Spontaneous Rotation of a Magnet over a High-Temperature Superconductor

Here I demonstrate an extremely interesting phenomenon. A magnet is suspended by Meissner Effect levitation over a toroid of high-temperature superconducting ceramic cooled in liquid Nitrogen. The magnet spontaneously begins to rock back and forth on its magnetic axis. The magnitude of the rocking gradually increases, until the magnet rocks all the way over and continues to spin in one direction, indefinitely, without the addition of any external power.
There have only been a few peer-reviewed papers in the literature concerning this effect. The conventional explanation is that it is due to a thermal gradient across the magnet and this gradient affects the magnetic field strength. I question this explanation, as I have performed this experiment with magnets encased in copper foil which should have evened out such a gradient--these magnets rotated just as well as unencased ones. I don't, however, have a viable alternative explanation.
The magnets shown are NdBFe and Samarium Cobalt; the superconducting donut is Y-B-C-O, or yttrium-barium-copper-oxide, high temperature superconducting ceramic, melt-textured and sintered, according to the formula of Evgeny Podkletnov. The liquid is Liquid Nitrogen, and the container is styrofoam.
References:
Ma, Liu, McMichael, Bruce, Mims, and Chu (1991). Spontaneous and persistent rotation of cylindrical magnets levitated by Y-Ba-Cu-O superconductors. J. App. Phys., v. 70, pp.3961-3963.
Hirsch and Hirsch (2003). Spontaneous spinning of a magnet levitated over a superconductor. arXiv:cond_mat/0303574v1 27 Mar 2003

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Meissner
• superconductor
• levitation
• high-temperature
• spontaneous
• rotation
• magnet
• free
• energy

[kukulcangod1]

ay ay ay ayyyy!! it is the bubbles moving this thing for crying out loud!

[TinselKoala]

@kukulcangod1

No, it's not.

If you think it's the bubbles, you have to be able to explain why it rocks back and forth at first and how the bubbles are timed just so in order to make it speed up instead of slow down. Think about it....

[bereanone]

Does the direction of the eventual rotation every change? Is it right hand or left hand rotation with respect to the positive and negative poles of the magnetic field?

[TinselKoala]

@bereanone

No, it can go either way. I think it depends more on the asymmetry between the mass distribution of the magnet blank and the magnetization of the blank. It's unusual for a small cheap magnet to be perfectly coaxially magnetized. Then, there are inevitable random perturbations that happen, so depending on all of that, the magnet might end up rotating in either direction.

You might be interested in my magnet slide video, where the Earth's field orientation makes a difference.

[QuarkToo]

Flash! - Canada replicates a high school experiment from the US.

The ring is damaged in the back and you can see that (well we can anyway) from the nitrogen fog that the field is breached. Therefor it is subject to all kinds of external forces you can see such as RF.

[TinselKoala]

@QuarkToo

Let's see: Claim 1: High schools do this experiment routinely in the US. I don't know, but I hope they do... but somehow I doubt it.

Claim 2: Nitrogen fog responds to "breached fields". WRONG.

Claim 3: You can see external RF force. WRONG.

Claim 4: The chipped ring has some effect on some field. WRONG.

[goatcheese1984]

It may explain the solar system...

[johnb003]

@TinselKoala You can explain the rocking by the fact that the mass is off center from the center of the magnetic field, and the bubbles are forming at a fairly consistent spot with consistent timing, which if it's in phase at all with the rocking will increase the rotation.

[ninjaphysics]

Have you ever tried this with an AC field on top of the DC field made by the ring magnet? I wonder if you just put a little coil and varied the AC frequency if you might find some sort of resonance effect.

[jamietti]

I might think that the temperature of the magnet has something to do with it. And the temperature gradient created in the room temperature magnet standing close to the cold nitrogen surface. After the first magnet was stopped rotating, it didn't want to start again. The next magnet with the black mark was warm when brought into the experiment. The temperature gradient (top side of the magnet cooling down slowlier than the side close to the nitrogen) could have something to do with it?

[sn1pe352]

I'm more fascinated with the void forming over the center piece 

[derre98]

Perhaps repeat this experiment in two vacuum chambers. This should eliminate any questions about heat gradients and gas flow. It should keep accelerating if something interesting is happening.

[rattytheraccoon]

Let's figure it out and split the Nobel prize. At least i would like to be in attendance at the award ceremony.

[rattytheraccoon]

So what law does this support? does it model planetary rotation?

, what have you learned ? Is it just the magnetic flows reacting to each other like a couple of gears , or is it just that magnetic fields produce rotation, just like rotating metals produces magnetic fields in earth.Maybe the magnetic domains are really all or most of the atoms spinning in the same direction, and what you see is that spin being transmitted through the magnetic field?

What do you think we can learn from this?

[Greeny992UK]

@TinselKoala Your description says that the magnet will continue to spin 'indefinitely' even when there is no power source applied to the superconductor but it doesn't spin indefinitely as the magnetic field decays over time. If the field doesn't decay over time the motion of the magnet would be indefinite, however, it would also violate the first law of thermodynamics by doing so