Post by Micro Farad on Mar 5, 2014 8:29:42 GMT
You may have seen this viral video making the rounds.
www.extremetech.com/extreme/177837-huvr-the-back-to-the-future-hoverboard-is-finally-here
It depicts a futuristic hover board and claims that this technology is coming to a consumer market. I was shocked to find some of my friends pulled in by this hoax so, since it is my hamartia that I do no suffer lies to blacken the minds of otherwise good people, I have decided to find out exactly why the HUVr hoax was created and who created it. If you don't believe me and think that this thing's legit, then just stick with me for a moment - I'll explain why it's a hoax eventually.
The first thing you may notice is that this is a big budget thing for a hoax. They've got big names and a lot of money clearly went into this "marketing". This leaves us with one logical conclusion: hype. There's a big, probably exciting product out there, possibly related to Back to the Future, and they want you to buy it / watch it / consume it. First, they need your attention. And for that, they need big names and a big flashy hover board. Hook, line, and sinker.
First, let's look at their site.
huvrtech.com/
Okay, nothing much, moving on.
What about their Youtube? Well, here's another video we haven's seen:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqExe69CEg8
Here we get our first glimpse of easy to spot hoaxery. If this really was an ultra successful MIT grad student summer project as their site claims in the About, then this explanation would have a lot more science and a lot less bullshit. Their claim is that this thing works using a "magforce charger". Magnets are magnets, not magic people. I thought we were over this whole magnets are magic thing. As I attempted to satirically point out in my utterly failed attempt at a web comic, our society has moved through several phases of ignorance in which different technologies seemed like magic to us. fc04.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2013/338/9/1/agd__4_quantum_mind_control_ray_by_micro_farad-d6wrdbk.jpg
Now, as I point out in the comic, I thought we were PAST thinking magnets are magic and have moved on to quantum mechanics but, since that is obviously not true by the growing number of people on my Facebook newsfeed suckered into this doozy of a hoax, let me break it down. There's really four magnetic effects you should be aware of:
Ferromagnetism is exemplified by iron. Iron nails will be attracted to a magnet and can be magnetized by that magnet. Ferromagnetism is typically strong.
Paramagnetism is similar to ferromagnetism, except that the paramagnetic object is only weakly attracted and cannot be permanently magnetized.
Diamagnetism is like the reverse of paramagnetism, where the diamagnetic object is repelled by the magnet. This force is also weak, but occurs in almost every material. Notably, I can recall a couple genuine Youtube videos of frogs and strawberries being levitated by an incredible strong magnet. www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1vyB-O5i6E
Eddy currents are due to a magnet passing by a conductor (such as a chunk of copper). The motion of the magnet relative to the conductor causes an induced electric current which, in turn, creates an induced magnetic field. This induced field opposes the magnet's movement. If you drop a strong magnet down a copper pipe, it will move very slowly for this reason. Using superconductors, which have very low internal resistance, we can levitate a magnet using these eddy currents. www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWTSzBWEsms www.youtube.com/watch?v=keMpUaoA3Tg
So, why can't it be ferromagnetism? Because that is an attractive force. You don't want the HUVr board to be attracted to the ground, you want it to be repelled from the ground.
So, why can't it be paramagnetism? Same reason. This is an attractive force.
So, why can't it be paramagnetism? Because paramagnetic forces are very weak. If you could make a strong enough magnetic field to levitate the HUVr board and a fully grown adult human being, then this field would be incredibly destructive. It would suck in bits of metal in an enormous radius, screw with electronics, erase tapes, and even cause direct harm to the human body. The strongest electromagnet in the entire world is not nearly powerful enough to levitate the HUVr board and it would do all of these disastrous things in an uncontrolled environment. www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGytW_C6hR8
So, why can't it be eddy currents? Because where is the superconductor? Not in the board, because that's where the magnet is. We would be levitating the magnet off of a superconductor, so the floor would have to be superconducting. Yet, clearly, it is not. That is plain old concrete. There's no way eddy currents are responsible for this because the mechanics just don't work out, not to mention that our work with superconductors is not nearly this advanced yet.
Okay, so on to the true purpose of this thread. Who, what, why? Well, that will have to wait until tomorrow, since I have class in the morning. Here's a few final notes:
I went to yougetsignal.com to try and locate the huvrtech.com network (176.32.102.92). "Unable to locate network", huh? Well, if you plug in that IP, you get an Amazon server site. Looks like a dead end. I did a tracert to huvrtech.com anyway to see what I can see. I see a failed trace. yougetsignal.com also fails to trace. That's unfortunate, I wonder what's going on. Again, seems dead-end-ish.
I think my first direction will be to identify our team of "scientists". We have faces, faces give names, and names give employers. That is a very direct route to possibly finding out where this hoax is coming from. huvrtech.com/about.html
Alright, to bed now.
