Levitating magnets Remember a few years ago when superconductors were in the news. One of the pictures that you saw was of a magnet floating over a dish of frozen gas. Well now researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles have levitated a magnet without superconductors. They have found that forces from everyday materials i.e. wood, plants, even a person’s fingers can help levitate small magnets placed in a magnetic field. The magnet will just sit there and hover motionless in space. This violates a 157 year-old principle known as Earnshaw’s theorem. The theorem says that no arrangement of magnets can make them stay in a stable equilibrium. Everyone that has played with magnets has seen how two magnets of the same polarity push apart. But if you try to make one magnet float the second magnet always falls to one side or the other. The principle is the same here. One magnet is being held aloft by a second magnetic field. But a weak repulsive force in water, proteins, and organic molecules is enough to "diamagnetic" (stabilize). This means that if you have a magnet of the right size you can stabilize the second magnet between two fingers, your fingers act as the diamagnetic. Did you know that NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) has hired researchers to develop an anti-gravity machine? There is some new research that, from what I understand, is secret. That means NASA believes that anti-gravity is possible. Return to top