Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Scientists Levitate Animals

Charles Q. Choi (Special to LiveScience.com)
Scientists have now levitated small live animals using sounds that are, well, uplifting. In the past, researchers at Northwestern Polytechnical University in Xi'an, China, used ultrasound fields to successfully levitate globs of the heavi-est solid and liquid...The aim of their work is to learn how to manufacture everything from pharmaceuticals to alloys without the aid of containers....

"An interesting question is, 'What will happen if a living animal is put into the acoustic field?' Will it also be stably levitated?" researcher Wenjun Xie, a materials physicist at Northwestern Polytechnical University, told LiveScience. (The answer is yes!) More>>