[timterroo]

Given the timestamp you offered, the man is not at free movement at all from the point.

Try 1:09 to 4:09. He's floating about, the ipad is floating about. It goes on beyond that, but that's 3 solid minutes of observable weightlessness. The vomcom is a max of around 30 seconds or so.

I don't think you have a point.

Yeah, I have a point.

This type of footage is made available without the need for any spacecraft. Period.

After watching these videos, and thinking about diamagnetic levitation, I suddenly realized a certain phenomenon that is experienced with electronic devices and magnets. In particular, what happens to magnetic storage devices like hard drives when a powerful magnet is introduced to it?

It is DESTROYED!!!

Hard drives like the ones in that Lenovo Thinkpad in the ISS video are susceptible to this. If you introduced a high-powered magnet, such as one in an MRI or perhaps one that could levitate a human, to the laptop, it would surely crash! That laptop looked fully functional in the video.

It seems like you can rule out diamagnetic levitation as an explanation for their apparent weightlessness.

Oh, so you can not use a laptop on a maglev train, uh?

Are the magnets directed at he laptop? If so, then no, you cannot.

[Tumeni]

Much more in line with your earlier claim of "sailing around...",yet still not meeting the statement of "hours..."

Ah, so that's what you're taking issue with now? When I said "hour upon hour" of footage, you took that to mean "continuous hours". That's not what I meant. I meant hour upon hour in the sense that there is literally hours of it. Oodles of it. A search on You Tube for "ISS tour" returns "About 1,200,000 results" .....

These effects are present in nearly all sci-fi movies depicting space and have been mimicked as early as 2001: A Space Odyssey

Here's the thing. In order to mimic something, you have to have something to mimic. You have to have the thing in the first place.

[timterroo]

totallackey may be correct. It is questionable whether a static magnetic field will even destroy a hard drive.

While I do not know how a magnet or hard drive will move inside the bore of an electromagnet; it seems that a static magnetic field alone may not be able to wipe a drive.

Look at this link:

https://www.kjmagnetics.com/blog.asp?p=hard-drive-destruction

The Results

Two DX0X8 magnets spaced on either side of a hard drive's platters

With the hard drive running, we were not able to disrupt the contents of the drive at all.  100% of the files were completely intact and accurate.  This result completely surprised us!

We were definitely getting some magnetic influence inside the drive.  When strong magnets like our RY04Y0DIA were held close, we could hear mechanical rubbing sounds from the drive, likely the result of deflection of the platters.  We didn't go much larger with the drive running, for fear of rendering the drive inoperable by mechanically bending parts inside.

The simulation picture at right shows our pair of DX0X8 magnets on either side of the disc platters.  This pair was chosen based on some studies of what arrangements would produce the strongest field within the drive.  We hoped that we might be able to at least affect the outermost platters, even if the inner ones might be shielded by them.

Most of the instructions we've seen say to rub the magnet several times across the face of the drive.  With our arrangement, the drive is actually spinning at 7,200 RPM.  We're pretty sure it's passing over the drive multiple times!

We also rubbed some very large magnets, like our 3" diameter DZ0X8-N52, across the hard drive with the drive turned off.  We figured we could use these large magnets without causing mechanical damage when it wasn't running.  When re-checked, the drive still showed no errors!  None of the data was changed at all.
Why didn't this work?  Surely these incredible magnets are strong enough!

Some older types of magnetic storage media can be erased with neodymium magnets.  The magnetic stripe on your credit card is one example.  Audio cassettes and VHS video tapes are another.  The material's coercivity, or resistance to being demagnetized, is lower than the field made by the magnet.  You can look up the coercivity numbers for these materials, all of which are usually in the 500-1000 Oersted range.

The more we researched the topic, the more we found conflicting data on the coercivity of hard drive materials.  One source said 1,250 Oe, another said 2,500 Oe.  It seems that, in the race to make hard drives of greater storage capacities, hard drive manufacturers keep finding higher coercivity materials for the hard drive platters.  The later the manufacturing date of your hard drive, probably the higher the drive's coercivity will be.

We searched for hard drive erasing services, figuring we could learn something by finding out what such companies provide.  Most companies either use strong degaussing machines that produce a strong an alternating magnetic field with an electromagnet, or shredders to physically destroy the drive.  As hard drive coercivity improves, physical destruction is becoming the more popular method.
But what if...

