Cambridge Team Breaks Superconductor World Record

An anonymous reader writes University of Cambridge scientists have broken a decade-old superconducting record by packing a 17.6 Tesla magnetic field into a golf ball-sized hunk of crystal — equivalent to about three tons of force. From the Cambridge announcement: "A world record that has stood for more than a decade has been broken by a team led by University of Cambridge engineers, harnessing the equivalent of three tonnes of force inside a golf ball-sized sample of material that is normally as brittle as fine china. The Cambridge researchers managed to 'trap' a magnetic field with a strength of 17.6 Tesla — roughly 100 times stronger than the field generated by a typical fridge magnet — in a high temperature gadolinium barium copper oxide (GdBCO) superconductor, beating the previous record by 0.4 Tesla."

Comments

Stronger?

[i kan reed]

I'm impressed, but I'm not sure about even the most theoretical engineering applications of a little more field strength. Higher heat tolerance is easy to grapple with, but this an improvement that's hard to imagine practical applications for.

Re:Stronger?

[MRe_nl]

Stronger magnetic fields could also be used to reinforce antimatter containment, although they might not prevent an impending warp core breach.

Re:Stronger?

[Anonymous Coward]

Stronger magnetic fields could also be used to reinforce antimatter containment, although they might not prevent an impending warp core breach.

Of course not. But if you could just reverse the polarity, you'd hopefully deionize the plasma.

Re:Stronger?

[Anonymous Coward]

Field strength limit of a superconductor limits the current density it can carry before it loses superconductivity. Higher field strength limit means the same superconductor cross section can carry more current, or alternatively you need less superconductor for a given application. In some situations that can also affect what temperature is used too, as typically the colder the superconductor gets, the higher its field limit. A lot of high temperature superconductors that would superconduct with liquid nitrogen (~77 K) are used with liquid helium ( 4 K) because they can conduct more current that way. How useful this is to geometries and mechanical situations relevant to practical superconductor applications might be a different story though, at least in the short-run.

Re:Stronger?

[synaptik]

Do you have any idea what that would do to the tachyon flux?

Well

[MRe_nl]

I'm off to buy roughly 101 fridge magnets, and you'll be seeing me in the Beer Book of Bets shortly.

Shielding

[camperdave]

One of the hazards that long duration space travellers will face is radiation. The Earth's magnetic field draws incoming particles to the poles, thus protecting us. Could these powerful magnets be utilized on spacecraft to provide a similar function, drawing incoming particles to a sacrificial target or an area of the spacecraft that is hardened against radiation?

Re:Shielding

[WaffleMonster]

One of the hazards that long duration space travelers will face is radiation. The Earth's magnetic field draws incoming particles to the poles, thus protecting us.

Miles of atmosphere between earthly peeps and space stops most of it. Earths atmosphere provides equivalent protection of about 33 ft of water.

Re:ummm...nope

[Firethorn]

Which would be odd, seeing as how in US parlance 'fridge magnet' does indeed mean a magnet intended to attach to your fridge, typically containing advertising or cute sayings, or holding things like sheets of your kid's art up.

Per wiki a typical fridge magnet is 5 mt, or .005 Tesla. So this experiment is more like 3000X as strong as a fridge magnet.

This thing is 10X as strong as most of my 'fridge' magnets, but then I like to play with neodymium ones.

Going by my experience, their 'fridge magnets' would hold to a fridge very well without requiring excessive strength to pull off. Most of mine you have to think about it a bit.

Oh, and 16T is enough to levitate a frog.

Re:Wrong symbol

[Anonymous Coward]

You will find that in the field these materials are referred to as "YBCO, GdBCO etc etc" with only the rare earth as the full element. This is not wrong. HAve a look at the original paper which is freely available. http://iopscience.iop.org/0953-2048/27/8/082001

Re:More like 3400 fridge magents

[QilessQi]

From now on I demand that all /. articles describe a magnetic force in units which express the number of frogs that it can levitate.

Re:A ton/tonne is a unit of mass - wrong

[iggymanz]

no, long ton and short ton (what is meant in common speech) are units of force. in the UK (long) 2240 avoirdupois pounds, in the USA(short) 2000.

Metric ton is unit of mass