Real World Quantum Levitation Wipe'out Track

Mark Dygert

The JIST (Japan Institute for Science and Technology) created a real world Wipe'out track based on Quantum Levitation (or did they?)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zqmdv5iyIOY

"Here is a short footage on our recent work on quantum levitation. We were inspired by the game Wipe'out to do our work. With this new technology, we hope to revolutionize the world of motor transport; Maybe in a near future we could assist to a real Wipe'out race."

That sounds amazing and would be a major scientific break through. But not so fast... It turns out this was a project by 3rd year students at Montreal’s Centre Nad.

Here is an excerpt from a montreal.openfile.ca blog post that explains the motivation behind the hoax.

" It all started with an assignment from professor Robin Tremblay’s third-year class in the media effects concentration at the school for animation and design.

“The assignment was to create a believable prank or hoax using CGI elements over a camera shoot they had to do,” Tremblay explained to OpenFile Montreal. “Once the project completed, they had put the result online and promote it through their social networks. To create CGI effects that are totally oblivious to acute viewer is still a big challenge for most post-production companies, and is a even bigger hurdle for students.”

One group of students decided to incorporate the popularity of a video game with the science of controlled quantum levitation.

“When they submitted the idea, I was very excited of the viral potential,” Tremblay said. “The Wipeout video game is in the gaming community since the inception of Sony (Playstation) console and was always very popular. A recent scientific experiment involving superconductors, liquid nitrogen and levitation largely viewed on the Internet was the spark that gave the idea to my students.”

But the hoax fell victim to its own popularity. With 2million+ views worth of attention, someone was bound to call them on it.

Until real scientist figure it out, you'll have to settle for this, which is still amazingly cool and probably partially responsible for idea...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsfxP77lSu8

All I have to say is well done guys, you managed to get 2 million+ views and probably fooled a few people.

eld

They didn't pull it off too well though, as it was debunked as soon as it hit the internet for countless of reasons, one being the simple knowledge of how quantum levitation actually works and why it doesn't hold up there.

The other being lackluster post effects and very flat matte materials, as well as camera-tracking acting up causing the geometry to float around.


http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/comment/9/2012/01/09bf5cc4516856a5ec05aaa11963ab40/original.jpg

Snipergen

The material definition is just non existent and that's why it looked fake to me. And the particles.

[HP]

particles are so fake it hurts!

garriola83

fool me once...shame on me....fool me, cant get fooled again

Axios

I miss weekly recaps. What happened to those?

Rubikubi

I would gladly be fooled. Even if just for one minute and thirty-four seconds.

Sako

This cardboard racing is awesome!) Now i feel the urge to have a RC Car, damn they're fun! Even tho thIs quantum wipeout is fake - is it a hard task to make kinda game based on magnetic levitation? i mean they've built BHC to collide particles, and it works this way - the big proton racing.

malcolm

I debunked this the first time I saw it purely based on the fact I know what ao looks like.

Vailias

it looks more real on a really small screen.

imbueFX

I was really intrigued by this video (more so its reception). When I first watched it, it took me only a few seconds to start to question it as 3d. But then facebook was full of people that just couldn't tell this wasn't real. When I called it out, I was actually told I was wrong by several people. Different news outlets like Engadget (I think . . one of those tech news sites) had this posted as real and everyone was elated in the forums with the concept and technology. It was then changed later with the [update: may not be real] tag appended to the title when someone noticed the smoke vapor going straight through the wall.

This is one of the first cases I've seen of a video going viral that genuinely fooled the majority of people who watched it. I think it's amazing where we are now; a turning point where only a group of students release a project and have captured our imaginations, all while performing a magic trick. There's probably a whole other level of the perception of what's "real" to viewers as we are bombarded by cg and fx that has something to do with it as well.

To quote The Prestige, "Now you're looking for the secret... but you won't find it, because of course you're not really looking. You don't really want to know. You want to be fooled."

This shit fascinates me . . .

Mr_Drayton

Long ago, I used to dream about Tamiya Maglev Mini4WD models.
Well... This video made the dream come alive, then tored it to pieces... T_T

But then I discovered that something similar really exists: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lmtbLu5nxw

eld

inbueFX, the less educated internet will believe anything, even if science itself contradicts it :P

educated Non-artists would debunk it by noticing the ways things worked and how the liquid nitrogen was apparently stored, which did not work.

Some paintball guy would notice that the device they used to inject liquid nitrogen into the racer was actually something used for paintball, and which could not be used to store liquid nitrogen, but compressed gas, and as we know liquids to not compress much, liquid nitrogen is almost always stored in big tanks and poured.


It's like unlimited detail all over again, only this was a viral trick to begin with.

sirenblue

SO. MUCH. AO!