We didn't try every possible combination of magnet and erasure method.  Since our methods failed to alter a single character of a single file, though, we wouldn't trust it to delete ALL the data.  Our results make us doubt that neodymium magnets are sure to erase all the data.  When folks rub a magnet across a hard drive, the goal is 100% data erasure.  If you have a proven method that works for you, we'd love to hear about it.

The researchers describe that they also tried rubbing the magnet across the hard drive, and express doubt that the concept of erasing hard drives by passing a magnet over it is even real at all or whether it is just a myth. Commercial degaussing machines work by producing a strong alternating magnetic field, and this is what may be necessary.

Hi Tom, you left out the last bit of that article:

"UPDATE:

Please note that this article describes our investigation about using magnets to completely erase data on a hard drive.  It completely ignores the question of whether a strong magnet can DAMAGE a hard drive.  These strong magnets certainly can damage a hard drive if brought close enough.  Keep neodymium magnets away from good hard drives!"

[totallackey]

totallackey may be correct. It is questionable whether a static magnetic field will even destroy a hard drive.

While I do not know how a magnet or hard drive will move inside the bore of an electromagnet; it seems that a static magnetic field alone may not be able to wipe a drive.

My guess would be that introducing just about any form of electronic device into such a powerful magnetic field would not be good for said electronic device.  Electromagnetic pulse, anyone?

Re-read your own statement and focus on the word pulse

[AATW]

They can just film the water globule effects in the diamagentic levitation chamber and super-impose the effects over the larger scenes. That would be the easier way to do it.

The floating astronaut can be achieved by harnesses or CGI.

I’m not aware of this sort of levitation being used in any film special fx which rather indicates that this is not the easier way to do it. And while I think we all agree that special FX have got pretty good what analysis has been done to show that footage from the ISS uses special FX and is not genuine? A few crazies on YouTube does not a proper analysis make.

[totallackey]

Given the timestamp you offered, the man is not at free movement at all from the point.

Try 1:09 to 4:09. He's floating about, the ipad is floating about. It goes on beyond that, but that's 3 solid minutes of observable weightlessness. The vomcom is a max of around 30 seconds or so.

I don't think you have a point.

Yeah, I have a point.

This type of footage is made available without the need for any spacecraft. Period.

After watching these videos, and thinking about diamagnetic levitation, I suddenly realized a certain phenomenon that is experienced with electronic devices and magnets. In particular, what happens to magnetic storage devices like hard drives when a powerful magnet is introduced to it?

It is DESTROYED!!!

Hard drives like the ones in that Lenovo Thinkpad in the ISS video are susceptible to this. If you introduced a high-powered magnet, such as one in an MRI or perhaps one that could levitate a human, to the laptop, it would surely crash! That laptop looked fully functional in the video.

It seems like you can rule out diamagnetic levitation as an explanation for their apparent weightlessness.

Oh, so you can not use a laptop on a maglev train, uh?

Are the magnets directed at he laptop? If so, then no, you cannot.

Why would the magnets on a maglev or any other craft using magnets to levitate be directed at a laptop?

[Tom Bishop]

totallackey may be correct. It is questionable whether a static magnetic field will even destroy a hard drive.

While I do not know how a magnet or hard drive will move inside the bore of an electromagnet; it seems that a static magnetic field alone may not be able to wipe a drive.

Look at this link:

https://www.kjmagnetics.com/blog.asp?p=hard-drive-destruction

<snip>

The researchers describe that they also tried rubbing the magnet across the hard drive, and express doubt that the concept of erasing hard drives by passing a magnet over it is even real at all or whether it is just a myth. Commercial degaussing machines work by producing a strong alternating magnetic field, and this is what may be necessary.

Hi Tom, you left out the last bit of that article:

"UPDATE:

Please note that this article describes our investigation about using magnets to completely erase data on a hard drive.  It completely ignores the question of whether a strong magnet can DAMAGE a hard drive.  These strong magnets certainly can damage a hard drive if brought close enough.  Keep neodymium magnets away from good hard drives!"

I believe that it's talking about how a magnet can hit the hard drive hard enough that it damages it physically. Its not talking about the magnetic field destroying the data.

This relates to the bit about I don't know how a magnet or hard drive would move inside the bore of an electromagnet.

[totallackey]

Much more in line with your earlier claim of "sailing around...",yet still not meeting the statement of "hours..."

