How Could Rocks Float?

[Arthur d. S. Jr.]

Greetings Everyone, I am developing a sci-fi video game called Sigma. Having said that, the point is: At one of our stages we'll have a scenario full of rocks floating around, similar to what we see in pandora from the James Cameron Avatar movie. One explaination me and the writers thought about it was maginectic repultion, that happens because the rocks and the Earth's area below them is magneticaly charged with the same charge. But thinking about our soldiers, who are cyborgs, full of metal... they could be affected by the magnetic fields as well, being attracted or pushed, depending on the charge of the armour they're using, what is a problem. Does someone has a theory on how this floating rocks could float without troubling the soldiers?

 

Grateful;

Arthur.

Edited August 31, 2016 by ArthurSigma

[Daecon]

Ancient technology of a long-lost civilization combined with Clarke's 3rd Law.

[Elite Engineer]

Its called the Meissner Effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meissner_effect

 

 

shown here via video:

 

 

 

 

~EE

[J.C.MacSwell]

Could it simply float? Pumice can be lighter than seawater, at least until it absorbs enough water...

 

From Wiki

 

"After the explosion of Krakatoa, rafts of pumice drifted through the Pacific Ocean for up to 20 years, with tree trunks floating among them.[5] In fact, pumice rafts disperse and support several marine species.[6] In 1979, 1984 and 2006, underwater volcanic eruptions near Tonga created large pumice rafts, some as large as 30 km that floated hundreds of kilometres to Fiji.[7]"

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumice

[fiveworlds]

Could it simply float?

 

Possible the movie that photo was from (avatar) never explained what the air was made of people walked around in pressurized suits with oxygen.

 

[swansont]

Solid things float because they have a lower overall density than the fluid (the buoyant force is equal to the weight of the material displaced). Lots of thing float in mercury, for example, because mercury is very dense. So one way rocks could float is because they are immersed in a dense liquid. (This implies people could walk on the liquid). Or, as with the pumice example, the rocks are low overall density (e.g. owing to air pockets)

[imatfaal]

A combination of freak occurences - the coincidence of pummice like rock (on some of the greek islands after a storm you will find rocks floating out at sea- bit weird), a very dense lower atmosphere in which a heavy gas forms a blanket over the land much like our oceans, a strong magnetic field which is excluded by the natural room temperature superconductor which makes up the body of the rock, and balloon-like appendages to trees which have gas-sacs of hydrogen as part of their energy storing for winter.

[michel123456]

Maybe if they are not floating over a planet, but simply like comets very close next to each other, orbiting a star. But then you have to explain the atmosphere.