This reminds me of a Mythbusters episode I saw where they tried numerous "antigravity" devices. A few of them did manage to levitate objects, but worked either on magnetic fields or thrust. There was no alteration of gravity.<p>That said, I'm a bit confused as to how scientists want to apply this achievement to low-gravity environments. Since gravity is not actually being altered here, it doesn't seem relevant. Am i totally off base here?
""It actually kicked around and started to spin, and without friction, it could spin faster and faster, and we think that made it even more disoriented," said researcher Yuanming Liu, a physicist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. They decided to mildly sedate the next mouse they levitated, which seemed content with floating. "<p>That mouse got high in more ways than one.
Here's a levitating frog:<p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1vyB-O5i6E" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1vyB-O5i6E</a><p>1997, as Confusion mentions.
The first living creature to be levitated was a frog, in 1997: <a href="http://www.hfml.ru.nl/froglev.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.hfml.ru.nl/froglev.html</a>. This link is completely devoid of news.
All science aside, I actually laughed out loud at this one.<p>If there's anything funnier than a small floating mouse spinning out of control, I can't think of it.