Physicists Figure Out How To Cause Levitation; Hoverboards Imminent
If there was a cooler movie prop in my childhood than the hoverboard from Back to the Future, Part II, I don't know what it was. That hoverboard made me really, really want to be living in the year 2015. And while as I got older my pragmatism and cynicism lead me to believe we would definitely not have hoverboards by that time, I might just be proven wrong in the most awesome way possible: by real hoverboards.
That's because a group of physicists claim to have figured out how to reverse what's known as the Casimir force, causing objects to repel from each other rather than be attracted. What's that mean? Hoverboards, bro. So what is this wacky Casimir force?
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.
1948年、オランダのフィリップス研究所の物理学者のヘンドリック・カシミール（ Hendrik BG Casimir ）は、平行におかれた二つの無帯電状態の金属板の間に吸引力が働くことを予想した。この引力を「カシミール効果」と呼ぶ。
