World's Strongest Magnetic Field Is Demonstrated

lazarus_ writes "PORTLAND, Ore. -- Researchers at Florida State University's National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Tallahassee achieved the holy grail of magnetism recently when their high-temperature superconductor attained the coveted 25-Tesla field strength record."

Comments

Re:Ok

[PurpleFloyd]

No, this is the largest magnetic field ever created (that we know about), although it does cover a fairly small area. The Earth's magnetic field is weak but very, very large; magnetic fields drop off rapidly (Inverse cube of distance, if I recall correctly) as you move away from the source. Similarly, speaker magnets are fairly weak (on the order of a few hundred to a thousand gauss) but since they are large, they affect a greater area than a small rare-earth magnet that has a 1 Tesla (10,000 Gauss) field strength - a few meters away, the magnetic field is lost in the "background noise" of the Earth's magnetic field. While this is almost certainly smaller than a tiny rare-earth magnet, it still won't cause compass needles all over the Earth to point in funny directions; just those around the building it's installed in. In summary: powerful magnet != big field.