levitation

Ooh, revival! "Three... Two... One... CLEAR!" "Ka-chunk!"

Yeah, high-altitude use of something that requires a high-density working fluid is a certifiably Bad Idea. The good news is that you won't kill yourself, because you simply won't get to the high altitude in the first place.

T. Ventura tried some vacuum tests with lifters and they didn't work. People are still trying. I remember a small tablet of material held suspended in air between the thumb and forefinger of a scientist. This from an old Magazine article.

It was the weak dielectric field of his hand.

Self-levitation is what we are talking about here--everything that has worked needs a medium or a base--like air or a monorail, etc.

Don't you mean "electric field"? I have never heard of an "insulator field".

My bad. I am looking for that mag and can't find it.

Here it is
AMERICAN SCIENTIST, VOL 92 Sept-Oct 2004, page 428

Diamagnetic Levitation.

(not dielectric)

Author is Ronald E. Peltrine at SRI
e-mail
ron.pelrine@sri.com

Wow, you learn something every day! I had never heard the term "diamagnetic" before, but a quick google for "diamagnetic levitation" turned up lots of hits, including this one.
http://www.physics.ucla.edu/marty/diamag/

juat so cool, what a link

More is being learned about the nature of magnetism:
http://www.spacewar.com/news/materials-05zn.html

Superconductor tech
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/energy-tech-05zzzzw.html

Odd: I wonder if this could be exploited as a 'magnetic thermal.' for flight

August 12

Theory Made Fact: Micro-Vortices Found in Earth’s Magnetosphere

The European Space Agency (ESA) announced that it has identified "micro-vortices" in the magnetosphere, the magnetic field surrounding earth, based on data collected from a series of four satellites that are part of the agency's Cluster mission.

The four identical Cluster satellites—Salsa, Samba, Tango and Rumba—were launched by the European Space Agency (ESA) in 2000 as part of a mission to understand the interactions between the earth and the solar wind, a constant stream of charged particles originating from the sun.

In this case, "micro" is a relative term, as each micro-vortex is approximately 60 miles wide. They are only small compared to "macro-vortices," which can have diameters of more than 20,000 miles.

Micro-vortices had long been a theoretical possibility predicted by mathematical models of interactions between the solar wind and earth's magnetic field but had never been observed until now.

The satellite's discovered the micro-vortices in 2002 while flying over Earth's magnetic cusps, regions where the Earth's magnetic field funnel into two points ending roughly at the two poles.

The discovery could have implications for space physics and for earth systems like telecommunication networks and power lines which can be seriously affected by solar winds.


-- SPACE.com Staff