Ah, so that's what you're taking issue with now? When I said "hour upon hour" of footage, you took that to mean "continuous hours". That's not what I meant. I meant hour upon hour in the sense that there is literally hours of it. Oodles of it. A search on You Tube for "ISS tour" returns "About 1,200,000 results" .....

These effects are present in nearly all sci-fi movies depicting space and have been mimicked as early as 2001: A Space Odyssey

Here's the thing. In order to mimic something, you have to have something to mimic. You have to have the thing in the first place.

Oh, so Jules Verne was writing from experience and Flash Gordon and Captain Video were based on true events...

I understand now...

Aside from the fact 2001: A Space Odyssey actually depicted a moonwalk prior to any reported moonwalk supposedly happening.

[markjo]

totallackey may be correct. It is questionable whether a static magnetic field will even destroy a hard drive.

While I do not know how a magnet or hard drive will move inside the bore of an electromagnet; it seems that a static magnetic field alone may not be able to wipe a drive.

My guess would be that introducing just about any form of electronic device into such a powerful magnetic field would not be good for said electronic device.  Electromagnetic pulse, anyone?

Re-read your own statement and focus on the word pulse

Actually, the word electromagnetic is much more relevant.  That is unless you think that the electrons moving around inside electronic devices are not affected by intense magnetic fields.

[timterroo]

Given the timestamp you offered, the man is not at free movement at all from the point.

Try 1:09 to 4:09. He's floating about, the ipad is floating about. It goes on beyond that, but that's 3 solid minutes of observable weightlessness. The vomcom is a max of around 30 seconds or so.

I don't think you have a point.

Yeah, I have a point.

This type of footage is made available without the need for any spacecraft. Period.

After watching these videos, and thinking about diamagnetic levitation, I suddenly realized a certain phenomenon that is experienced with electronic devices and magnets. In particular, what happens to magnetic storage devices like hard drives when a powerful magnet is introduced to it?

It is DESTROYED!!!

Hard drives like the ones in that Lenovo Thinkpad in the ISS video are susceptible to this. If you introduced a high-powered magnet, such as one in an MRI or perhaps one that could levitate a human, to the laptop, it would surely crash! That laptop looked fully functional in the video.

It seems like you can rule out diamagnetic levitation as an explanation for their apparent weightlessness.

Oh, so you can not use a laptop on a maglev train, uh?

Are the magnets directed at he laptop? If so, then no, you cannot.

Why would the magnets on a maglev or any other craft using magnets to levitate be directed at a laptop?

That is my point, the magnets would NOT be directed at the laptop (as it would if you diamagnetically levitated one), therefore the answer to your question is, yes, you can still use a laptop on a maglev train.

[timterroo]

totallackey may be correct. It is questionable whether a static magnetic field will even destroy a hard drive.

While I do not know how a magnet or hard drive will move inside the bore of an electromagnet; it seems that a static magnetic field alone may not be able to wipe a drive.

Look at this link:

https://www.kjmagnetics.com/blog.asp?p=hard-drive-destruction

<snip>

The researchers describe that they also tried rubbing the magnet across the hard drive, and express doubt that the concept of erasing hard drives by passing a magnet over it is even real at all or whether it is just a myth. Commercial degaussing machines work by producing a strong alternating magnetic field, and this is what may be necessary.

Hi Tom, you left out the last bit of that article:

"UPDATE:

Please note that this article describes our investigation about using magnets to completely erase data on a hard drive.  It completely ignores the question of whether a strong magnet can DAMAGE a hard drive.  These strong magnets certainly can damage a hard drive if brought close enough.  Keep neodymium magnets away from good hard drives!"

I believe that it's talking about how a magnet can hit the hard drive hard enough that it damages it physically. Its not talking about the magnetic field destroying the data.

This relates to the bit about I don't know how a magnet or hard drive would move inside the bore of an electromagnet.

That is your interpretation I guess. As an IT specialist, I often work with "damaged" hard drives that have been damaged in the sense of lost data bits due to corruption, this is different than a complete hard drive wipe, but it doesn't mean the hard drive's mechanics are damaged.

[Tumeni]

2001: A Space Odyssey actually depicted a moonwalk prior to any reported moonwalk supposedly happening.

