No, It's Not CGI... Watch Scientists Levitate These Objects With Nothing But Sounds Waves

January 3, 2014

Photo: Everett Collection

The essence of levitation technology is the countervailing of gravity.

It is known that an ultrasound standing wave is capable of suspending small particles at its sound pressure nodes and, so far, this method has been used to levitate lightweight particles, small creatures, and water droplets.

Okay, this is not how they pulled off the famous levitation scene in the 1973 horror classic, The Exorcist, but Japanese scientists Yoichi Ochiai, Jun Rekimoto and Takayuki Hoshi have released footage of their new series of acoustic levitation experiments that demonstrate the power of sound.

Their manipulation system has two original features. One is the direction of the ultrasound beam, which is arbitrary because the force acting toward its center is also utilized. The other is the manipulation principle by which a localized standing wave is generated at an arbitrary position and moved three-dimensionally by opposed and ultrasonic phased arrays.

They experimentally confirmed that various materials could be manipulated by our proposed method, and here is the proof:

Source: YouTube