This has nothing to do with Ning Li, and barely anything to do with anti-grav....except that it disucsses a new way to cause levitation (by reversing the Casimir effect)
Levitating Nanomachines
Quote:
Perfect lenses are nothing like conventional glass lenses. Instead, they are made of metal carved into a repetitive lattice-like structure. Glass lenses such as the ones used in cameras can't resolve details of an object that are smaller than the wavelength of the light bouncing off them. Perfect lenses do not have that limitation. And they bend--or refract--light in a direction opposite to that in which ordinary materials like water and glass bend it. Researchers predict that perfect lenses could lead to higher-density DVDs, ultrahigh-resolution microscopes that can image nanoscale objects, and faster fiber-optic communications.
The technology to make such optical lenses is only a few years old. But Philbin says it's already good enough to produce lenses that can convert the Casimir attraction between objects into repulsion. Leonhardt and Philbin's calculations show that such lenses should also be sufficient to levitate an aluminum foil 500 nanometers thick. "In theory, if you could build the right kind of lens, you could levitate heavier objects," Philbin says.
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Yes, levitation means little without a terrestrial environment. However, when considering the increase of friction due to weight (and the inefficiencies that lie therein), one would figure that it could possibly be relevant.
As well, an anit-casimir force field would be VERY useful in LEO.