{"id":236197,"date":"2026-04-30T02:17:41","date_gmt":"2026-04-30T07:17:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/04\/levitated-nano-ferromagnet-confirms-a-160-year-old-physical-prediction"},"modified":"2026-04-30T02:17:41","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T07:17:41","slug":"levitated-nano-ferromagnet-confirms-a-160-year-old-physical-prediction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/04\/levitated-nano-ferromagnet-confirms-a-160-year-old-physical-prediction","title":{"rendered":"Levitated nano-ferromagnet confirms a 160-year-old physical prediction"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/levitated-nano-ferromagnet-confirms-a-160-year-old-physical-prediction.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Ferromagnets, such as iron, cobalt, and nickel, are materials with a strong, spontaneous, and permanent magnetic field. Over 150 years ago, the physicist and mathematician James Clerk Maxwell speculated that under specific conditions, non-spinning ferromagnets or electromagnets would behave as gyroscopes, objects that maintain their orientation, typically due to the angular momentum arising from spinning.<\/p>\n<p>Maxwell hypothesized that this unique gyroscopic behavior would arise from the relationship between a ferromagnet\u2019s magnetism and its angular momentum within a specific set-up. While numerous studies tested this prediction, so far it had never been proven experimentally.<\/p>\n<p>Researchers at the Institute of Photonics and Nanotechnology IFN-CNR and the Bruno Kessler Foundation recently observed the effect predicted by Maxwell in a non-spinning and levitated ferromagnetic sphere. Their observations, <a href=\"https:\/\/journals.aps.org\/prl\/abstract\/10.1103\/hdh6-r1gy\" target=\"_blank\">presented in a paper published in <i>Physical Review Letters<\/i><\/a>, could open new exciting possibilities for the development of quantum technologies and for the collection of highly precise measurements.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ferromagnets, such as iron, cobalt, and nickel, are materials with a strong, spontaneous, and permanent magnetic field. Over 150 years ago, the physicist and mathematician James Clerk Maxwell speculated that under specific conditions, non-spinning ferromagnets or electromagnets would behave as gyroscopes, objects that maintain their orientation, typically due to the angular momentum arising from spinning. [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,1617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-236197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nanotechnology","category-quantum-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=236197"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236197\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=236197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=236197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=236197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}