8/18/2019 Can a City Fly? Semi-Scholarly Paper
1/4
Written by Taha Jamall Nasir - when citing my work, please
credit my name, the link to this work,
and the brand “Polyrogue Games” accompanying it.
Can a City ‘Fly’?
The popular 2013 game ‘Bioshock Infinite’ was set in a modern,
but alternate timeline of the
Earth, taking place in a City that sat suspended in the air,
called Columbia. The entire concept of
this City sounding like Science Fiction, the game did make a
short attempt to explain the feasibilityof the levitating nature of
Columbia, quoted below:
“Extremely thin material, suspended, not levitating, through a
magnetic field at a fixed point in
space”.
Despite the brevity of the ‘explanation’, upon doing a thorough
amount of research, I found that
their brief explanation actually had some scientific backing,
and that with funding, this could be
potentially feasible, albeit a few key flaws, and this briefing
will explore how.
The phenomenon the game describes as ‘quantum suspension’ is
known as flux pinning, a process
of which will be explained momentarily: when a type-II
superconductor, such as
Yttrium-Barium-Copper-Oxide is placed above a magnet (at the
temperature, where it gains
superconducting properties, in this case, this is the
temperature of liquid nitrogen, about
-196 °C), it would normally be subjected to the Meissner effect,
where the magnetic field is
expelled around it1 . However, this is an exception to this
rule:
© 2016 Taha Nasir & Polyrogue Games. All rights
reserved.
8/18/2019 Can a City Fly? Semi-Scholarly Paper
2/4
Written by Taha Jamall Nasir - when citing my work, please
credit my name, the link to this work,
and the brand “Polyrogue Games” accompanying it.
Superconductors are materials that have zero electrical
resistance. This is achieved due to electronbonding in pairs,
which actually ‘tunnel’ through the material freely, flowing
through without
resistance. Obviously, ordinarily electrons cannot bond with
each other for having the same
charge, but there is an exception. These pairs are called Cooper
pairs. This happens when one
electron flows ahead of the other through a substrate of
positive ions. As a result, they are slightly
attracted to the electron, causing ions around the electron to
be more ‘bunched up’ than ones
before it. As a result, the proceeding electron is attracted to
these ions, and by extension to the
electron. This process is one of the qualities of a
superconductor.
If the superconductor is thin enough, often achieved in the
modern day at a thickness of 1micrometre, then quantised packets of
magnetic flux that are extremely thin and narrow are able
to penetrate through tiny imperfections in the superconductor,
each called a quantum vortex, tiny
topological defects in the surface. These penetrations by
magnetic flux (each string is called a flux
tube) actually suspend the superconductor, effectively locking
it in space. They can be moved
within this field, and remain suspended. Quantum vortices that
can allow penetration from flux
tubes are called Pinning Centres, and these imperfections can be
defects including ‘dislocations,
grain boundaries, or segregations – i.e. a defect in the crystal
lattice itself’ 3 .
The number of flux tubes per unit area is proportional to the
flux density B, which can be found
using the equation:
B = A
Φ
Where Phi ( is the Flux (measured in Webers Wb) and A is
the area (measured in m²).)Φ
This superconductor used must be of Type-II, as Type-I cannot be
penetrated by magnetic fields1.
In the last two decades, it has been discovered that certain
ceramics have superconducting
qualities at higher temperatures than metals, which require
temperatures approaching absolute
zero, which is why the ceramic Yttrium-Barium-Copper-Oxide has
been singled out as one of the
most useful and versatile, since it also has ‘great potential
for use in a range of technical
applications such as superconducting cables, electrical motors,
and generators’ 4, as well as having
one of the most convenient critical temperatures, since it is
extremely similar to the temperatureof liquid nitrogen5 9, which
can be obtained in abundance by professionals. To achieve the
thickness (or lack thereof) required, often this ceramic is
merely a coating on top of another
substrate, which also means that the substrate can be
deliberately engineered to be have many
quantum vortices to act as the aforementioned Pinning Centres,
allowing the flux tubes to
penetrate through the thin layer of the ceramic coating.
So, Columbia could be sat on an extremely large platform coated
in a micrometre thick coating of
Yttrium-Barium-Copper-Oxide, suspended over a large magnet
below. However, the issue of mass
must be considered – how much mass can a magnet support using
flux pinning?
© 2016 Taha Nasir & Polyrogue Games. All rights
reserved.
