Scientists solve the mystery of levitation

Hoverboards all round then

8 August 2007 9:14 GMT / By Amy-Mae Elliott

Scientists at the University of St Andrews have created "incredible levitation effects" by tinkering with the force of nature that normally makes objects to stick together.

The Telegraph reports that Professor Ulf Leonhardt and Dr Thomas Philbin have worked out a way of reversing this force, called the "Casimir" force, so that objects are repelled instead of being attracted.

This will ultimately have a very useful purpose in the field of nanotechnology as the Casimir force causes difficulties in this area when trying to build electrical circuits and tiny mechanical devices on silicon chips, for example.

The team have said that this anti-force could at first be used on this kind of scale - to stop tiny objects from sticking together.

Eventually, this new development could lead to frictionless machines with moving parts that levitate, as well as moving bigger objects (even people-sized objects) by levitation over distance.

Hmmm, moving people over distance via levitation... that's a hoverboard, surely?

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