# Yogi Levitation, What physics need bent? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 6, 2014, 3:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yogi-levitation-what-physics-need-bent/706501 "2014-12-06T15:39:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![ziggydsw](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/977dab/32.png) [@ziggydsw](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ziggydsw)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2014, 3:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yogi-levitation-what-physics-need-bent/706501/1 "2014-12-06T15:39:10Z")
Let’s say Yogis could levitate… what rules would need to be adjusted in order to accommodate the avoidance of Gravity? ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2014, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yogi-levitation-what-physics-need-bent/706501/2 "2014-12-06T15:45:06Z")
That depends on how they’re supposedly doing it. There are many ways, even ones allowed by the known laws of physics, to make something fly. None of them are accessible to a human without tools, but that’s a problem of biology, not physics. ---
**Author:** ![Grumman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/43a26b/32.png) [@Grumman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grumman)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2014, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yogi-levitation-what-physics-need-bent/706501/3 "2014-12-06T16:37:14Z")
In order to levitate, you need two things: a means of projecting a force across an air gap, and either a means of controlling that force to keep yourself stable or for the force to automatically change in such a way that it keeps you stable. Without the latter you might be able to levitate - using opposing magnets, for example - but only for as long as it takes to get flung out of position in an undignified manner. ---
**Author:** ![ziggydsw](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/977dab/32.png) [@ziggydsw](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ziggydsw)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2014, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yogi-levitation-what-physics-need-bent/706501/4 "2014-12-06T16:48:45Z")
The modern Transcendental Meditation-ers belief they can “using the unified field” obtain levitation. What physics are they intending to circumvent? ---
**Author:** ![x-ray\_vision](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/x-ray_vision/32/351_2.png) [@x-ray\_vision](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/x-ray_vision)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2014, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yogi-levitation-what-physics-need-bent/706501/5 "2014-12-06T16:58:08Z")
> [@ziggydsw](#): > > The modern Transcendental Meditation-ers belief they can “using the unified field” obtain levitation. What physics are they intending to circumvent? First you’d have to tell us what “the unified field” means and it’s relation to levitation. That just sounds like gibberish. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2014, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yogi-levitation-what-physics-need-bent/706501/6 "2014-12-06T17:02:06Z")
As an incidental, if you were somehow capable of cancelling gravity’s effect on you, you’d still have to contain your own inertia and prevent being flung off in a straight line out to space. ---
**Author:** ![ziggydsw](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/977dab/32.png) [@ziggydsw](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ziggydsw)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2014, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yogi-levitation-what-physics-need-bent/706501/7 "2014-12-06T17:34:04Z")
“using the unified field” sounds like gibberish to me as well, but their argument (which I’m sure is better delivered by the TM-ers themselves) is that they will be able to Levitate. ---
**Author:** ![x-ray\_vision](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/x-ray_vision/32/351_2.png) [@x-ray\_vision](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/x-ray_vision)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2014, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yogi-levitation-what-physics-need-bent/706501/8 "2014-12-06T18:20:12Z")
How can anyone tell you what “physics are they intending to circumvent” when you admit that the method they label but don’t explain sounds like gibberish? If you want to “fly” straight up, the force that must be overcome is gravity. I assume you already know that, but I’m not really sure what more information you’re looking for. ---
**Author:** ![DataX](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@DataX](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DataX)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2014, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yogi-levitation-what-physics-need-bent/706501/9 "2014-12-06T18:43:27Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > As an incidental, if you were somehow capable of cancelling gravity’s effect on you, you’d still have to contain your own inertia and prevent being flung off in a straight line out to space. Maybe that’s the problem - people are successful at levitating, but we don’t have the proof - as they are space junk (assuming death cancels out their powers). Actually I guess they’d die before space, so maybe we should be looking for dead yogis with impact injuries. And I guess it would be less of a problem when done indoors. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2014, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yogi-levitation-what-physics-need-bent/706501/10 "2014-12-06T18:59:49Z")
The Ranger’s not going to like this. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2014, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yogi-levitation-what-physics-need-bent/706501/11 "2014-12-06T19:31:45Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > The Ranger’s not going to like this. \*\* Yogi Bear:\*\* Boo Boo, you’ve tried to stop my brilliant ideas with common sense a thousand times. Has it ever worked? **Boo Boo:** No. **Yogi Bear:** Then… let’s go-go-go! [Splat!] ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2014, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yogi-levitation-what-physics-need-bent/706501/12 "2014-12-06T20:17:01Z")
