Superconductivity in a vacuum needs a few minor things, such as a simply enormous magnetic field, or a handy particle accelerator.
But it is the lightest superconductor available, perhaps, and lends itself to levitation against another magnetic field.
So...a vacuum superconductor system - ground based - and - vehicle based- could be the basis of a flying type of vehicle.-- Ling, Nov 13 2013 Vacuum superconductor http://www.newscien...r.html#.UoQHKY1gBFQ [spidermother, Nov 13 2013] What you say can only be true if the vacuum is perfect, no atoms at all floating about in there. Even one would introduce some interference/resistance with the flow of electrons through the volume it occupies.-- Vernon, Nov 13 2013 More detail, please. Vernon it up some. How would this be done?-- bungston, Nov 13 2013 "Chernodub likens the resulting condensate to that formed by ordinary superconductors. Below a certain critical temperature, electrons in these materials bind together in so-called Cooper pairs, which all share the same quantum state and so flow without friction. However, Paul Olesen of the University of Copenhagen in Denmark says the similarity is not exact because ordinary superconductors repel magnetic fields."
No repulsion of magnetic fields means no levitation.-- spidermother, Nov 13 2013 No Meissner effect is rather strange...I wonder if the current density is unlimited...
If so, the potential magnetic forces could be huge as well. But how can a vacuum exert a force? Hmmm...thinks...-- Ling, Nov 14 2013 Nothing in Chernodub's speculative work on vacuum superconduction or other physicists' comments on it suggest practical engineering applications. It's mostly interesting in its suggestion that superconductivity played some role in the very early universe contributing to the large scale structure - ie the arrangment of galaxies - we see now.
His speculation concerns making virtual particles real, like the demonstrated Casimir effect, which uses mechanical confinement, or speculated Hawking radiation, which uses gravity, using magnetism. The particles involved - rho mesons - are very short-lived - on the order of 10^-24 seconds - and would require huge machines to create. Compared to one using ordinary superconducting materials, such a system wouldn't be "the lightest available", any more than a heavy metal or glass vacuum chamber is lighter than a helium party balloon of the same volume.-- CraigD, Nov 16 2013 So that's what Dyson is really up to....-- not_morrison_rm, Nov 17 2013 random, halfbakery