Xref: utzoo sci.physics:18073 sci.bio:4773
Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!cis.ohio-state.edu!uoft02.utoledo.edu!desire.wright.edu!sbishop
Newsgroups: sci.physics,sci.bio
Subject: Re: Magnetic Levitation of Organic Materials
Message-ID: <1991Apr15.053443.3237@desire.wright.edu>
From: sbishop@desire.wright.edu
Date: 15 Apr 91 05:34:43 EST
References: <1489@gtx.com> <40065@fmsrl7.UUCP> <1991Apr12.222942.12775@ucselx.sdsu.edu>
Organization: University Computing Services, Wright State University
Lines: 33

In article <1991Apr12.222942.12775@ucselx.sdsu.edu>, naqvi@ucselx.sdsu.edu (Shahid A. Naqvi --Hercules--) writes:
> In article <40065@fmsrl7.UUCP> wreck@fmsrl7.UUCP (Ron Carter) writes:
>>In article <1489@gtx.com> al@gtx.UUCP () writes:
>>>I'm curious about the possibility of generating gradients like this on
>>>a large scale so that, say, a person's body could be levitated.  Given
>>>the above numbers, would this be technically possible?  Would the
>>>great field strength or gradient thereof have any significant effect
>>>on, say, electrical activity in nervous tissue or other life processes?
>>
>>Hell, yes.  Just think of the phenomena you have in the body:
>>mildly-conductive fluids moving through tubes in a mildly-conductive
>>matrix.  Now introduce an enormous magnetic field.  Every moving
>>ion will experience a BxV force, and every blood vessel which is
>>not parallel to the ambient field becomes an MHD generator of
>>DC current (pulsating in the arteries, closer to continuous in
>>the veins).
>>
>>I'm not sure if the currents would be enough to short out the
>>neural circuitry which controls the heart, but I wouldn't want
>>to find out personally.  It sounds dangerous.
>>
>>Yes, I'm a real double-E.
> 
> I think such an experiment would detonate the vessels or nerves before
> it could levitate the body. Your soul would levitate before your body can!!!
> Shahid, SDSU,EE

You people may have missed the heated discussion that has been going on in
talk.origins.  There is a Velikovskyite who keeps insisting that in 'andeluvian
times the felt effect of gravity was lighter'.  He keeps changing his stand
on exactly what the mechanism is that could cause this but most of the time
he's trying to use magnetism.  Anyway he keeps saying that anything larger
than an elephant would be too heavy to stand up in the current gravity.