Scientists in China have achieved a groundbreaking milestone by creating a remarkably powerful resistive magnet, which has officially set a new world record by maintaining a magnetic field of 42.02 tesla.
This is over 800,000 times stronger than Earth’s magnetic field, which typically measures around 50 microtesla.
This record was established on September 22 at the Steady High Magnetic Field Facility (SHMFF) in Hefei, surpassing the previous record of 41.4 tesla, which had been held since 2017 by a resistive magnet at the National High Magnetic Field Lab in Florida.
The motivation behind pushing the boundaries of magnetism is rooted in the potential for scientific discovery.
Physicist Joachim Wosnitza from Dresden’s lab in Germany noted that stronger magnetic fields open up new realms of physics, offering the possibility of discovering new states of matter.
Another physicist added that high magnetism allows for the engineering and manipulation of new phases of matter that cannot exist under normal conditions.
Each additional tesla achieved makes instruments exponentially more sensitive to faint phenomena.
The SHMFF’s record-breaking magnet is available for international researchers to look through advanced materials like superconductors.
However, resistive magnets such as this one consume vast amounts of power. The SHMFF magnet required 32.3 megawatts to achieve the new record.
Despite their high energy demands, resistive magnets are still favored because they can sustain high magnetic fields for longer periods than superconducting magnets, which eventually hit their performance limits. Additionally, resistive magnets can be ramped up quickly.
Efforts to reduce the energy consumption of these powerful magnets continue, with teams like those at the SHMFF working on hybrid and fully superconducting designs that could reach extreme magnetic strengths while using less energy.
It’s important to note that superconducting or hybrid designs are not necessarily weaker than resistive magnets. In fact, China introduced a hybrid resistive/superconducting magnet in 2022 that reached 45.22 tesla.
In 2019, the U.S. National Lab developed a mini superconducting prototype that briefly produced a 45.5 tesla burst.
However, the challenge remains to make these low-power systems both reliable and affordable while addressing cooling issues, which is why resistive magnets continue to play a crucial role.
