Magnetic levitation can be used to separate the living from the dead
newscientist.com
newscientist.com
"Levitating Cells to Sort the Fit and the Fat"
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32352239/
"Density is a core material property and varies between different cell types, mainly based on differences in their lipid content. Sorting based on density enables various biomedical applications such as multi-omics in precision medicine and regenerative repair in medicine. However, a significant challenge is sorting cells of the same type based on density differences. Here, a new method for real-time monitoring and sorting of single cells based on their inherent levitation profiles driven by their lipid content is reported."