The truth is it’s not exactly a carpet that’s floating around a lab at Princeton. More like a plastic sheet that has an electric current running through it. The creation of a grad student inspired by a paper he read by some MIT prof, the footage of the experiment has since gone viral. Innovation at its best, ladies and gentlemen. Below is a fantasy stock image of a flying carpet, because the real footage (after the jump!)  looks awful.

It took graduate student Noah Jafferis two years and a lot of painstaking labor to finally get his sheet to, uh, hover. To what end? Vindicating some paper he read that was authored by an MIT prof. Of course, when the prof heard about Jafferis’ work, he was mighty proud.

The ‘carpet’ is actually a thin plastic sheet and if it does prove useful in any applications, it could make an impact on VTOL technology. Quite exciting, since the tech on a Harrier’s VTOL isn’t really as hot these days.