Scientists levitate heaviest elements with help from cold oxygen

Scientists at the University of Nottingham have successfully levitated diamond and some of the heaviest elements, including lead and platinum. Using liquid oxygen to increase the buoyancy created by a specially designed superconducting magnet, they could now levitate a hypothetical object with a density 15 times larger than that of the densest known material, osmium. This research is published today (11th May 2005) in the New Journal of Physics co-owned by the Institute of Physics and Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft (the German Physical Society).