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Published online 17 December 2007 | Nature 450, 138- (2007) | doi:10.1038/4501138b
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Physicists make ripples with their 'magic carpet'
Tiny rug gets off to a flying start.
Perfectly timed for pantomime season, a team of scientists has come up with instructions for how to make a flying carpet.
The magical device may owe more to Walt Disney than to The Arabian Nights, but it is not pure fantasy, according to Lakshminarayanan Mahadevan of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and his co-workers.
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If you look at how Manta Rays swim, that should give us an idea of how flexible sheets propel themselves through water. What we would want to achieve is a fly by wire flexible sheet which is able to navigate through water using chip controlled undulating/rippling motions. Just to see Manta Rays swimming is magical. We need to be able to map the Manta Ray's swimming movements and try to simulate them in a lab.
As a fellow engineer (BSEE Auburn class of '80) with degrees in physics and applied mathematics as well, I wonder just exactly what the hell we are paying college professors to do these days. I read this trivial crap about flying carpet technology on the same day I read about a genius that teaches at UC-Davis claiming squirrels wrap themselves in rattlesnake skin so the SMELL will keep snakes from eating them. On the one hand, Ali Baba is a child's tale with zero relevance, on the other any idiot with half a brain knows rattlers hunt by heat, not smell. Perhaps it isn't the most scintillating and refined response in this day and age.....but DUH!...is absolutely appropriate.
Happy Holidays, Chuck. Go get a cup of eggnog and relax by a large carbon footprint, politically incorrect fireplace. Life is not just all about heat seeking snakes and important, absolutely appropriate, correct things. Otherwise, in what sterile room would humor be archived to protect us from our painfully obvious humanity?
Happy Holidays! I agree with Chuck. I feel the article is a prime candidate for the (Ig)noble Award. Its an interesting topic, but one that is not new and has been the subject of inquiry from the beginning of flight. I read the actual paper. I feel that the authors real fault was not pushing the envelope on possibilities for flight and failed to explore current technology possibilities. Using a "magic carpet" analogy is so "ancient" and uninspiring. Better to have called it an "energy ribbon" like the Nexus in the Star Trek movie "Generations."
At first glance the 'magic carpet' research appears a waste of hard-to-get funds. But it does point out a limit and requirement in a 'flight' scenario. Flexible, adaptive and self-healing composite materials were once thought to be science fiction. I do not really think any researcher thinks we will be touring via magic carpets for most of us are still waiting on our jet-pacs to get to work. However I think such research can lead to other feasible technologies. The question then becomes cost-benefit for those guarding the coffers, i.e., the bean counters and their managers. Its within reason quantum technologies will reveal useful innovations in the classical. Of course it is similar to coupling nanosystems to microsystems to yield practical devices in the metasystem for use in our bulky world. It isn't easy but its not impossible. Recently aDr. Mueller at NCSU used some leftover funding to buy ten 'playstations.' The result: A mini-super computer exceeding what would be expected if the monies had been spent on standard computers.