Scientists have theorized that magical traits described in the Harry Potter series have a realistic connection to recessive genes in human genetics. University of Oxford geneticists Sreeram Ramagopalan, Marian Knight, George Ebers, and Julian Knight published a paper that analyzes the heritability of the described magical abilities in many of the characters.

In describing magical family lineages, they wrote:

We estimated familial aggregation to detect whether a characteristic has a genetic component. The final Harry Potter book Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows goes into great detail about magical families, notable examples being the Black and Gaunt lineages. Although shared environmental influences can also lead to familial clustering of a trait, the presence of magical abilities in seven generations of the Black family and at least three generations in others strongly suggests the influence of genetic factors in determining magical ability.

The geneticists also said magic, similar to athletic ability, is not a dichotomous trait, but rather carries a wide range of capacities, ranging from the power of Albus Dumbledore to the unimpressive abilities of Crabbe and Goyle.

Magical ability is likely to be affected by the environment, with experience and emotional state being important factors, the scientists said.

The flying broomstick

Bernoullis principle states that as air flow speeds up, air pressure must decrease.

In the case of an airplane, air flows more quickly at the top of the planes surface than the bottom, reducing pressure on the bottom of the plane. The planes ability to fly relies mostly on its wings, which are shaped to allow the air to deflect downward, giving the aircraft its lift.

This concept doesnt work for a broomstick without wings. Instead, flying broomsticks would have to use a completely different approach: antigravity. Just as magnets have the ability to repel each other, they also apparently have the ability to repel other objects that have their own natural magnetic fields. In 1997, a group of British and Dutch scientists successfully levitated a frog with super magnets, which repelled the frog 2 meters into the air.

In 1999, scientists at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York made a saucer fly on a 10-kilowatt beam of light. The super magnet developed for this experiment is powerful and large enough to lift a human and his broomstick.

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The "Harry Potter" magic