Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by mdorazio 2116 days ago
Be careful here. Magnetorquers do exactly what the name says - they create torque, which manifests as rotation around a point. If a device demonstrates linear force, it's likely to be a different effect (electrodynamic), which currently requires a rather long tether to work [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrodynamic_tether

1 comments

Right, or we can just link to the physical law itself: - Lorentz force - the force on a current carrying wire. No need for a long wire. It's in the range of micro-Newtons for few Amps, for 10cm, at earth magnetic field:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorentz_force#Force_on_a_curre...

"When a wire carrying an electric current is placed in a magnetic field, each of the moving charges, which comprise the current, experiences the Lorentz force, and together they can create a macroscopic force on the wire (sometimes called the Laplace force)."