Thursday, September 10, 2009

Techknow Thursday!

According to the wonderful people over at Gizmodo, apparently NASA has been able to create a small anti-gravity field, giving them the ability to levitate mice and other small rodents.



So far, they haven't been able to create anything larger in size, but that is a hopeful eventuality. The true technological amazingness about this entire system is that it relies on supermagnets to push on the water in the body of the rats, allowing them to rise. That' s awesome, but what's even more amazing is that they were able to do this at room temperature instead of needing an extremely cold environment for this to function.

Additionally, the rats apparently began trying to move after being lifted which caused the rat's to spin. Without friction, they would just spin faster and faster causing the rodents to become disoriented. In order to counter this, the second batch of rats were sedated, so NASA has now successfully levitated and drugged mice...all in the name of science! I personally agree with Gizmodo: I want to see some hoverboards, and soon!

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