Levitation Mystery Solved
Posted by sky | Tags: Science, Technology, invisibility, levitation, nanotechnology
From Telegraph .The University of St Andrews team has created an 'incredible levitation effects’ by engineering the force of nature which normally causes objects to stick together. They 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. The Casimir force is due to the fluctuations in all-pervasive energy fields in the intervening empty space between the objects and is one reason atoms stick together. Now, using a special lens of a kind that has already been built, Prof Ulf Leonhardt and Dr Thomas Philbin report in the New Journal of Physics they can engineer the Casimir force to repel, rather than attact. Because the Casimir force causes problems for nanotechnologists, who are trying to build electrical circuits and tiny mechanical devices on silicon chips, among other things, the team believes the feat could initially be used to stop tiny objects from sticking to each other. Micro or nano machines could run smoother and with less or no friction at all if one can manipulate the force. Prof Leonhardt leads one of four teams - three of them in Britain - to have put forward a theory in a peer-reviewed journal to achieve invisibility by making light waves flow around an object.Previous Post Next Post