IT'S TIME TO FLY !!!

The magical device may owe more to Walt Disney than to The Arabian Nights , but it is not pure fantasy, according to Lakshmi narayanan Mahadevan , Research scientist of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and also his co-workers.
The researchers have studied that the aero-dynamics of a flexible, rippling sheet moving through a fluid, and find that it should be possible to make one that will stay aloft in air. It is simply mind blowing.No such a cool carpet is going to ferry people around, though.

The researchers say that to stay afloat in air, a sheet measuring about 10 centimetres long and 0.1 millimetres thick would need to vibrate at about a frequency of 10 hertz with an amplitude of about 0.25 millimetres in it.Making a heavier and harder carpet "fly" is not forbidden by the laws of physics.
But the researchers say that their "computations and scaling laws suggest it will remain in the magical, mystical and virtual realm", as this engine driving the necessary vibrations would need to be so powerful than the normal.

The key to a magic carpet is to create up-lift by making ripples that push against fluids such as air or water. If it is close to a horizontal surface, like a piece of foil settling down onto the floor, such rippling movements create a more high pressure in gap between the sheet and the floor.

"As waves propagate along a flexible foil, they generate a fluid flow that leads to a pressure that lifts the sheet or foil, roughly balancing its own weight," Mahadevan explains.
"If the waves propagate from one edge," says Mahadevan, "this causes the foil to tilt ever so slightly and then move in one of the direction towards the edge that is slightly higher. Fluid is then squeezed from this end to the other end, causing the sheet to progress like a submarine ray."

To travel at speed, the carpet have to undulate in big ripples, comparable to the size of the carpet. This would make the ride very bumpy and thrilling.

"If you want a smooth ride, you can generate a lot of small ripples," says Mahadevan. "But you'll be slower in it."