Record-Setting 100+ T Magnetic Field Achieved At Los Alamos

New submitter schrodingersGato writes "Researchers at the Los Alamos campus of the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory achieved a record-setting 100.75 Tesla magnetic field. To do this, scientists placed a resistive magnet (a sophisticated electromagnet) coupled to massive bank of capacitors within another magnet fixed at a 'lower' magnetic field. A short-lived pulse two million times stronger than the Earth's magnetic field was generated. The magnet itself made an eerie sound as it was energized (video). Prepare for the birth of Magneto!"

Comments

Interplanetary Space?

[gcnaddict]

How much stronger would a field have to be to protect a hypothetical ship the size of the space shuttle from solar winds and other non-EM ionizing radiation in interplanetary space?

If 100 tesla is achievable now, then I can imagine it wouldn't take long before a field can be generated which would be powerful enough to provide a buffer against most ionizing radiation a la Earth's own magnetic field, but I could be way in the realm of science fiction with this thought.

Re:Interplanetary Space?

[durrr]

The earths magnetic field is not strong, it's just huge. You're probably more burdned by power and weight and size contraints if you want to shield a shuttle than field strenght.

What I find interesting with this is that some "magic physics" theories postulates funny things to be possible at some ~50 tesla strenght. Probably won't show up anything, but testing them to falsify is always a noble goal.

Re:Interplanetary Space?

[XiaoMing]

It's great that you can quote a few numbers you recall being important and draw inferences from them, but please leave the science to people who didn't just read the summary of an article, and go "hey that number I just read is bigger than another one I remember reading about somewhere else, so I'm close to discovering a solution!"

This is like if you find out that if you place a 50lb bag on a 100 foot lever, you can generate 5000ft-lb of torque, and holy crap how far away are we from sandbag-lever arm car engines!?

First off:
This is a transient field generated by an electric current that was created through the discharge of capacitor banks. The banks themselves probably took a few minutes to charge up, at a power draw unsustainable for any space vehicle, and discharged a "short lived" pulse, which from the video, was order of seconds. Regardless, the point of mentioning "short-lived" is obviously that this cannot run in steady state, which wouldn't do much for protection.

Second (and you and whoever modded you up have probably heard of this exciting term too):
The physics behind an EMP (electromagnetic pulse) is exactly what this magnet would create: a large magnetic flux change through closed conducting circuits. That means that if you can't generate this type of magnetic field in steady state (remember the words "short-lived"?), you'd end up frying more components than whatever charged particles you want to protect against.

Third:
Does anyone know how standard magnetic fields are generated, or at least bother to take a look at the pretty pictures in the article? The 100T that was quoted was undoubtedly in the center of the giant metal solenoid (new buzzword for the pseudoscientists out there!). To "protect" a space vehicle from more science words using this specific methodology basically means building a giant metal sewer pipe around every space shuttle to begin with. The technology required to be useful in stellar flight requires small modular field generators that can create magnetic fields external to itself (and anything it wants to protect), not internal (where once again dFlux/dt would fry your circuits).

Finally:
"Non-EM ionizing radiation" is a cute and exciting phrase, but really that just means other "ions". And yes, if a magnetic field can stop a proton (a hydrogen ion) from that "non-EM" solar wind, it'll stop other forms of ions as well, as they all follow the same physics of being a massive (i.e. having mass) charged particle.

+3 interesting?? What the fuck, mods.

Re:Interplanetary Space?

[Anonymous Coward]

+ 5 Informative, -6 for being a snarky asshole.

Re:Interplanetary Space?

[Anonymous Coward]

FYI: your reply would have been more interesting without the snobbery and generally superior attitude. You may be technically correct, but you sound like an ass.

Re:Interplanetary Space?

[Xiterion]

This is a transient field generated by an electric current that was created through the discharge of capacitor banks.

If you're going to pour on the snark, you could at least read enough of the article to understand that, while a capacitor bank is used in establishing the magnetic field, the primary energy storage was from a motor-generator that stores 1.2 GJ of energy for the experiments. So, while I agree that it's frustrating to hear half baked ideas for applications of exciting new science to pet science fiction dreams, doing so in a confrontational manner does little to actually enhance the knowledge of the folks making those sorts of suggestions.

Re:Interplanetary Space?

[Baloroth]

Does anyone know how standard magnetic fields are generated, or at least bother to take a look at the pretty pictures in the article? The 100T that was quoted was undoubtedly in the center of the giant metal solenoid (new buzzword for the pseudoscientists out there!). To "protect" a space vehicle from more science words using this specific methodology basically means building a giant metal sewer pipe around every space shuttle to begin with.

This in itself shows a clear lack of understanding of how magnetic fields work. Magnetic fields are closed loops: what that means is, if there is a 100T flux through the middle of the magnet, there will also be an intense magnetic field curving back around the outside of the magnet (this is middle-school physics here). So if you ran the magnet through the center of the ship (and had sufficient power to leave it on, or hell a permanent magnet would also work), it would create a magnetic field that would extend around the entirety of the ship, which would deflect and charged particles stream that got near the ship (except at the ends, where like the Earth's north pole, the field would be parallel to incoming particles and wouldn't be deflected). Indeed, that design would be exactly identical to the Earth's magnetic field.

Also, the EMP effect would be non-existent if you could keep the magnet charged (assuming you built up slowly), so that point is... well, not relevant to the posters question (he didn't say this design would work, only asked how strong the field would need to be in general). And your third point is just being snarky. He asked an interesting hypothetical question, and you answered snarkily and, ironically, in a way that revealed your own ignorance.

Re:Interplanetary Space?

