Lexus Hoverboard

Most of the guys growing up in the 90's would know about the movie Back to the the Future staring Michael J Fox as Marty McFly, now a lot of cool things were seen in the then "Future" which is now our present, like flying cars, mini pizza's that turn into large pizza's that microwave and self lace tying Nike sneakers but from all that was shown there was one thing that we all craved the most and that was the hover board that Marty used, besides it being cool, it was the closest thing that a normal person can come close to flying, with friction-less movement through the air. There were a lot of fake videos that did the rounds over the past few years and many having claimed to have made an actual working one but as with all myth's they were soon busted but not until now...

The smart guys at Japanese motor manufacturer Lexus however set out on a quest to put all myths to bed by actually making a working prototype hover board. Now ever since the launch video on Tuesday evening I've been seeing comments on the various social media streams "its another fake", "computer animation", "green screen tricks"... um no dumbasses,  its real and they did it with a thing called its called physics. 

Japan for long has been the leader in innovation when it comes to magnetic levitation (MagLev), with it being used for their famed "Bullet Trains". Till now Japan's original Bullet train travels faster than any other train made in the US. Now I can explain the nitty gritty of how the whole thing works but someone already did that on Wikipedia but basically its a mode of transporting without the object touching the ground as it moves along a magnetic track. 

Whats with the smoke? When you watch the video, you'll see smoke emitting from the hover board, no its not on fire, neither is it just for effects, that's liquid nitrogen discharge, the magnets heat up to such a point that it has to be cooled down as fast as possible and the only way this is possible is by using liquid nitrogen which freezes anything it comes into contact with in an instant!

                       

Now that you know much about it, many of you must be thinking Lexus cheated by building a magnetic track and the hover board can only go along that specific track but reality is, for now that is the only possible way. To make a magnet that defy's gravity is much to ask but there's no saying they are not busy with it anyway. Why did Lexus do this? Well they say it was to prove that nothing is impossible, but if you look into is, there could be some R&D they can take from this into potentially use maglev technology in cars and making a "flying car". The possibilities are endless and if we don't have engineers playing around (I say that loosely) with things like this, we won't know what is and isn't possible.