The world’s largest pulse magnet begins to be built, which will be 2 million times stronger than the Earth’s magnetic field

China started construction of the world’s most powerful pulse-field magnet facility in the city of Wuhan on Tuesday, September 27.

The facility, affiliated with the High School of Science and Technology in Wuhan, promises to create a short but powerful magnetic field system, at 110 Tesla. To make it easier to imagine, it would be 2 million times stronger than the Earth’s magnetic field.

The current world record for a pulsed magnetic field is 100 Tesla, held by a facility at Los Alamos National Laboratory in the US state of New Mexico. Currently, the strongest pulsed magnetic field that China can generate is 70 Tesla.

China is also the country that holds the record for the strongest stable magnetic field ever created by man on Earth. In August this year, the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ High Pulse Magnetic Field Laboratory in Hefei, Anhui Province said it had created a stable magnetic field as strong as 45.22 Tesla for research purposes. Research requires a system that can operate for a long time.

The new facility in Wuhan will take five years to build and cost more than 2 billion yuan (about $276 million), according to the country’s Science and Technology Daily.

According to the official newspaper of the Ministry of Science and Technology of China, a series of potential users have lined up to register to conduct experiments with the new pulse magnet system right now.

They include engineers working on “high-power electromagnetic projects”, scientists developing new superconductors and semiconductors, researchers involved in 6G communications technology, and scientists working on the latest technology. Science hopes to unlock the secrets of human biology.

Pulsed magnetic fields are designed to allow scientists to observe the structure of matter, the behavior of subatomic particles and life processes in an extreme environment. Experts say such scientific observations would not be possible under normal circumstances.

Using powerful pulsed magnetic fields, scientists hope to make breakthroughs in areas of research, from carbon-based computer chips and stealth technology to high-powered microwave weapons and drugs. could save the lives of millions of people. In an interview in April, the project’s development team said they wanted to transform the facility to attract scientific research talent from around the world.

However, building this new magnet system is also expected to be challenging and risky. According to the report, workers will be required to wrap fine metal wires around magnets while wearing hazardous substance suits (also known as Hazmat) for several hours in an environment filled with gas. poison.

Creating such a strong magnetic field is also very difficult. Magnets will require a generator that can produce gigawatts of power and special materials that can absorb the heat and shocks generated by the electromagnetic pulse.

Not to mention, conducting magnetic experiments can also be very dangerous. In 2018, a research team in Japan created the strongest controllable magnetic field in history at 1,200 Tesla. But the experiment was so powerful that it destroyed the magnet itself and blew the lab door off its hinges.

Refer SCMP, Science and Technology Daily