{"id":40734,"date":"2011-10-23T15:45:12","date_gmt":"2011-10-23T15:45:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/superconductors-flux-tubes-levitating-frozen-puck-80beats\/"},"modified":"2011-10-23T15:45:12","modified_gmt":"2011-10-23T15:45:12","slug":"superconductors-flux-tubes-levitating-frozen-puck-80beats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/astronomy\/superconductors-flux-tubes-levitating-frozen-puck-80beats.php","title":{"rendered":"Superconductors + Flux Tubes = Levitating Frozen Puck | 80beats"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When you freeze a chunk of sapphire coated in yttrium barium copper oxide, what do you get? A puck that can whiz around a magnetic track like a hovercraft. When the oxide gets very cold, it becomes a superconductor and actively repels magnets, with the result that when it&rsquo;s placed over a large enough magnet, it levitates.<\/p><p><span><\/span>As the Tel Aviv University team behind this video <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.quantumlevitation.com\/levitation\/The_physics.html\">explains<\/a>, despite the puck&rsquo;s aversion to magnetic fields, the thinness of the oxide layer on it means that the field does manage to penetrate it a little. But only in tiny columns called <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Flux_tube\">flux tubes<\/a>. The puck doesn&rsquo;t like having those flux tubes moved around in it, which happens whenever it moves. And in order to minimize the shifting of the flux tubes, it&hellip;floats. It&rsquo;s a phenomenon called quantum locking.<\/p><p>No alien tech or magic required.<\/p><p>We do wonder, though, if the levitating puck has ever met the levitating frog, pictured below. Or his buddy, the <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/80beats\/2009\/09\/10\/two-things-you-need-to-levitate-a-mouse-1-strong-magnet-2-sedatives\/\">levitating (heavily sedated) mouse<\/a>.<\/p><p>&nbsp;<\/p><p><a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~a\/iMhPVmkk6mSNmjdjU8CCZELxGDo\/0\/da\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/ec03e_di\" border=\"0\" style=\"padding-left:10px; padding-right: 10px;\"><\/a><br><a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~a\/iMhPVmkk6mSNmjdjU8CCZELxGDo\/1\/da\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/ec03e_di\" border=\"0\" style=\"padding-left:10px; padding-right: 10px;\"><\/a><\/p><p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/c2045_UAIJdkGR-l0\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\" style=\"padding-left:10px; padding-right: 10px;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/afd49_sdHMS6NaPss\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\" style=\"padding-left:10px; padding-right: 10px;\"><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When you freeze a chunk of sapphire coated in yttrium barium copper oxide, what do you get? A puck that can whiz around a magnetic track like a hovercraft. When the oxide gets very cold, it becomes a superconductor and &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/astronomy\/superconductors-flux-tubes-levitating-frozen-puck-80beats.php\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"limit_modified_date":"","last_modified_date":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40734","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-astronomy"],"modified_by":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40734"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40734"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40734\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}