Tags for this video have been changed from 'superconductor, locked, magnetism, magic, how do they work' to 'superconductor, locked, magnetism, magic, how do they work, physics' - edited by kulpims

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

That's a key question. Also how cold do you have to keep that superconductor? What about room temperature ones. Weren't they all the rage a while back?>> ^BoneyD:

How much load can be exerted on a mass that is 'locked' in place like that?
i.e. Could this be a way to make super sweet hover bikes and cars a reality??

>> ^Boise_Lib:

>> ^juliovega914:
Alright, this is unbelievably fucking cool.
You guys might (not) remember the Meissner effect I posted earlier (http://videosift.com/video/The-Meissner-Effect-Awsome-physics) This is exactly the same effect.
The fundamental difference is that the superconductor in my vid is thicker than in this case. In this case, a 1 micron YBCO layer is deposited onto a sapphire wafer (probably through physical vapor deposition [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_a9Slv1T1UM, go to 3:15 if you want to skip to PVD])
When you deposit a thin film with PVD you will inevitably form small imperfections at the grain boundaries in the film, usually only nanometers wide. When brought down below the superconductive transition temperature (IE, liquid nitrogen temp), the magnetic field lines are able to penetrate these grain boundaries in discrete quantities (unlike the thicker superconductor) forming what they seem to be calling "quantum tubes". The superconductor pins the field lines into these quantum sized tubes, and the force required to distort the field lines is greater than the weight of the superconductor.
Read this for a bit more: http://www.quantumlevitation.com/levitation/The_physics.html, but it doesn't seem terribly well translated, and it cant seem to decide how layman's terms it wants to be.

I didn't think that PVD would form YBCO.
I could easily be wrong though--my knowledge is out of date.
Great video about the Meissner Effect.


Physical vapor deposition (evaporation) pretty much works with any material that can be evaporated in a vaccuum without decomposing. Metals, semi-metals, and many ceramics and metal-oxides are candidates.

I had no idea Jeff Goldblum was so interested in superconductors.

>> ^juliovega914:

Alright, this is unbelievably fucking cool.
You guys might (not) remember the Meissner effect I posted earlier (http://videosift.com/video/The-Meissner-Effect-Awsome-physics) This is exactly the same effect.
The fundamental difference is that the superconductor in my vid is thicker than in this case. In this case, a 1 micron YBCO layer is deposited onto a sapphire wafer (probably through physical vapor deposition [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_a9Slv1T1UM, go to 3:15 if you want to skip to PVD])
When you deposit a thin film with PVD you will inevitably form small imperfections at the grain boundaries in the film, usually only nanometers wide. When brought down below the superconductive transition temperature (IE, liquid nitrogen temp), the magnetic field lines are able to penetrate these grain boundaries in discrete quantities (unlike the thicker superconductor) forming what they seem to be calling "quantum tubes". The superconductor pins the field lines into these quantum sized tubes, and the force required to distort the field lines is greater than the weight of the superconductor.
Read this for a bit more: http://www.quantumlevitation.com/levitation/The_physics.html, but it doesn't seem terribly well translated, and it cant seem to decide how layman's terms it wants to be.


I didn't think that PVD would form YBCO.
I could easily be wrong though--my knowledge is out of date.

Great video about the Meissner Effect.

Alright, this is unbelievably fucking cool.

You guys might (not) remember the Meissner effect I posted earlier (http://videosift.com/video/The-Meissner-Effect-Awsome-physics) This is exactly the same effect.

The fundamental difference is that the superconductor in my vid is thicker than in this case. In this case, a 1 micron YBCO layer is deposited onto a sapphire wafer (probably through physical vapor deposition [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_a9Slv1T1UM, go to 3:15 if you want to skip to PVD])

When you deposit a thin film with PVD you will inevitably form small imperfections at the grain boundaries in the film, usually only nanometers wide. When brought down below the superconductive transition temperature (IE, liquid nitrogen temp), the magnetic field lines are able to penetrate these grain boundaries in discrete quantities (unlike the thicker superconductor) forming what they seem to be calling "quantum tubes". The superconductor pins the field lines into these quantum sized tubes, and the force required to distort the field lines is greater than the weight of the superconductor.

Read this for a bit more: http://www.quantumlevitation.com/levitation/The_physics.html, but it doesn't seem terribly well translated, and it cant seem to decide how layman's terms it wants to be.

