Magnetic levitation and magic carpets

A magic carpet is what? A piece of fabric woven like a normal carpet you put on your living room floor... ah, but there is a difference! It flies!

I really enjoyed reading Carol's story in the anthology, which was about a woman who flew to foreign lands carried upon a magic carpet. What an adventure she had.

It reminded me of a scene I wrote in the first chapter of my second novel, The True Price of Immortality. Inside a castle, set in an alien landscape on a planet far, far away, in both space and in time, they rode on magic carpets. Since the castle is so enormous in its dimensions, people rely on flying carpets for transportation to move from one end of its expanse to the other end. Except these weren't "magic" carpets in the fantasy sense. I could not get away with magic carpets in a hard SF novel, there had to be some technological innovation behind their workings.

What I imagined was that since the floor of this alien castle was made of a magnetic metal, it could repel another object made of the same magnetic metal that was opposite in its polarity. So, much like how the two like-poles of a magnet will repel one another, you would get an effect known as 'magnetic levitation'. Similar to what the Japanese high speed monorail trains run on.

Hence, in that story in my book, my magic carpets were actually founded on physical laws, and the carpet my characters rode on was hovering several feet above the floor of the castle on magnetic levitation and propelled along horizontally by use of tiny ion drives mounted on the underside of the carpet.

So now I feel I have an invention of magic space carpets to my name, that could one day fly on the Moon under its 1/6th lunar gravity! My claim to fame, I was the FIRST!

Dear Ahad,
I can see your vison. I do believe it will work! You are a thinker beyond your time. I love your posts! In my dreams I can fly. Ah! what a feeling that is.

I do think that there is more possible than most people can imagine. I would like to see it all.

Love,
Betty

Wonderful invention, Ahad--you'd best patent it before someone else does!!

Isn't the imagination a wondrous thing? And the world is so full of great things. Sasquatch comes tomind, as does the Yeti. I think they are basically the same thing. They have discovered previously unknown creatures in very remote places, and I think maybe the elves have taken them to the forests to protect them.

Would these magnetic carpets repel each other, Ahad? That might make it difficult for folks to get together.

Zada,
as I understand it, Likes attract, opposites repel.
If that applies to male/female being opposites, then I see a big problem.

Can't be any worse, Abe, than being from Venus when your love interest is from Mars.

I LOVED all the stories and cartoons about magic carpets. And like you, Zada, I believe the Yeti and Sasquatch are variations of the same species.

I think the magnets would also prevent mid-air collisions.

Carol

Sounds good to me, Carol.

Carol Troestler wrote:

I think the magnets would also prevent mid-air collisions.

Carol

I was thinking of 'bumper cars'!

Reason why I mentioned magic carpets "on the Moon" one day is pretty obvious; for the equivalent amount of magnetic repulsion, you'd get carpets flying SIX TIMES HIGHER up from the ground of the Moon than you would on Earth.

In fact, if you jumped up into the air...okay there's no 'air' on the Moon but you know what I mean... you'd be six times higher than on Earth...

Would you land 6 times softer if you fell?

zadaconnaway wrote:

Would you land 6 times softer if you fell?

The answer is yes. And quite positively so, since you weigh only one sixth as much on the moon as you do on earth, you will fall to the ground from your magic carpet with a force that's proportionately less (1/6th of earth's).

The physics equation is F = m * a; where F is the force measured in Newtons, m is your mass in kilograms and a is the acceleration due to gravity in m/s^2.

Taking this example one step further, if you were to jump up from the surface of a very small object, such as an asteroid like the one in this picture:

http://www.astroscience.org/abdul-ahad/firstarktoalphacentauri/m-c-4.jpg

You wouldn't really fall back down to the ground at all; you'd be carrying on flying up...up...and away!