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But I am surprised and very impressed with how the researchers choose to use it, and that bug eye shaped lens array is pure scifi fun!
The demo in the video, timestamped below, showing why they used such a design to create a single opening behind the array is amazing in its own right.
It goes to show how difficult manufacture, or in the case of the LK-99 news cycle “reproduction”, of these materials really is, and YBCO was a well documented area of superconductor manufacture.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ws6AAhTw7RA&t=90
If we develop methods of creating these superconductors with perfect crystal composition then there will only be the repulsion, allowing for levitation in a bowl shaped superconductor, but this “hanging levitation” would be impossible.
Perhaps we will develop manufacturing techniques to induce specific imperfections into the material to ensure predictable flux pinning.
The diamagnetism, importantly this means repulsion of both poles simultaneously and equally (this is how you can have these magnets spin, a regular magnet repels same poles and attracts opposites, diamagnets repel both poles), is simply a characteristic of the superconductor, but it alone would just repel the object off.
Here is a timestamped link to NileRed’s YBCO video that visually describes the flux pinning:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RS7gyZJg5nc&t=1887
And here’s a timestamped link to Ben Krasnow’s Applied Science YBCO video where he shows a close up of the crystal’s cross section that shows the imperfections that allow the magnetic field through for the pinning effect: