London, May 8 (IANS): How about travelling in a train that can touch the speeds up to 3,000 km per hour? It may sound far fetched but this is what a researcher in China has planned for our future.
Dr Deng Zigang, an associate professor at Southwest Jiaotong University in Chengdu city at Sichuan province has unveiled the first-ever manned megathermal superconducting magnetic levitation (maglev) loop.
Maglev trains have been a big hit in Asia owing to their capacity to reach speeds of up to hundreds of km per hour.
At the moment, the speed is limited to 400 km per hour due to the excessive air resistance encountered at such speeds.
"If the running speed exceeds 400 km per hour, more than 83 percent of traction (grip) energy will wastefully dissipate in air resistance," explained Zigang.
By reducing the air pressure up to 10 times less than normal atmospheric pressure at sea level in a vacuum tube train line, it can travel up to seven times faster in the future, he added.
The world’s fastest passenger train at present is the the Shanghai Maglev Train that can reach a maximum speed of 431 km per hour.