Quantum levitation, how does that work?

Jason Thibeault

I’m not nearly clever enough or learned enough to explain this myself, but then again, neither is the Insane Clown Posse, who’d rather attribute it to miracles. So I don’t feel so bad.

Luckily, Ethan Siegel is smarter than the average Juggalo.

This is super cool(ed). Shame it would take far too much liquid nitrogen to make quantum levitation trains feasible, if you could even produce the lift needed to pull off such a feat. Would any of our resident physics geeks like to napkin-calculate how strong of magnets and how much liquid nitrogen it would take to use this tech for moving whole trains? If not, I don’t blame you.

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Quantum levitation, how does that work?

About the author

Hi! I'm a tech guy, skeptic, feminist, gamer and atheist, and love OSS and science of all stripes. I enjoy a good bit of whargarbl now and again, and will occasionally even seek it out. I am also apparently responsible for the death of common sense on the internet. My bad.

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5 thoughts on “Quantum levitation, how does that work?”

  2. Jason Thibeault
    2

    Slightly different than what I meant, due to the fact that current maglev tech doesn’t use superconducting magnets, so they have to control for pitch, roll and yaw. Current maglev trains are essentially flying.

    EDIT: wait, this maglev you’ve shown does use superconducting magnets? So why do they need to control for pitch etc?

  3. Nomen Nescio
    3

    i can’t be sure, but i suspect that (1) the Japanese trains probably use type-I superconductors, which can’t do the “locked in space” quantum pinning thing for reasons that go way above my own head (something to do with imperfections in crystal structure, i think), and/or (2) the stresses inherent in moving an actual train down a track at speed would be more than any quantum pinning could cope with anyway, so yaw/roll control would be required anyhow.

    “regular” superconductors still repel magnetic fields to the point of levitating, but don’t stay put in any given position or attitude relative to the magnet; they “bounce around” similar to how a pair of mutually repelling permanent magnets act. you need a type-II superconductor for this particular trick. if the Japanese train projects aren’t using type-II’s for whatever reason, they’d need some sort of active control i’m pretty sure.

  4. Compuholic
    4

    If I remember correctly, the japanese train uses superconducting electromagnets to generate the magnetic field. The metal parts in the guideway are not superconductive.

    Here the magnets are in the guideway and a superconductor is floating above them. Big difference…

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