Quantum Levitation

David J Miranda Rosario 

This levitation occurs thanks to the Meissner Effect, Superconductors, Casimir Effect and Flux Pinning. The Meissner Effect explains itself as a wind hitting a closed door then when it is opened the air will flow the same way it did when it was close now to flow the same way it did when it was closed but now to the rest of the field through the door frame. Imagine the wind is a magnetic field and the objects around us are open doorways, the magnetic fields just passes through them just like the light goes through glass. When the door is closed all the air goes all around the door and then go back to his path so basically that’s what happens in Superconductors.

Superconductors are basically metals and alloys that can conduct electricity without any resistance. When they are cooled down to amazingly low temperatures they became superconductive. These so called superconductors never loss any of the electricity that passes through them. This doesn’t allow magnetic lines to pass through them like the closed door made the air go around them and this is the so called Meissner Effect discovered in 1931 discovered by German physicists Walther Meissner and Robert Ochsenfeld.

Now the Cassimir Effect comes in, it can give rise to repulsive forces between uncharged objects. Simply because of this it caused the physicist to create applications to the future development of levitating devices such as a skateboard for example.

When a superconductor is pinned in space above the magnet this is called Flux Pinning. Superconductors are used to create these quantum levitations but they cannot be penetrated by magnetic fields. At high temperatures these superconductors with a 3-inch diameter, 1micrometer thick and a magnetic field of 35 0Oe there can be about 100 billion flux tubes and can hold up to 70 000 times the superconductor’s weight. But when it reaches low temperatures the flux tubes are pinned and cannot move. This holds the superconductor in place allowing it to levitate.

There is another type of process which a superconductor is locked in place within a magnetic field called Quantum Locking. This allows the superconducting material to become fixed so that it will not re-orient itself without outside assistance. It is also known as Quantum Trapping or Quantum Flux Pinning. But this goes even beyond Quantum Levitation because this isn’t the same as magnetic repulsion, simply because the superconductor doesn’t have any electrical charge on it. But it repulses the magnetic field around it, if the superconductor is thin like it should be then some of the fields pops through the material due to the Meissner Effect previously explained before.

I personally find this topic in physics very interesting since it can change way better the way we live and be closer to that “FUTURE” everyone has in their mind. Such as having floating cars in the streets floating skateboards maybe those things are far from there but who knows what can comes next, in a decade the world of computers was almost renovated itself better and better every year until the first that were created became obsolete. I think I can wait until people that are physics enthusiast can come up with some brilliant ideas of how to develop applications to the daily life of a human being.