Maglev elevators to scare us all by 2008
After having recently been stuck in a dark elevator for over a half-hour (and requiring a fire department rescue; thank heavens our PPC-6700 was close at hand to summon help and Orb away the downtime), we're not all that jazzed up about the idea of an elevator that relies on the principal of magnetic levitation. Maglev technology has been around for years as the propulsion method behind certain European and Asian trains, and basically involves using the Physics 101 properties of magnetic attraction and repulsion to provide an object with momentum. Well we're fine if that momentum is occuring parallel to the ground, but we're a little leery of trusting some magnets to suspend us several hundred feet above terra firma (does power outage=free fall?). Seemingly unconcerned with our hesitation, Toshiba Elevator and Building Systems Corp. has announced that we'll be seeing these potential deathtraps commercially installed within the next few years, hopefully with the Otis-type hacks still fully functional.
