Scientists built a heart-shaped object that floats in water and literally doesn't care which way is up.
April 3, 2026
Original Paper
A floating body with no preferred orientation: an experimental realization
arXiv · 2604.01692
The Takeaway
Usually, a floating object has one or two stable positions it naturally returns to. Using a special geometric trick, this researcher built a shape that has no preferred orientation at all, effectively defying the intuitive behavior of every boat or buoy ever made.
From the abstract
We present a simple experimental realization of a two-dimensional floating body that can remain in equilibrium in any orientation. This system is based on a class of shapes known as Zindler curves, which possess the remarkable geometric property that all chords dividing their area into equal parts have the same length. Using a multilayer fabrication approach, we construct a heart-shaped floating object with an effective density close to one half of that of the surrounding liquid. We show experim