Surely if flying saucers existed, they would float around like the disc in this video. The demonstration by physicist Boaz Almog from Tel Aviv University, Israel, at the Association of Science-Technology Centers (ASTC) Annual Conference in Baltimore, Maryland, earlier this week illustrates how a superconducting plate can be fixed in 3D space while levitating above a track of permanent magnets. But this isn't simply magnetic repulsion: the disc can also stay suspended upside down when the magnets are flipped over.

The make-up of the disc is key: it's composed of sapphire crystals, which are poor conductors, coated with a thin layer of yttrium barium copper oxide, which is a superconductor. Superconductors hate magnetic fields due to a phenomenon called the Meissner effect. Since electrical current and magnetic fields are related to one another, and electrical current flows very easily in a superconductor, subjecting it to a magnetic field will create currents that expel the field inside it. The device will then resist any changes, like falling down, that might change the magnetic fields it contains.

Almog's disc can be locked in place thanks to tiny gaps in the ultra-thin superconducting coating that allow some of the magnetic fields to seep in. Since the superconductor hates magnetic fields, it traps them in weak areas. So the tiny spaces act as pins, holding up the disc in space.


Full article: http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/nstv/201...n-3d-space.html

It would be so cool to have one small in your room just for display.

We can create room temperature super conductors we will all be able to FLY!