Video: He might have billions of dollars, a company that promises to revolutionise space travel, and an upgraded full head of hair, but Elon Musk’s Hyperloop will never be as cool as this superconducting quantum levitation Möbius strip race track created by students at Ithaca College’s Low Temperature Physics Lab.
Möbius strips, as we all learned in science class, turn both sides of a strip of paper (or in this case, a flat track) into one continuous looped surface. The students at Ithaca College added three twists to their track, creating a 3π Möbius strip which they then covered with 1000 magnets so that a liquid nitrogen-cooled superconductor was able to levitate both above and beneath it as it raced in circles.
If this is what the Hyperloop would look like one day, potential investors would be lined up around the block.
[YouTube via Geekologie]