In fiction, magic makes levitation straightforward. With a easy swish-and-flick of his wand, Ron Weasley yanks a troll’s membership excessive above its head in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. By means of swish martial arts, ingredient benders in TV’s Avatar sequence launch boulders and waves of water skyward. And an informal gesture is all Marvel hero Scarlet Witch must fling away enemies.
In the actual world, sound, magnets and electrical energy can all create upward forces sturdy sufficient to cancel out gravity. Simply don’t anticipate these levitation strategies to toss boulders or dangerous guys. A minimum of, not with out some outrageous — and harmful — upgrades.
Acoustic levitation gadgets use vibrations to carry objects aloft. These machines sometimes blast sound waves too high-pitched for people to listen to. The waves create alternating areas of high- and low-intensity “noise” within the air. Noisier areas push objects away, trapping them in pockets of relative quiet — however provided that the objects are very small and light-weight. A few of the heaviest stuff to ever surf sound waves are Styrofoam beads.
Greater objects want longer, lower-frequency sound waves to cradle them, says Luke Cox, a mechanical engineer who heads Impulsonics in Bristol, England. He estimates you would want at the very least 275-hertz sound waves with 1.25-meter wavelengths to levitate an individual. A bass guitar performs notes about that low. However it must be devastatingly loud to carry somebody off their ft.
You’d in all probability want the vitality output of a nuclear energy plant to run such a tool, Cox muses. Plus a protect to guard anybody you levitated from the warmth generated by that quantity of energy. In any other case, your gnarly, nuclear-powered bass solo may actually soften their face off.
Magnets get objects a lot greater than folks off the bottom with out destroying them. As an example, those on maglev practice automobiles and rails work together to make the trains hover simply centimeters above their tracks.
Utilizing magnetism to levitate one thing not strapped to a magnet is trickier, however not unattainable. Many seemingly nonmagnetic supplies, together with water and proteins, are diamagnetic: In a robust magnetic subject, they grow to be weakly magnetized and begin to repel the sphere.
In 1997, scientists famously used that truth to levitate a frog. They positioned the creature inside nested coils of wire that created a magnetic subject 16 teslas sturdy — or about 10 instances the power of magnets used to choose up automobiles in junkyards. That was simply sufficient to buoy the frog to close the highest of the 18-centimeter-tall interior coil of wire.
You may theoretically levitate an individual this manner. It could take one heck of a magnet, although. One of many frog floaters estimated in 1998 that you just’d want a 40-tesla subject created by a magnet operating on 1 gigawatt of energy — roughly half the output of the Hoover Dam.
Ballooning spiders use a distinct means of levitation. They electrically cost themselves up by spinning out lengthy threads of silk, says Igor Bargatin, a physicist on the College of Pennsylvania. That cost permits the spiders to carry off in Earth’s electrical subject after which trip the wind as much as kilometers excessive.
The spidey means of levitation gained’t work for big objects like folks, Bargatin says. You’d should construct up a lot cost that you just’d find yourself triggering lightning strikes round you and fry your self earlier than ever taking off.
Even when real-world levitation by no means measures as much as on-screen superpowers, it could actually nonetheless be helpful. Acoustic levitation might present hands-off dealing with of lab samples to keep away from contamination. Magnetic levitation might make elements of motors float, permitting them to spin quicker with out carrying down. And scientists proceed dreaming up new makes use of for levitation — ones that don’t trigger lethal collateral injury.
