How can it look like something that is ostensibly invisible? It's not swinging around like a pendulum, so what exactly are you seeing that makes you think it looks like an invisible string?
What accounts for the smooth “settling” into place after the last touch around 10s?
I have no idea what I’m talking about, but in other flux pinning demonstrations the sample seems to oscillate around the fixed point. That smooth settling looks like some sort of damping, like maybe a force that increases with distance, like maybe spring tension.
(Of course, “we have no idea” is an acceptable answer if that turns out to be the case.)
Air resistance seems like a reasonable explanation for the dampening. Furthermore if it's not pure and only partially superconducting, the dampening could be due to magnetic fields forming eddy currents in the sample.
> (Of course, “we have no idea” is an acceptable answer if that turns out to be the case.)
Good hypotheses both! “We’ve never been able to pin something this size before” covers a lot of wiggle room. So to speak.
(FWIW I’m thrilled about the possibility of a rtrp drop this year, and I have to assume 'pera is as well. But this video doesn’t look just like flux pinning we’ve seen before. It’s visibly a little different in a way that wants explanation. I wouldn’t come out the gate calling it a hoax, but I’d feel better about not doing that if the basis for skepticism were at least acknowledged.)
But you haven't explained how it looks like that. It could be that, but it looks like it's floating. What is it about the appearance of this thing which has you believing there is a string?
If there is a magician on the stage, you can safely presume there is no actual magic involved, even though you do not know how exactly the trick works.
For actual flux pinning, the first thing you would do is show what happens if you put the thing upside down. It should stick. Even if it does not, you would show that it does not.
The point of the illusions in a good magicians act is that they look like magic. If the illusions look like invisible strings/etc, then they were poorly done. Even if you know there must be a string, it shouldn't look that way.
So what I'm saying is that even if it's reasonable to deduce that this supposed magnet is being suspended from a string, it doesn't look like it is. If it is fake, it's a well-done illusion not a shoddy illusion.
Whether it "looks like it's on a string" is highly subjective. Suppose I primed you by saying: Look at this speck of dirt on a string, does it look like a speck of dirt on a string to you?
