Superstuff: When quantum goes big
- 16 January 2012 by Michael Brooks
- Magazine issue 2847. Subscribe and save
- For similar stories, visit the Quantum World Topic Guide
In the coldest labs in the universe, bucketfuls of liquid flow uphill and solids pass through one another
FOR centuries, con artists have convinced the masses that it is possible to defy gravity or walk through walls. Victorian audiences gasped at tricks of levitation involving crinolined ladies hovering over tables. Even before then, fraudsters and deluded inventors were proudly displaying perpetual-motion machines that could do impossible things, such as make liquids flow uphill without consuming energy. Today, magicians still make solid rings pass through each other and become interlinked - or so it appears. But these are all cheap tricks compared with what the real world has to offer.
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