'Arabian Nights Flying Carpet Can Be a Reality'

Along with his colleagues at the university, Mahadevan studied the aerodynamics of a flexible, rippling sheet moving through a fluid. Based on their study, the researchers came to the conclusion that making a carpet that would stay aloft in air may be possible.

Mahadevan says that to stay afloat in air, a sheet measuring about 10 centimetres long and 0.1 millimetres thick would need to vibrate at about 10 hertz with amplitude of about 0.25 millimetres.

He, however, has made it clear that no such carpet will be able to ferry people around. Mahadevan admits that making a heavier carpet 'fly' is not forbidden by the laws of physics, but clarifies that the engine driving the necessary vibrations would need to be very powerful for the purpose.

The researcher says what is required for making a magic carpet is to create uplift by making ripples that push against fluids like air or water.

Such rippling movements create a high pressure in the gap between a horizontal sheet and the floor, if they are close to the sheet. "As waves propagate along a flexible foil, they generate a fluid flow that leads to a pressure that lifts the foil, roughly balancing its weight," Nature magazine quoted Mahadevan as saying.