Heavy lifting

Scientists at The University of Nottingham have successfully levitated diamond and some of the heaviest elements, including lead and platinum.

Using liquid oxygen, the main component in many rocket fuels, to increase the buoyancy created by a specially designed superconducting magnet, they could now, in theory, levitate an object with a density 15 times larger than that of osmium, the heaviest metal known in nature.

The science behind the research could be used to develop a variety of potential applications, especially in the mining and pharmaceutical industries.

Writing in the New Journal of Physics, the team led by Professor Laurence Eaves and Professor Peter King, in the University’s School of Physics and Astronomy, describes how mixtures of oxygen and nitrogen in liquid and gaseous states provide sufficient buoyancy to levitate a wide range of objects, including diamonds, a £1 coin and heavy metals such as gold, silver, lead and platinum.

Some materials, called diamagnetic, tend to become magnetised in a direction opposite to the magnetic field being applied to them. Magnetic levitation occurs when the force on such an object is strong enough to balance the weight of the object itself. If the object is immersed in a fluid such as a gaseous oxygen, the levitation can be enhanced by the effect of buoyancy caused by the ‘magneto-Archimedes’ effect.