Wednesday 21 February 2018

A fairy story

In the course of trying to find out what a femto tesla was this morning, I came across the knowledge that it is possible to levitate a living frog using a variety of magnetism called diamagnetism. Levitation which seems to amount to a variety of magnetic repulsion: think of the repulsion of ordinary horseshoe magnets if you line them up the right way, then see reference 1.

I then wondered whether you could indeed levitate the roof of St. Pancras Station, a feat which I believed was attempted by an Indian guru, some years before its metamorphosis into a hotel. Leaving aside the complication that this roof does not contain much water, at least not by comparison with a frog, I wondered if you got a million people sitting down in front of the station with their brain waves being synchronised by the antics of said guru dancing about in front of them, then their synchronised brain waves would indeed generate a big enough magnetic field to lift the roof of the station.

I compute that you could comfortably sit a million people in a space measuring 1,000 yards by 1,000 yards, allowing a generous square yard to the sitting person.

Reference 1: http://www.ru.nl/hfml/research/levitation/diamagnetic/.

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