Cool Science
So there was this video of some researchers at the Tel Aviv University of this really cool science trick, it went up on Youtube, and, of course, the internet went bonkers over it! Almost 5 million views in about a week! Craziness! And the science community just finds this hilarious. Well, that is, because it’s a relatively simple trick that most of us have probably seen in our science classes (maybe now… I don’t remember getting to witness anything that awesome in class).
But yeah, guys, science is darn cool! Literally! See, this trick is pulled off by taking a material (in this case, a thin sapphire disk) that is coated with something (a ceramic layer of yttrium barium copper oxide) that when chilled with a splash of liquid nitrogen, makes it a superconductor. Now, normal magnets give off a field (probability field) that would ordinarily just pass right through the disk. But when it goes superconductor, it bends this field around it, allowing it to levitate! That’s called the Meissner Effect. Now, the real trick is to get Quantum Locking to work (and no, not those Weeping Angels from Dr.Who). That’s where it holds its place in 3 dimensions. How this works, is that because the special coating is so super thin, it has little imperfections, magnetic soft spots if you will, that create “flux tubes” allowing bits of that magnetic field to pass through and “lock” the object in place!
Neat trick huh? Of course… if we were to see the stuff that’s a little more advanced, we’d either have our minds blown apart by the wow or think it’s just a bunch of CG effects. >)
Source: PhysOrg, The Escapist
Depends on what you mean by real science, considering most of it is math and projections, for an outcome the may not even explode would probably bore people.
heh, sorry for the delay in text… kinda got caught up in other projects.
anyways, I’m talkin bout some REAL science! like, firing up them tesla coils, breaking out the uranium cakes, a bottle of the finest whiskey, and seeing what happens! I like the pioneering of science, the romantic view of it being done in a dingy laboratory tucked away in a castle dungeon with pinup model assistants… er… sry, let my fantasy get away from me.
but yeah, I like the “hands on” kind of science. where you experiment until something blows up and call it a good day.
I don’t like or trust the “math only” kind of science… it all just seems a bit shady to me.
Yeah, but guess and check is hardly efficient. Some estimation is needed to prevent accidentally doing everything wrong.
I am in my entire brain and soul a biology buff, physics can occasionally shine, chemistry is fun to watch but not to do, but throwing genes at a bacterial colony until the bacteria absorbs it to make them bioluminescent is always fun; even if it’s equally if not more simplistic than the one you depict.
Since you mentioned the Tesla coils, I’m now thinking about that Tesla orchestra that emits charges in a certain way so that a pitch is produced when it strikes the metal rod. It’s fascinating, but as soon as they try to play a real song I get bored. They only play the obvious melody, but due to equipment limitations they cannot also play the counter melody, the base, or the percussion and you can hear the empty space.
Neat trick, but considering we can do better with regular instruments or even a computer, all I can think is that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
There is no imperfections causing quantum locking there - just 3 magnets (or 9 if you want to be fancy). The idea is that if you make a material superconductive over a magnet, it will get the same magnetic properties. Opposites push each other away. If you have a NSN magnet below the superconductor, you will get an NSN magnetisation pattern on the semiconductor and it will float on top of that magnet (but it will move along the axis of the magnets, to prevent that you put two SNS magnets on either side). There is plenty of old videos with maglev train models based on this thing. And considering that it was discovered in 1933, it is pretty amazing how little people actually know of science.
hmm, sounds interesting. and it’s true it’s been around for quite some time with a few variations to the construction. but, the “imperfections cause flux tubes” is the way it is explained by the Tel Aviv Uni. people and the physics news articles, so… I’m inclined to trust in its accuracy of explaining that locking mechanism in the video.
For further reading, check out the Quantum Levitation website.
i have believed for a good while that people would end their days becoming baby-like, with machines becoming our eternal baby-sitters, ever since one of my elementary school teachers said ” technology makes us lazier” and after reading an abridged version of Herbert Wells ” The time machine”.
Then Wall-E came out and confirmed my suspicion that other people thought we would end up like that. One question, though:
If the humans in Wall-E didnt even notice their ship had a pool, how is it they still had babies?!?!
On a side note, id like to point out you still have yet to make the strips for the orcs and forsaken origin of the species. The orcs look like snots, and that made think on that cartoon tv series, the Snorks.
Anyone ever heard of it? lol.
ha! yeah! my friends made me watch Idiocracy a while back… I’m fairly confident that will be fate of humanity in the next few decades. (if you have not seen it, you really need to!)
they could be manufactured babies… like done in test tubes and whatnot.
oh yeah! I know! I really need to get all of them done, huh? friday should have a wow comic though… not an origins I’m afraid… so… good times?
lol! yeah! I watched that Snorks cartoon! very very strange… like underwater smurfs with straws on their heads…
yeah im afraid that future generations actually eat in a fast food restaurant called Butt f… well, you saw the movie.
And you called straws on your head wierd when there are this caps with soda cans on them? though those are really wierd too.
/lolspeech-on also, can i haz moar wold o warcrft cumics plz?!?! cuz theyz awsum an ur awsum 2 can i haz moar?!!?!?!eleven11!! k, thnx, lololololololol!!!!!!??! /lolspeech-off
keep up your work dude. :D
I know we’re already at least 50+ years behind where technology should be given what we’ve known and had access to. I sell smart phones for a living and there are still people visibly scared of what they can do or what would happen if they fail. I can understand some of their concerns, but I still think the view point is insanely short sighted.
Just one example before I finish my rant; we put a man on the moon with slide rules and a computer that’s the technological equivilant of a modern watch. Sending a man to Mars would only take roughly 214 days depending on the launch window, however, we’ve never tried.
Technology has been stifled for ages due to political, economic, and social reasons. Therefore, I don’t believe technology will increase by a significant amount over the next 50 years. Phones will likely replace computers, tablets will be accessories for phones that actually run on the phone hardware, they’ll get faster and have more storage and battery life, probably eventually being beaten out by inplantable options. But if research had been done enough, and in the right areas, we could have had useable inplants by now. However the social reaction to of cyborgs walking around would not be good. Specially if you take into account they could have eyes that work like cameras recording every action you make ready to end up on youtube in about the 10 seconds it takes to upload the clip over LTE-A.
Summary: No huge technological advances in the next 50 years, due in part to greedy corporations, scared, uninformed, or paranoid people, and governmental restrictions.
-sigh.. I do apologize for the size of this post, I originally hadn’t intended on being so.. Verbose…
I totally agree!!
if we can only convince peeps to caugh up the monies to do some sort of good for the advancement of humanity…
and no worries about post sizes! it’s good for us to get all our ideas out!