Moving mercury and The Lorentz Force

Supposedly according to "ancient Indian texts", "Vimanas" operated by having mercury in an iron container which produced lifting force when heated. This is not supported by experiment ( as far as I know) or it would surely have been rediscovered long ago.  Apply enough heat to mercury in a sealed container and it will explode, making a very big  poisonous mess. Either those "ancient texts" are not telling anything like the whole story or they are just plain lies.

What this video DOES show is what is known scientifically as the Lorentz Force: the mercury in the ring is penetrated by a magnetic field going through it vertically while the electric field goes through it horizontally, these two creating the third force which moves the mercury at right angles to the other two - around the ring.  This will not create any "lift force" but it does show that the Lorentz force is real and does work on a conductive fluid.

Can the Lorentz Force be used to generate thrust? Note that it only operates on a conductive fluid - so you won't be moving air or water with it any time soon unless you change the medium's properties first. Then consider the power used: only two volts but a LOT of current - better have some serious power supplies on hand to do it. Finally, there is no "antigravity" effect or force involved - sorry folks, no secret flying saucer power here - just real science.

In theory, one might ionise air around your "saucer" to make it more conductive but even so the electrical resistance of the air will dramatically increase the amount of power needed to cause movement and the magnetic field is going to need to be huge too: so you will need a tremendous amount of electric power to cause this effect and after all of this, there is no "antigravity" or artificial gravity involved: that generator and the rest of your equipment is still going to weight a lot and won't make a saucer that can do much apart from maybe (if you have enough power/weight ratio) get you off the ground.  No supersonic performance, no instant cornering at 2000 Kph.  Nope.

Score one for science and zero for fiction.

Thanks to Electrical Experiments Roobert33 for the video.