[c0lo]

What I find interesting with this is that some "magic physics" theories postulates funny things to be possible at some ~50 tesla strenght. Probably won't show up anything, but testing them to falsify is always a noble goal.

They went to pulsed 200T in 1950-ies (see the MK2 in 1956).

Re:Interplanetary Space?

[XiaoMing]

Good point.

But the snark is there for a reason. He posed a silly thought, and was instantly modded to +3 with worthless comments otherwise. I post something factual with a shit attitude, and everyone spends additional effort trying their best to prove me wrong. Which one got the general public to do more thinking? Even the other (non AC) response to mine tried to at least mention some high school physics and bring up regimes where my EMP example might not completely hold.

The real problem isn't that comments are misleading, but that too many people blindly eat up whatever sounds important or right without doing their own due diligence, as OP demonstrated first hand.

There was a link on ./ a week ago regarding online comment sections being completely worthless. It was almost ironic that it was posted in ./, probably best known for its comments sections, and I refuse to let the same thing happen here without a fight.

Ming

EAT IT, Thomas!

[Thud457]

There ain't no SI unit named after Edison. beeeotch!

Re:EAT IT, Thomas!

[Eponymous Hero]

i propose we use Edisons as units of patents trolled

Re:EAT IT, Thomas!

[Anonymous Coward]

Sadly, there is an award named after Edison and he gets all the attention in schoolbooks. Seems Edison's slow, amateur progress from a telegraph addict to inventing one of the least efficient light sources known to man is preferable to teaching about the 'madman' who repeatedly did the 'impossible' and established the technological foundation for the majority of modern age.

Probably just a bunch of teachers scared about what the middle-school science fairs would look like if Tesla had been part of the lesson plan...

Not just field strength

[Roger W Moore]

How much stronger would a field have to be to protect a hypothetical ship the size of the space shuttle from solar winds

The deflection of charged particles in a magnetic field is roughly proportional to the strength of the field and the "thickness" of the field i.e. the distance that the charged particle travels through it. So (ignoring important complexities like varying field strength, ship geomtery etc.) a 100T field 1 m around the craft would be roughly as effective as a 1T field extending 100m around the craft.

Re:Not just field strength

[squidflakes]

You're damn right 100T is incredibly powerful. Most MRI rings for humans max out at 3T. Some of the experimental medical rings are 7T-8T and you have to be really careful working around those. I can't imagine 100T. Hell, we stuck a dumpster to a brick wall with a 5T magnet.

Re:Not just field strength

[Rich0]

14 years ago I routinely used a 12T NMR, and we had a 17T model in the basement (time on that one was a bit harder to get).

However, to be useful for most forms of NMR the field has to be very uniform and stable over long periods of time. You can't do that with pulses or some of the other techniques used at this high-field lab. There are of course all kinds of other things you can do there.

MRIs tend to be much weaker than NMRs. The problem is the bore size of the magnet. Scaling up the size of a magnet is very difficult, and it takes a lot more energy to make a weak field the size of the earth than a strong one that you can fit a skinny test tube inside. This is similar to the difference between temperature and heat. A match and a bonfire might be the same temperature, but the bonfire puts out way more heat.

Medical MRI tends to be only a few T at most. Really big ones are in the very low teens, and are VERY expensive to build. Of course, MRIs have spacial resolution and NMRs typically do not. An NMR probes fairly complex chemical relationships but does not generate a spacial image. An MRI probes fairly simple chemical relationships (often just the presence of water or a contrast agent), but it takes a 3D picture.

The other more modern trend is building bigger NMRs but instead of making them more powerful using extra magnets to cancel out the field outside of the dewer. This makes them easier to site - and people don't get injured by flying tools if somebody is careless. High-field NMRs can be very dangerous when performing operations like filling with the aid of gas cylinders (with very long hoses). Shielding or not, another big danger with either NMRs or MRIs is ventilation. If something causes the magnet to quench you can get huge volumes of He/N2 liberation which will quickly displace all O2 in even a large room.

Re:What would survive.

[jd]

The strongest MRI currently used on humans is 9.1T and a 13T MRI scanner is being built - might already be finished. Given that the 9.1T is good enough to see individual neurons, the 13T scanner might be good enough to start seeing the fine structure of the synapses. I look forward to seeing the photos that will hopefully be published once the scanner gets going.

It would be interesting to see how far you could go before the damage becomes excessive. Would it be possible to build an MRI capable of directly observing the proteins that control and form memories? Could you observe the tau protein unpeeling as Alzheimer's begins? (Long before structural changes occur, which in turn is long before symptoms appear.)

How about archaeological uses? Could a high-power MRI reveal something of the mental state of the various bog bodies that have been found? What about Otzi? If we can directly observe memory structure, could we interrogate his brain to find out what happened to him?

Re:What would survive.

[jd]

My bad, it's 11T. See links below for info.

This is the existing 9T MRI with 80cm bore.

http://medgadget.com/2007/12/94_tesla_monster_mri.html

This is the whole-body 11T MRI being built

http://irfu.cea.fr/en/Phocea/Vie_des_labos/Ast/ast_visu.php?id_ast=3058

Some of the underlying technology:

http://www.microwavejournal.com/articles/print/2551
http://www.microwavejournal.com/articles/10402-software-platform-for-mri-phased-array-system-design-optimization
http://www.hfmmagazine.com/hfmmagazine_app/jsp/articledisplay.jsp?dcrpath=AHA/PubsNewsArticleGen/data/0403HFM_NEWS_Construction
http://www.aapm.org/meetings/05am/pdf/18-2826-94182-387.pdf