This actually appears to be a General Question since no one (thank Og), is arguing that it is a real phenomenon. Off to GQ. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2014, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yogi-levitation-what-physics-need-bent/706501/13 "2014-12-06T22:39:21Z")
> [@x-ray\_vision](#): > > If you want to “fly” straight up, the force that must be overcome is gravity. Actually, it’s worse than that. Assuming they’re not violating the conservation of mass-energy, which is central to every logically consistent theory, they’re “turning off” gravity as it applies to them, and that runs into a serious problem with what gravity even _is_. Gravity isn’t a force. It looks and acts like a force, most of the time, but what it _is_ is the result of what happens when you have some non-trivial amount of mass and/or energy in the same spot at the same time. (If you have a trivial amount, you technically get the result, but it’s trivial, so nobody cares.) Spacetime gets warped, straight trajectories appear to take curved paths, and you get what we perceive as a force pulling us towards the center of our planet. [I really like this YouTube video which shows what I mean.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlTVIMOix3I) My point is, gravity naturally falls out of both the fundamental nature of mass and energy as we know them and the fundamental geometry and trigonometry of spacetime. Negating that would require a pretty substantial re-write of what we think of as the bedrock of reality. For example: Gravity is intimately connected to why you cannot travel faster than light, and therefore why you cannot go back in time. Therefore, if someone were able to exempt themselves from gravity, they’d be able to go back in time. Being able to float wouldn’t necessarily require being able to make gravity somehow not apply to you, but if they claim they can make themselves immune to gravity, and _floating_ is what they boast of, they’re either complete imbeciles or liars who are just a bit untutored in modern physics. I know which way I’m betting. So turning off gravity is out. How about pulling power out of their asses, in contradiction to mass-energy conservation? That’s… not any better, from a logical standpoint. See, physics at the level of conservation laws is mathematical, and conservation laws are a mathematical consequence of the fundamental physical laws we test every day. In specific, a beautiful result called [Noether’s theorem](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noether's_theorem) states that whenever you can prove mathematically that some property of a system doesn’t change as you change some variable of the system, there’s a conservation law related to that property which applies to that system. [For example, if the system doesn’t change as you vary a location parameter, the system conserves linear momentum.](http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/noetherth.htm) That’s mathematical, which means it’s logical. We really demand that our physics be logically sound; we’re willing to give up common sense, but logical soundness must remain. (Hence quantum mechanics.) So, either these very well-verified physical laws go, or their claims do. The idea that physics is logically unsound to the point Noether’s Theorem doesn’t work isn’t worth considering. Not on the kind of evidence they’ve brought, which is somewhere between “Nothing” and “Blurry video”. So, what physics would need to be revised if someone were able to float without mechanical help? All of it. Every part. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2014, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yogi-levitation-what-physics-need-bent/706501/14 "2014-12-06T22:54:08Z")
> [@ziggydsw](#): > > “using the unified field” sounds like gibberish to me as well, but their argument (which I’m sure is better delivered by the TM-ers themselves) is that they will be able to Levitate. Only phenomena that actually exist require an explanation. Can we first determine that there even is such a thing as yogic levitation, **then** go looking for an explanation for whatever it is we observe? ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2014, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yogi-levitation-what-physics-need-bent/706501/15 "2014-12-07T00:21:46Z")
There was an amazing truly God-touched moment in my twenties when I traveled to India on a spiritual quest and as I slipped into a transcendent state his soothing voice told me to picture a container of woven reeds, holding snakes that represented all the problems of my life and to charm them, and as I approached the moment when my inner eye opened and all was made clear, he jokingly tapped me on the forehead and my concentration, and the insight, was lost. I shall never forget that day: a yogi stole my epiphanic basket. ---