The Meissner effect is the expulsion of a magnetic field from a superconductor during its transition to the superconducting state. Walther Meissner and Robert Ochsenfeld discovered the phenomenon in 1933 by measuring the magnetic field distribution outside superconducting tin and lead samples.[1] The samples, in the presence of an applied magnetic field, were cooled below what is called their superconducting transition temperature. Below the transition temperature the samples canceled nearly all magnetic fields inside. They detected this effect only indirectly; because the magnetic flux is conserved by a superconductor, when the interior field decreased the exterior field increased. The experiment demonstrated for the first time that superconductors were more than just perfect conductors and provided a uniquely defining property of the superconducting state.
-wikipedia

For those interested in the physics behind this this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddy_current

In conductors, electric currents are generated whenever there is a changing magnetic field. These currents generate their own magnetic field, which opposes the magnetic field which generates them. In this example, the magnet once dropped generates a current in the aluminum because as the magnet gets closer, the field gets stronger at the position of the aluminum. This generates a current, which creates its own magnetic field, acting on the magnet, and slowing it down.

Here's where it starts getting really interesting. The generated magnetic field will be notably weaker than the field of the dropped magnet, because the current is subject to electrical resistance. But what if we used a superconducting material, where there is zero electrical resistance, the two magnetic fields should equal eachother, right?

Check out this vid: http://videosift.com/video/The-Meissner-Effect-Awsome-physics

This is called the Meissner effect. This video shows an experiment of a strong magnet being put on top of a YBCO superconductor. All superconductors need to have their temperature dropped dramatically in order to to hit the superconducting threshhold known as a transition temperature. Typical transition temperatures are below 10 kelvin. YBCO is a unique material known as a high temperature superconductor, meaning that it can be cooled to its transition temperature with liquid nitrogen (about 70 kelvin).

Wait.. go back to the hoverboard.. superconductors defy gravity, how again?
I really like his enthusiasm and willingness to entertain the public about scientific issues here and in tv shows and documentaries, but he really shouldn't stretch the truth as much as he always does JUST TO ENTERTAIN.
Yea, übermagnets give you levitation - when there's something underneath to counteract them.
This is nothing new.

>> ^dag:
Fusion reactors seems like one of those technologies that will be 20 years away from reality ... forever.
Latest stuff I've read about the tokamak is they still take in more energy than they produce. (though I enjoyed the cameo of a lookalike in Iron Man)
So it's not a matter of smaller fusion reactors- it's building ones that actually work as an energy source.


That's dependent on the temperature of the surrounding environment. If you build it on titan and use liquid methane from titan's ocean as coolant, you save a huge amount of energy on keeping the superconductors cold enough to superconduct. If the coolant fluid from outside was below the transition temperature of the superconductors, this would vastly improve the efficiency of the tokamak. Inventing superconductors with higher transition temperatures would allow a similar improvement. The biggest amount of waste in the tokamok is from the fact that you have a huge heat/radiation source surrounded by superconducting electromagnets that have to be kept at 50 Kelvin or below.

Fusion power would be much more viable on Mars (or bodies even farther than the sun) because the low ambient temperature would make it easier to cool superconductors.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'float levitate magnet electromagnet frog' to 'float, levitate, diamagnetic levitation, magnet, electromagnet, frog, superconductor' - edited by fissionchips

So, the big silver thing is a dewar. It most likely contains liquid helium.

I am not sure how much NMR has to do with it, but there are NMR based qubits...The decoherence term, which came from NMR, is the same effect, but not actually the same phenomenon that is going on here, I don't think.

Most quantum qubits that I have heard of are made out of low temperature(Type I) superconductors, like niobium. The qubit itself is a Josephson Junction, which is a entirely too long discussion to go into too much detail.

But the basic idea is that if you get two superconductors close together, but separated by an insulator, they will quantum mechanically link. So the state of one describes the state of the other(e.g. entanglement).

*Warning, a more technical explanation is below.

You can exploit this entanglement and by systematically rocking the potential that describes the coupling between the two states with a microwave signal. Eventually you can get the system into the ground state. Now the flux quanta which couples the two systems, exist as discreet energy levels. By injecting that flux into the system, you excite the system into it's first energy eigenstate. At this point the system is effectively described by the Bloch equation. This two state system is your quantum qubit. Which you can use to make calculations, the easiest of which and first test is to factor numbers or seek prime numbers. The problem, as I alluded to earlier, is that as the system evolves in time some of the energy escapes into other energy eigenstates, it is no longer |Q>=a|1>+b|0> but now it is |Q>=a|1>+b|0>+c|2>... and so on. The time the state can be described by |1> and |0> is referred to as the coherence time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephson_junction
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_computer

How was that rbar?

Tags for this video have been changed from 'science, physics, experiment, magnet, saved' to 'science, physics, experiment, magnet, saved, superconductor, meissner effect' - edited by MycroftHomlz

http://wtf.videosift.com/talk/CHEMTRAILS-Is-US-Govt-Secretly-Testing-Americans-Again

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In reply to this comment by gorgonheap:
although barium can be used as a poison (when mixed with water or acid). There are a lot of other man made products that use barium. Such as spark plugs, batteries, superconductors, dyes, vacuum tubes, florescent lights, bricks, rubber, glass, medicine and in manufacturing processes. Sounds like pollution to me. I don't see how the government fits into this.