/biz/ - Business & Finance

>>19382134
>>19382299
>>19382134
>>19382423
Actual PhD in quantum chemistry here, I will address the mercury question.

Mercury is diamagnetic, meaning that it is weakly repelled by a magnetic field. The opposite is paramagnetic, like oxygen, which is attracted by a magnetic field. It all depends on outer electron parity (pairing).

In principle, a material diamagnetic enough would generate a force opposing the MF of the earth. If the said force was equal to the material's weight, then you get levitation. If you add thrust, you get your UFO. But here comes the reality check:

The earth's magnetic field is about 50 microTesla. In comparison, a fridge magnet is around 5 milliTesla; this means that a fridge magnet is 1000 more powerful than the earths magnetic field.

Seeing how your thermometer doesn't levitate just like that, I doubt any contraption will. I can see how the "spinning" mercury bit could align the forces or some shit like Magic Angle Spinning does in NMR, but the numbers are still very unfavorable.

>pic related
The diamagnetic constant of the pyrolytic graphite is 13x times larger than mercury, and the magnets below are about 1 Tesla (1.000.000x stronger than this planet).