In what has to make one’s inner sci-fi nerd stir excitedly, NASA has announced research that involved makingImage by be_khe and kukkurovaca mice levitate. In the past researchers in several countries managed to levitate insects, small lumps of solid matter and globs of liquid in ultrasonic fields, but Yuanming Liu and his team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory used a strong magnetic field.

Under normal conditions we don’t notice any effects of magnets on living tissues.  Of course that doesn’t mean that there are no effects.

Most naturally occurring materials will show some level of “diamagnetism” – a repelling response to an applied magnetic field. There is a great deal of water in living tissue, including that in mice (and humans, of course, which is one of the reasons MRI technology works, but that’s another story). When inside a magnetic field, water molecules exhibit diamagnetism, pushing against the field. If enough water molecules do this at once, and they are contained, the container – in this case a mouse’s body – can be made to levitate.

Apparently the mice weren’t very happy being levitated and needed to be tranquilised so they didn’t end up spinning around and around as they tried to find something to grab onto. Fair enough – it has to be a pretty weird sensation.

I’m now wondering if this could be sized up and reversed to produce the kind of artificial gravity of the sort that is featured in so many movies – very cool.