So what? The Mercury and Gemini programmes were completed by that time, and Apollo was well under way. The effects of weightlessness had been seen and experienced already over multiple missions, and shown to the world. It's a short step from there to extrapolating what some movement on the lunar surface would look like for a movie ...

[timterroo]

Another bit to note about hard drives is that they actually have relatively powerful magnets inside of them, so right off the bat you know it will take a very powerful magnet to effect them. It is no surprise the magnet used in the video was not strong enough.

[totallackey]

2001: A Space Odyssey actually depicted a moonwalk prior to any reported moonwalk supposedly happening.

So what? The Mercury and Gemini programmes were completed by that time, and Apollo was well under way. The effects of weightlessness had been seen and experienced already over multiple missions, and shown to the world. It's a short step from there to extrapolating what some movement on the lunar surface would look like for a movie ...

No.

You were very specific in stating YOU NEED THE THING to mimic in the first place....

Your backtracking and loose lipping the issue is very telling.

[markjo]

Another bit to note about hard drives is that they actually have relatively powerful magnets inside of them, so right off the bat you know it will take a very powerful magnet to effect them. It is no surprise the magnet used in the video was not strong enough.

It's also quite convenient that magnetic fields can be directed and/or shielded so that they don't interfere with the magnetic media itself.

[stack]

You were very specific in stating YOU NEED THE THING to mimic in the first place....

Your backtracking and loose lipping the issue is very telling.

This all seems so desperate. First it’s “there are no videos with 5 minutes of weightlessness.” Oh, there are. Then there’s this whole business about the definition of the word “sailing”. Now this nonsense. Such a desperate diversion.

Further desperation can be found in this whole magnetic levitation business. The CGI argument is the tried and true go to argument for FE. It gets them out of every jam, it’s their ace of spades. Why sully it with a brand new notion around mag lev. CGI is far more digestible to the layman.

Plus, if you want to hang your hat on mag lev, then it negates CGI entirely as the most common explanation for weightlessness across the YouTube-osphere, sorry, ‘plane’. In essence you would now be saying, “Oh, they are weightless and they are really floating around, but it’s not wires and CGI, they’re inside a magnetic tube at Area 51."

My guess is FE is scared about something; coming up with yet some other explanation for weightlessness, anything other than humans in space.

[stack]

The weightless scenes in The Martian was achieved with a combination of wire support and CGI. CGI, as in cutting the actor out from the green-screen and making him or her float in the scene...

NASA was a consultant on the effects for that movie too.

So is this how you think the conversation went between the movie people and the NASA technical consultants:

Movie: We'd like to get your expertise on on how to simulate weightlessness in space for our movie.
NASA: (wryly chuckling) Just do what we do, wires, CGI, you know, the standard stuff.
Movie: Wow, I had no idea you did that too. But cool, so much easier. But, we also want to do that water globule effect you do.
NASA: Simple, just green screen inside of a mag lev tube. You want to borrow ours?
Movie: Awesome, that would be great! Thanks

[JHelzer]

We have solid state drives.  No magnets, no disks, no motors, no moving parts.  The computer I am typing this on uses SSD.  The whole computer actually has no moving parts.  Amazing.

[timterroo]

We have solid state drives.  No magnets, no disks, no motors, no moving parts.  The computer I am typing this on uses SSD.  The whole computer actually has no moving parts.  Amazing.

I have rewatched that video several times to try to determine the model of the laptops used on ISS. Although I have not been able to determine the model, I can pretty reliably guess that it is an older laptop that is not equipped with an SSD. Notice the size and thickness of the laptops, and sometimes you can get a glimps of all the little ports and switches on the sides (these are all indicative of older models). Newer laptop models are slimmer and with fewer accessories and ports on the sides.

If I were a betting man, I'd say those laptops have HDDs.

[timterroo]

A quick google search (yes a google search) lead me to this website:

https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/1489/what-kind-of-laptops-do-iss-astronauts-use

Evidently Thinkpads are the only laptops certified for use on the ISS, and have been in use on the ISS since 1998. Thinkpads in general have been used on every NASA shuttle space flight since 1995 - there they used the ThinkPad 755. The ThinkPad 755 looks to have been equipped with a 540 MB drive... not quite sure if they are talking about the hard drive because they did not distinguish between HDDs and SSDs in the 90s since they were all HDDs. They would be using a newer model currently though, which possibly contain SSDs; however, since they have been using Thinkpads since the late 90s, they would have been HDDs at least then, if not now.