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posted by janrinok on Monday October 28, @09:34PM   Printer-friendly
from the story-that-tugs-at-the-pacemaker dept.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Scientists in China have created a mind-bogglingly powerful resistive magnet that has officially broken the world record by sustaining an incredible 42.02 tesla. That is over 800,000 times stronger than the magnetic field produced by Earth itself, which has a flux density of about 50 microtesla.

The new record was set on September 22 at the Steady High Magnetic Field Facility (SHMFF) in Hefei, narrowly edging out the previous record of 41.4 tesla held by another resistive magnet at the National High Magnetic Field Lab in Florida since 2017.

As for why scientists are so determined to push the limits of magnetism, physicist Joachim Wosnitza from Germany's Dresden lab explained that it opens up all kinds of bizarre new realms of physics to explore. Essentially, the stronger the magnetism, the greater the chances of discovering new states of matter.

Another physicist noted that high magnetism allows scientists to engineer and manipulate entirely new phases of matter that simply don't exist under normal conditions. Each additional tesla achieved also makes instruments exponentially more sensitive for detecting faint phenomena.

The SHMFF's new champion is available for international researchers to test on advanced materials like superconductors.

The only drawback of such resistive magnetic systems is that they are real power hogs. The SHMFF's creation consumed a staggering 32.3 megawatts to achieve that record. However, scientists continue to use them because they can sustain high magnetic fields much longer than their newer superconducting counterparts, which eventually reach their limits. The older magnets can also be ramped up quickly.

Nonetheless, the enormous power requirements are a significant problem. Therefore, teams like those at the SHMFF are also working on hybrid and fully superconducting designs that could achieve extreme strengths while consuming much less energy.

This is not to say that hybrid or superconducting designs are less powerful than resistive magnetic systems. In fact, China debuted a hybrid resistive/superconducting magnet in 2022 that achieved a 45.22 tesla field.

On the other side of the world, the US National Lab's mini superconducting prototype managed a brief 45.5 tesla burst back in 2019. However, making these new low-power systems reliable and affordable – while also keeping them cool – remains a major technical challenge, underscoring the continued need for resistive magnets.


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  • (Score: 2) by BananaPhone on Tuesday October 29, @03:42PM

    by BananaPhone (2488) on Tuesday October 29, @03:42PM (#1379273)

    A Magnet like this in one of Mars Lagrange points would shield it from the sun's solar wind.
    Now we just have to figure out how to feed it 32.3 megawatts...

  • (Score: 3, Funny) by Sourcery42 on Tuesday October 29, @06:05PM

    by Sourcery42 (6400) on Tuesday October 29, @06:05PM (#1379302)

    32.3 megawatts

    Did anyone else read this Doc Brown's voice? Just me?

  • (Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday October 29, @07:40PM

    by VLM (445) on Tuesday October 29, @07:40PM (#1379322)

    If you're curious what to do with it, here's what the locals are up to:

    https://nationalmaglab.org/research/research-groups/ [nationalmaglab.org]

    "scanning magneto-optical spectroscopy" sounds pretty cool.

    It's not so much the magnet itself, its the numerous cool things you can do with sensors and physics and magnets, and its not so much the constant field as having a super large field means a really high gradient means (in theory) very high resolution.

    I guess think of it like an unimaginably high res MRI machine.

    And downstream of that is high res means you can analyze ultra fast processes because you're kind of zooming in or sweeping by while something happens. So that's kinda cool too.

    The SHMFF's creation consumed a staggering 32.3 megawatts

    Meh. In a data center "A dozen kilowatts per rack" is not unheard of. So its like a thousand or so rack data center. A thousand racks sounds big but remember that's only thirty or so columns times thirty or so rows. I mean, yeah, bigger than my basement, but I've worked around data centers a lot larger than that (although not as consistently high power density).

    Way back when I started this game some old water-cooled IBM mainframes drew "less than ten kilowatts" by my estimate just for the CPU, I worked at once center that had two in parallel, and TONS (literal tons) of disk and tape drives. The dual diesel generators were megawatt class, very large, very expensive. What's that garage over there? That's not a garage thats just generator #2. Oh. Anyway this is about three dozen of those. The site I worked at was not unusually impressive from the outside you'd think its just an office until you notice some oddities. So a major international lab drawing 30 times the power of my boring old office building is pretty "meh".

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