~ Micro Farad
www.extremetech.com/extreme/177837-huvr-the-back-to-the-future-hoverboard-is-finally-here
It depicts a futuristic hover board and claims that this technology is coming to a consumer market. I was shocked to find some of my friends pulled in by this hoax so, since it is my hamartia that I do no suffer lies to blacken the minds of otherwise good people, I have decided to find out exactly why the HUVr hoax was created and who created it. If you don't believe me and think that this thing's legit, then just stick with me for a moment - I'll explain why it's a hoax eventually.
The first thing you may notice is that this is a big budget thing for a hoax. They've got big names and a lot of money clearly went into this "marketing". This leaves us with one logical conclusion: hype. There's a big, probably exciting product out there, possibly related to Back to the Future, and they want you to buy it / watch it / consume it. First, they need your attention. And for that, they need big names and a big flashy hover board. Hook, line, and sinker.
First, let's look at their site.
huvrtech.com/
Okay, nothing much, moving on.
What about their Youtube? Well, here's another video we haven's seen:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqExe69CEg8
Here we get our first glimpse of easy to spot hoaxery. If this really was an ultra successful MIT grad student summer project as their site claims in the About, then this explanation would have a lot more science and a lot less bullshit. Their claim is that this thing works using a "magforce charger". Magnets are magnets, not magic people. I thought we were over this whole magnets are magic thing. As I attempted to satirically point out in my utterly failed attempt at a web comic, our society has moved through several phases of ignorance in which different technologies seemed like magic to us. fc04.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2013/338/9/1/agd__4_quantum_mind_control_ray_by_micro_farad-d6wrdbk.jpg
Now, as I point out in the comic, I thought we were PAST thinking magnets are magic and have moved on to quantum mechanics but, since that is obviously not true by the growing number of people on my Facebook newsfeed suckered into this doozy of a hoax, let me break it down. There's really four magnetic effects you should be aware of:
Ferromagnetism is exemplified by iron. Iron nails will be attracted to a magnet and can be magnetized by that magnet. Ferromagnetism is typically strong.
Paramagnetism is similar to ferromagnetism, except that the paramagnetic object is only weakly attracted and cannot be permanently magnetized.
Diamagnetism is like the reverse of paramagnetism, where the diamagnetic object is repelled by the magnet. This force is also weak, but occurs in almost every material. Notably, I can recall a couple genuine Youtube videos of frogs and strawberries being levitated by an incredible strong magnet. www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1vyB-O5i6E
Eddy currents are due to a magnet passing by a conductor (such as a chunk of copper). The motion of the magnet relative to the conductor causes an induced electric current which, in turn, creates an induced magnetic field. This induced field opposes the magnet's movement. If you drop a strong magnet down a copper pipe, it will move very slowly for this reason. Using superconductors, which have very low internal resistance, we can levitate a magnet using these eddy currents. www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWTSzBWEsms www.youtube.com/watch?v=keMpUaoA3Tg
So, why can't it be ferromagnetism? Because that is an attractive force. You don't want the HUVr board to be attracted to the ground, you want it to be repelled from the ground.
So, why can't it be paramagnetism? Same reason. This is an attractive force.
So, why can't it be paramagnetism? Because paramagnetic forces are very weak. If you could make a strong enough magnetic field to levitate the HUVr board and a fully grown adult human being, then this field would be incredibly destructive. It would suck in bits of metal in an enormous radius, screw with electronics, erase tapes, and even cause direct harm to the human body. The strongest electromagnet in the entire world is not nearly powerful enough to levitate the HUVr board and it would do all of these disastrous things in an uncontrolled environment. www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGytW_C6hR8
So, why can't it be eddy currents? Because where is the superconductor? Not in the board, because that's where the magnet is. We would be levitating the magnet off of a superconductor, so the floor would have to be superconducting. Yet, clearly, it is not. That is plain old concrete. There's no way eddy currents are responsible for this because the mechanics just don't work out, not to mention that our work with superconductors is not nearly this advanced yet.
Okay, so on to the true purpose of this thread. Who, what, why? Well, that will have to wait until tomorrow, since I have class in the morning. Here's a few final notes:
I went to yougetsignal.com to try and locate the huvrtech.com network (176.32.102.92). "Unable to locate network", huh? Well, if you plug in that IP, you get an Amazon server site. Looks like a dead end. I did a tracert to huvrtech.com anyway to see what I can see. I see a failed trace. yougetsignal.com also fails to trace. That's unfortunate, I wonder what's going on. Again, seems dead-end-ish.
I think my first direction will be to identify our team of "scientists". We have faces, faces give names, and names give employers. That is a very direct route to possibly finding out where this hoax is coming from. huvrtech.com/about.html
Alright, to bed now.
~ Micro Farad