Chinese scientists develop magnet 800,000 times stronger than Earth’s magnetic field

A resistive magnet developed by China’s Steady High Magnetic Field Facility (SHMFF) can generate a magnetic field of 42.02 tesla, surpassing the previous record of 41.4 tesla achieved by Florida’s National High Magnetic Field Lab in 2017. The natural magnetic field of Earth is around 800,000 times less than the magnetic field of this object.

This record-breaking achievement allows scientists to dig into new types of matter and make scientific tools even more sensitive. Physicist Joachim Wosnitza from a lab in Dresden says stronger magnetic fields give scientists better chances of finding new forms of matter and tweaking materials in ways we haven’t been able to before.

Now, while the SHMFF magnet is impressive, it guzzles a lot of power—32.3 megawatts, to be exact. Even so, resistive magnets are still preferred since they can maintain these strong magnetic fields longer than superconducting ones, and you can adjust the field strength quicker, too.

The facility lets researchers worldwide use this magnet for cutting-edge materials testing, especially for superconductor studies. Meanwhile, the team is also working on hybrid and fully superconducting designs to hit the same magnetic field strength with less energy.

In 2022, China showed off a hybrid magnet that hit 45.22 tesla, while a US National Lab prototype briefly touched 45.5 tesla in 2019. But coming up with low-power systems that are reliable, affordable, and stay cool enough is still a massive engineering undertaking.

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