Notes from The Ruckus Society (Tibet)

“Around 10 p.m. NYC time (10 a.m. Beijng time) six courageous
Tibetan independence activists from the UK, US, and Canada were
detained by Chinese authorities after rappelling (abseiling) off the
top of the Great Wall of China with a 450-square foot banner reading
“One World, One Dream, Free Tibet 2008” in English and Chinese.

The activists from the UK, the US and Canada are Sam Price, Melanie
Raoul, Leslie Kaup, Duane Martinez, Pete Speller and Nupur Modi.  Their
current whereabouts are unknown but we are monitoring the situation
closely.

The action took place on the eve of the one-year countdown to the 2008
Beijing Olympics as China was preparing for what they thought would be
a glorious celebration.  As Ben Blanchard from The Guardian has already
reported: “Free Tibet activists on the Great Wall, a barrage of
critical rights reports, a shroud of smog hanging over Beijing –
China’s government must surely have imagined a more auspicious one-year
countdown for the Olympics.”

To see the footage of these amazing Tibetan freedom activists in action, click on the links below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xp5mAMrfvI8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6Qp2-pJUio

You can also see still photos at:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/greatwallaction

To read the press release, go to:  www.studentsforafreetibet.org
To see some media postings, interviews and blog commentaries go to:
http://blog.studentsforafreetibet.org/

ALSO, DON’T FORGET to check www.BeijingWideOpen.org
for Lhadon Tethong’s latest posts.  Watch footage of her recent
encounter with IOC President Jacques Rogge at his Beijing hotel.
 Lhadon and Paul continue reporting from Beijing, exposing the reality
of China’s propaganda campaign.”

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Physicists Have Solved “Mystery” of Levitation

Levitation has been elevated from being pure science fiction to science
fact, according to a study reported today by physicists.

	In theory the discovery could be used to levitate a person

In earlier work the same team of theoretical physicists showed that invisibility cloaks are feasible.

Now, in another report that sounds like it comes out of the pages of a Harry Potter book, the University of St Andrews team has created an ‘incredible levitation effects’ by engineering the force of nature
which normally causes objects to stick together.

Professor Ulf Leonhardt and Dr Thomas Philbin, from the University of St Andrews
in Scotland, have worked out a way of reversing this pheneomenon, known
as the Casimir force, so that it repels instead of attracts.

Their discovery could ultimately lead to frictionless micro-machines with
moving parts that levitate But they say that, in principle at least,
the same effect could be used to levitate bigger objects too, even a person.

 

 

The Casimir force is a consequence of quantum mechanics, the theory that
describes the world of atoms and subatomic particles that is not only
the most successful theory of physics but also the most baffling.

The force is due to neither electrical charge or gravity, for example,
but the fluctuations in all-pervasive energy fields in the intervening
empty space between the objects and is one reason atoms stick together,
also explaining a “dry glue” effect that enables a gecko to walk across
a ceiling.

Now, using a special lens of a kind that has already been built, Prof Ulf Leonhardt and Dr Thomas Philbin
report in the New Journal of Physics they can engineer the Casimir
force to repel, rather than attact.

Because the Casimir force causes problems for nanotechnologists, who are trying to
build electrical circuits and tiny mechanical devices on silicon chips,
among other things, the team believes the feat could initially be used
to stop tiny objects from sticking to each other.

Prof Leonhardt explained, “The Casimir force is the ultimate cause of
friction in the nano-world, in particular in some microelectromechanical systems.

Such systems already play an important role – for example tiny mechanical devices
which triggers a car airbag to inflate or those which power tiny ‘lab
on chip’ devices used for drugs testing or chemical analysis.

Micro or nano machines could run smoother and with less or no friction at all
if one can manipulate the force.” Though it is possible to levitate
objects as big as humans, scientists are a long way off developing the
technology for such feats, said Dr Philbin.

The practicalities of designing the lens to do this are daunting but not
impossible and levitation “could happen over quite a distance”.

Prof Leonhardt leads one of four teams – three of them in Britain – to have
put forward a theory in a peer-reviewed journal to achieve invisibility
by making light waves flow around an object – just as a river flows
undisturbed around a smooth rock.

http://www.newscloud.com/read/Physicists_have_solved_mystery_of_levitation

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