Levitation

Hey, it's not practical yet, but what sort of theoretical physics would be! It's awesome, though. The basic premise is that by manipulating (read: reversing) the waves of attraction that exist between quantum particles it's theoretically possible to make an object levitate. Probably not a lot, but enough to make it essentially frictionless. Think the Spider-man villain Slyde. I'm sensing all sorts of future-sports applications. And the best lube ever.

clipped from www.telegraph.co.uk Professor Ulf Leonhardt and Dr Thomas Philbin, from the University of St Andrews in Scotland, have worked out a way of reversing this pheneomenon, known as the Casimir force, so that it repels instead of attracts. The Casimir force is a consequence of quantum mechanics, the theory that describes the world of atoms and subatomic particles that is not only the most successful theory of physics but also the most baffling. 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.