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Re:Invisible Electrostatic Wall at 3M plant by swayvil on Tuesday January 21, 2025 @01:45PM (#42783760)
That's pretty darn far from what we're talking about here. The comparison is absurd.
Re:Invisible Electrostatic Wall at 3M plant by rUsHeYaFuBu on Tuesday January 21, 2025 @01:49PM (#42783807)
How so? It's literally an invisible (to the eye) field that can lift hundreds of pounds.

And magnetic fields are directly related to electric fields. It's called electromagnetism for a reason.

Re:Invisible Electrostatic Wall at 3M plant by function_seven on Tuesday January 21, 2025 @02:08PM (#42784049)
Of metal, yes. That's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about force fields in the sci-fi sense. An invisible wall that a person can't pass through.
Re:Invisible Electrostatic Wall at 3M plant by rUsHeYaFuBu on Tuesday January 21, 2025 @02:11PM (#42784091)
The article is about an electrostatic field. That's far from sci-fi.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_field

Re:Invisible Electrostatic Wall at 3M plant by function_seven on Tuesday January 21, 2025 @02:16PM (#42784126)
I was clarifying the sense I was using the term "force field". Not a generic field of electromagnetic forces, but the fantastical one that can contain arbitrary matter.

Like the one described in the article, that a person was leaning against and could not pass through. If this were something that we could reproduce, it would have awesome real-world uses. Like a real hover board! Or the best anti-theft protection for my parked car.

Re:Invisible Electrostatic Wall at 3M plant by rUsHeYaFuBu on Tuesday January 21, 2025 @02:29PM (#42784259)
You could though. Given a sufficiently strong enough positively (or negatively) charged electric field and yourself equally positively (or negatively) charged sufficiently you could have an 'invisible' wall that you couldn't walk through. Assuming that neither yourself or the field you're walking into has anywhere to discharge to.