Scientists created a mini Aladdins Flying Carpet using nothing but light
Human ingenuity knows no bounds and the world's mini "flying carpet" is proof of that.
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Griffin, M. (2021) 'Scientists created a mini Aladdins Flying Carpet using nothing but light', 311 Institute, 6 March. Available at: https://www.311institute.com/scientists-created-a-mini-aladdins-flying-carpet-using-nothing-but-light/ (Accessed: 1 October 2026).
In the past year we’ve seen dramatic improvements in the development of both light and sound based tractor beams that can make objects dance in mid air and even be used to thread needles which, as the researchers behind these innovations say, could one day be used in robot surgeries. And now researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have managed to levitate two small plastic plates using just light.
With the energy from a set of bright LEDs in a vacuum chamber, the team coaxed two tiny Mylar plates to hover — a bona fide breakthrough, Wired reports, because scientists have never before been able to cause an object that large to float using light alone.
Miniature flying carpets for miniature people
“When the two samples lifted, there was a gasp between all four of us,” UPenn engineering doctoral candidate Mohsen Azadi told the magazine.
However, if you’re hoping to pick up a light-powered magic carpet from Amazon anytime soon you’ll have to keep waiting because the team are more interested in using this technology to research the mesosphere, a high-up region of the atmosphere that’s notoriously difficult to study.
“Sometimes it’s called ignorosphere, in joke,” Igor Bargatin, a mechanical engineering professor at UPenn, told Wired. “We just don’t have access to it. You can send a rocket for a few minutes at a time, but that’s very different from doing measurements using airplanes or balloons.”
With the recent breakthrough, though, researchers hope to develop a flight system that can carry tiny sensors into the mesosphere using the light-powered hovering technology.
Even NASA is interested in the technology’s potential applications in Mars research — especially since the pressure in the Red Planet’s atmosphere is similar to Earth’s mesosphere, leaving open the possibility that tiny, light-powered levitators could help collect temperature and composition data.
“You can just take off once per day, and go up and then come back down and land on your little Martian lander,” said Paul Newman, chief scientist of Earth Sciences at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “We don’t have that information on Mars. That would be fantastic.”
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Human ingenuity knows no bounds and the world's mini "flying carpet" is proof of that.
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Matthew Griffin Founder, 311 Institute
Matthew Griffin is a multi-award winning Futurist and expert in Disruption and Innovation, Geopolitics, Leadership, and Technology, who NASA have described as a "walking encyclopaedia of the future" and a "futurist Polymath."
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Matthew Griffin is a multi-award winning Futurist and expert in Disruption and Innovation, Geopolitics, Leadership, and Technology, who NASA have described as a "walking encyclopaedia of the future" and a "futurist Polymath." 15-time best selling author of the "Codex of the Future" series, Matthew is the Founder and Futurist in Chief of the 311 Institute, a global Futures and Deep Futures advisory firm working with royal households, world leaders, G7, G20, and G77 governments, NGOs, and multi-national mid and mega cap firms to help them explore, shape, and lead the next 50 years of business and society.
An award-winning YouTube creator with over a million followers, with an unrivalled global reach and impact, Matthew is a highly sought-after international keynote speaker, lecturer, and mentor who collaborates with global leaders through the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC) and United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) to shape pivotal initiatives such as the UN’s AI for Humanity program, the United Nations Conference of the Parties (UN COP), and the World Economic Forum in Davos.
As the former Global Head of Cloud, National Security, and Enterprise Sales for companies including Atos, Dell-EMC, and IBM, Matthew has a proven track record of building multi-billion dollar business units and turning failing divisions into market leaders. His ability to identify, analyse, and communicate the implications of hundreds of emerging technologies and trends is unparalleled, and his insights are trusted by many of the world’s most respected organisations, including ABB, Accenture, Adidas, AON, ARM, BCG, Centrica, Citi, Coca-Cola, Dentons, Deloitte, Dow Jones, EY, Google, KPMG, Lego, Legal & General, LinkedIn, Microsoft, PepsiCo, Qualcomm, RWE, Samsung, Siemens AG and Siemens Energy, T-Mobile, UBS, VISA, Walmart, Workday, Worldpay and many others.
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Source: first published by the 311 Institute on 6 March 2021. Cite as: Griffin, M. (2021). Scientists created a mini Aladdins Flying Carpet using nothing but light. 311 Institute. https://www.311institute.com/scientists-created-a-mini-aladdins-flying-carpet-using-nothing-but-light/
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