**Author:** ![AtomicDog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ac91a4/32.png) [@AtomicDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AtomicDog)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2014, 12:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yogi-levitation-what-physics-need-bent/706501/16 "2014-12-07T00:24:22Z")
Sir, you win the Internet. ---
**Author:** ![AtomicDog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ac91a4/32.png) [@AtomicDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AtomicDog)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2014, 12:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yogi-levitation-what-physics-need-bent/706501/17 "2014-12-07T00:26:07Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > Only phenomena that actually exist require an explanation. Can we first determine that there even is such a thing as yogic levitation, **then** go looking for an explanation for whatever it is we observe? You mean that I can’t fanwank warp factors anymore? ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2014, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yogi-levitation-what-physics-need-bent/706501/18 "2014-12-07T00:48:33Z")
Now that we are in GQ, it is true that turning gravity off is not in the Yogi’s bag of tricks. So other forces, under certain conditions, can be called. One thing one can use is a large and powerful enough magnet. > **[How One Irreverent Physicist Went From Levitating Frogs to Winning the Nobel...](https://slate.com/business/2014/05/nobel-prize-in-physics-andre-geim-went-from-levitating-frogs-to-sciences-highest-honor.html)** > > The following is adapted from Lewis’ The Rise: Creativity, the Gift of Failure, and the Search for Mastery, published by Simon & Schuster. > [@](#): > > Geim, a Russian-born Dutch and British citizen and a professor at the University of Manchester, and his colleague Konstantin Novoselov won the 2010 Nobel Prize in physics for their experiments involving the single-atom-thick material called graphene—the thinnest, strongest, most conductive material in existence. It is predicted to replace silicon and transform the electronics industry as we know it. > > Compounding the honor of winning the Nobel is that Geim is the only scientist to date to win both a Nobel and an Ig Nobel, the award given to scientists for experiments so outlandish that they “first make people laugh, and then make them think.” > [@](#): > > Geim won the Ig Nobel in Physics in 2000 for levitating a live frog with magnets. “In my experience, if people don’t have a sense of humor, they are usually not very good scientists either,” he said. The image of the flying frog first made the rounds after its publication in the April 1997 issue of Physics World, though many assumed it was an April Fools’ Day prank. Most thought that water’s magnetism, billions of times weaker than iron, was not strong enough to counter gravity; the demonstration showed its true force. > > Geim became curious about magnetism when he didn’t have the equipment to continue his experiments while working at Radboud University Nijmegen’s High Field Magnet Laboratory in the Netherlands. So one Friday evening he set the electromagnet to maximum power, then poured water straight into the expensive machine. He still can’t remember why he “behaved so unprofessionally,’” but he was able to see how descending water “got stuck” within the vertical bore. Balls of water started floating. They were levitating. He had discovered that a seemingly “feeble magnetic response of water” could act against Earth’s gravitational force. No yoga required. Of course making a magnet big enough for a human would be very expensive, and I’m not sure of the side effects a human can encounter… Video of the levitating frog: [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/bOtT0gB-FLE/hqdefault.jpg "The flying frog") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOtT0gB-FLE) ---
**Author:** ![Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/try2b_comprehensive/32/65_2.png) [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Try2B_Comprehensive)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2014, 2:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yogi-levitation-what-physics-need-bent/706501/19 "2014-12-07T02:40:15Z")
If you are going to reject yogic levitation, you also must reject Peter and Jesus walking on water. Not many Bible literalists around here though. ---
**Author:** ![am77494](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d2c977/32.png) [@am77494](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/am77494)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2014, 5:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yogi-levitation-what-physics-need-bent/706501/20 "2014-12-07T05:20:50Z")
> [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](#): > > If you are going to reject yogic levitation, you also must reject Peter and Jesus walking on water. > > Not many Bible literalists around here though. I do not see the connection here. Most hindus know and acknowledge that a lot of sadhus/yogis/holy-people are bogus. Many also believe the same of religious scriptures and books - that much of it is creative liberty of an imaginative mind anyways. Some hindus are atheists too. In general reasoning / logic / religious beliefs of the Abrahamic religions are not congruent with eastern religions. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yogi-levitation-what-physics-need-bent/706501.md?page=2)