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http://www.quantumlevitation.com/levitation/The_physics.html

Quoted from Ash

It’s a phenomena known as the Meissner Effect, happens when most conductors are supercooled to a few tens of kelvin (-260 degrees approximately).
As for the graphene response, graphene is not a conductor, its a semi conductor. It has some pretty amazing properties, like being totally 1-dimensional and every conduction electron travelling at exactly 1000 km per second, yet super conductivity in it is highly unlikely to occur.

Would be cool to have materials which super- and semiconduct at the same time though… Insanely fast computers that generate minimal amounts of heat :P

Quoted from Gladdy

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Would be cool to have materials which super- and semiconduct at the same time though… Insanely fast computers that generate minimal amounts of heat :P

In terms of the physics, thats impossible pretty much. As far as i am aware it is impossible for a material to have both super and semi conducting properties. If you want insanely fast computing, look at quantum computing, everything happens instantly with that :)

Quoted from Gladdy

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Travelling faster than the speed of light was supposed to be ‘impossible’ aswell :P

It was shown that that result was likely false, but that didn’t recieve much mainstream media coverage ;)

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2011-10/dutch-physicist-says-special-relativity-explains-faster-light-neutrinos

Quoted from octochris

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It was shown that that result was likely false, but that didn’t recieve much mainstream media coverage ;)

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2011-10/dutch-physicist-says-special-relativity-explains-faster-light-neutrinos

It would be pretty stupid if they overlooked something as simple as that. Accounting for special relativity in gps has been known for years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Error_analysis_for_the_Global_Positioning_System#Relativity

I like how the guy kept using different words to describe the action, and every time the physicist was like “No, Locking, LOCKING”

The reason that sort of thing doesn’t see widespread use is that for the “levitation” effect to occur, the item being levitated must be a superconductor. Currently, the only way we know how to make something a superconductor is to make it really, really cold, which isn’t easy or safe to implement in widespread usage.

Thus we need to find a room temperature superconductor, badly.
Interestingly, there is no physical theory forbidding one.

There is, in fact, no really consistent theory explaining high-temperature superconductivity AT ALL.

When superconductors were discovered (elemental superconductors), a nice theory was quickly developed which explained them nicely. Except it predicted that no superconductivity about 4 Kelvin was ever possible.

Nowadays, superconductors work in 1XX Kelvin temperatures, and we have no clue as to why.

Whoever figures it out will have a nice dinner with the king of sweden soon.

I found another video relating to this experiment with some explanation. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyOtIsnG71U&feature=related

Quoted from dodgydogman

Lovely video. Loved the ending where they mentioned professor Nimrod Batcher!

Quoted from instag1b

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It would be pretty stupid if they overlooked something as simple as that. Accounting for special relativity in gps has been known for years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Error_analysis_for_the_Global_Positioning_System#Relativity

Its not special relativity that they account for in gps, its general relativity. As for the whole neutrinos travelling faster than the speed of light, it doesnt mean anything yet until another institution can replicate the results. Hence as soon as the team at the OPERA detector found something anomalous they urged the entire scientific community to check their results and perform the same experiment. In the modern scientific community nothing is accepted until it is replicated.

As for the super conductors, recent inovations have allowed super conducting to occur in mercury thallium barium calcium copper oxide (retarded name yes :P) at about 140 kelvin which is still only -160 degrees.