterial", a new class of substance which is being used for all sorts of neat things lately.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metamaterial

[#5 posted by Tedly Teddington , September 7, 2007 11:42 AM]

Yeah, this article does nothing to explain how it works.

[#6 posted by Jay Levitt , September 7, 2007 12:15 PM]

And I love the stock photo of someone floating a magic-trick top. Because surely, if scientists were studying nanotechnology, one of the first objects they'd be able to float would be a top.

[#7 posted by Anonymous , September 7, 2007 12:38 PM]

Ulf Leondhart, adimttedly a genius, but he's the worst lecturer you will ever come across!

[#8 posted by Anonymous , September 7, 2007 2:40 PM]

Hopefully this will work into the plot of LOST. The Casimir effect was mentioned in a recently discovered Darhma film....

[#9 posted by Anonymous , September 7, 2007 7:53 PM]

The actual journal article is New Journal of Physics 9 (2007) 254.