Floating object freely in the air

[favetelinguis]

Im not a since guy but I been thinking about this question for a time now so got an acount here and hopfylle we can sort it out. (Im not a native english speaker so sorry for spelling errors)

 

Is it possible to get an object floating perfecty still at a XYZ coordinate that i put in at the ground without using motors etc. For example can i get a small baloon floating at a hight of say 500meters, 1000meters and so on only using some special gas or special temperature of the air in the baloon.

I guess the hardest part would be it staying still in XZ coordinates?

 

Looking forward to any information.

[Kyrisch]

Any neutrally buoyant object in air will remain in place barring perturbations. All one must do is make a balloon which weighs exactly the same as the amount of air it displaces (so the gas inside the balloon must be slightly lighter than air to compensate for the mass of the balloon).

[Mr Skeptic]

Well, if you mean to do this at large distances and outdoors, wind will become a problem. Otherwise, I think the simplest setup would be a negatively charged ring, being used to electrically suspend a negatively charged ball of styrofoam. For this sort of thing you'd need very high voltages to get enough charge, the sort of voltages you get from static electricity.

 

There's other ways, of course. Magnetism works, but unless you use superconductors they have a problem because magnets have two poles, and also that makes it much weaker over a distance. A famous one is using a regular vacuum cleaner set to blow, which can and will stably hold up a ping pong ball. Of course the vacuum cleaner does have a motor, but the ping pong ball does not.