Meissner Field

Jewish Midrashim commentaries describe how the Ark of the Covenant levitated and carried along some of the people who were supposed to be carrying it. The only known phenomenon that could levitate in this manner is a superconductor s Meissner field. 

As White gold is a superconductor with a, Meissner field, the pot of manna in the Ark of the Covenant could have contained a quantity of Whitegold that produced such a field. There is some suggestion that Moses placed an omer of manna, or Whitegold, in the Ark. David Hudson s theory is that a Whitegold s Meissner field would then have... 

An unusual characteristic of Meissner fields is that another Meissner field, which oscillates at the same frequency, can enter that field of the first and not perturb it. Each week the High Priests of Melchizedek ventured beyond the veil in the Holy of Holies. There they partook of the Bread of the Presence of God. Then more Bread was set out for the next week before the Ark of the Covenant. 

A Melchizedek high priest who had eaten the Bread of the Presence of God for some time could theoretically approach and safely touch the Ark of the Covenant. The Priest would not perturb the Ark s Meissner field because of his resonance with it. Resonance avoids a voltage difference. 

It is perfectly diamagnetic, i.e. it completely excludes applied magnetic fields. This is the Meissner effect and is the reason why a superconductor can levitate a magnet. 

Beane S. R., Bernard V., Lee T. S. H., Meissner U. G. The isoscalar S-wave pi-N scattering length a+ from 7r-deuteron scattering, Phys.Rev. C 57, 424, (1998) Borasoy B. and Griesshammer H. W. The S Wave Pion Deuteron Scattering Length in Effective Field Theory. arXiv nucl-th/0105048. 

The authors of Ref. [12] reconsidered the problem of magnetic field in quark matter taking into account the rotated electromagnetism . They came to the conclusion that magnetic field can exist in superconducting quark matter in any case, although it does not form a quantized vortex lattice, because it obeys sourceless Maxwell equations and there is no Meissner effect. In our opinion this latter result is incorrect, since the equations for gauge fields were not taken into account and the boundary conditions were not posed correctly. 

This solution motivates the existence of a complete Meissner effect for all gauge fields inside quark superconductor. It corresponds to the absolute minimum value of free energy Fmin = Fn — 3a2/2A2 in the bulk. 

Twenty years later, in 1933, the German physicist Walter Meissner (together with his co-worker Robert Ochsenfeld) discovered that superconductors cannot be crossed by magnetic field lines. This property is today defined as the Meissner effect. 

The Meissner Effect and Levitation. Besides the absence of electrical resistance, a superconducting material is characterized by perfect diamagnetism. The exclusion of magnetic field lines from a material when it passes from a normal state to a superconducting state is shown schematically in Figure 3. 

Figure 3 The Meissner effect. A superconductor (here in a circular section) excludes the magnetic field lines when it is frozen below the critical temperature...

Figure 2 The Meissner Effect, or the levitation of a strong magnet by the internal diamagnetic field of a high Te superconductor. 

Figure 4 Flux exclusion (shielding) versus increasing temperature (solid triangles) and flux expulsion (Meissner effect) versus decreasing temperature (open triangles) in a 25 Oe external field for a superconducting YE Cu Oy.g single crystal. Exclusion and expulsion are equal for temperatures above the irreversibility point Tjrr (w90.5 K at 25 Oe) Tc is 92 K.

The Meissner effect is a very important characteristic of superconductors. Among the consequences of its linkage to the free energy are the following (a) The superconducting state is more ordered than the normal state (b) only a small fraction of the electrons in a solid need participate in superconductivity (c) the phase transition must be of second order that is, there is no latent heat of transition in the absence of any applied magnetic field and (d) superconductivity involves excitations across an energy gap. 

In addition to the zero resistivity, superconducting materials are perfectly diamagnetic in other words, magnetic fields (up to a limiting strength that decreases as the temperature rises toward Tc) cannot penetrate them (the Meissner effect). This is a consequence of the mobile, paired state of the electrons. Indeed, it is the demonstration of the Meissner effect, rather than lack of electrical resistivity, that is usually demanded as evidence of superconductive behavior. One entertaining consequence of the Meissner effect is that small but powerful magnets will float (levitate) above the surface of a flat, level superconductor.30... 

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