/sci/ - Science & Math

Now that diamagnetism is off the table, there are only two options left:

1. It's completely fake, CGI etc.
2. It's a superconductor

1 seems too farfetched given the rush to publish. As unlikely as it might sound, it seems like 2 is the only realistic option left.

What are the options left for it to be not real?

1. The video is completely fake, CGI etc.
2. The video is real, but the magnet being used is an engineered magnet and the sample is simply a strong diamagnet.
3. The video is real, the magnet is a normal dipole but the effect isn't caused by superconductivity but rather some new mechanism.

1 seems unlikely, purely because two overlapping groups rushed out papers to be the first to publish, which is an academic concern and seems like an odd choice if you knew it was fake and were trying to dupe investors and play the stock market. The videos so far also look convincing enough where CGI would seem unlikely.

2 seems plausible, but again it seems strange that you'd rush to publish something you know to be fake against your peers. This is the only option available for a normal diamagnet as a diamagnet over a single dipole magnet will be unstable in a gravitational field, leaving only outright deception as an option.

3 seems like it's the most unlikely, it would be almost as big of a discovery to find a new kind of magnetic interaction as it would to find a RTAPSC. Even more so given that nothing rules out a RTAPSC within physics while anything else would be completely new and outside of the known framework.

Does that sum it up? While a RTAPSC seems unbelievable, when you weigh the alternatives it seems almost like the most likely option given the evidence. The rock floats.