Cosimo Rusconi (l.) and Oriol Romero-Isart (r.) play with a levitron to demonstrate their work on nano magnets. Credit: IQOQI Innsbruck/M.R.Knabl
Researchers demonstrate in two new papers that despite a classic 175-year-old theorem saying it’s impossible, nanomagnets can be stably levitated in an external magnetic field.
How can this be accomplished? Thanks to quantum mechanical principles.In 1842, the British mathematician Samuel Earnshaw proved you can’t have a stable and permanent configuration of levitating magnets. If you float one above another, the whole setup can collapse with the slightest movement. An international team of physicists has shown that “in the quantum world, tiny non-gyrating nanoparticles can stably levitate in a magnetic field.”
Their discovery builds on the work by Albert Einstein and the Dutch physicist Wander Johannes de Haas, who explained magnetism in 1915…
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