With a BOOM, the laboratory was shattered by a strong magnetic field of 1,200 Tesla.
Earlier this year, researchers at the University of Tokyo created the strongest manipulable magnetic field in history. By the way, they also accidentally blew up the whole lab during a bug test.
The specific study, published in the Review of Scientific Instrument, states that the magnetic field was created to test the new generator system. The researchers were trying to achieve a strong magnetic field of 700 Tesla, but the machine they built was stronger than they expected: it reached the 1,200 Tesla mark . For comparison: the magnetic field in the magnet attached to the surface of the refrigerator, the blackboard/blue board is only 0.01 Tesla.
This is the strongest magnetic field level ever produced in a controlled laboratory environment. To be specific is because it is not the strongest magnetic field in the history of engineering that we know of. In 2001, Russian scientists created a powerful 2,800 Tesla magnetic field.
In both tests from Japan and from Russia, they used a technique called electromagnetic flux-compression , which roughly translates to electromagnetic flow compression . It will create a peak in the magnetic field by suddenly squeezing the magnetic field down to a smaller size. Electromagnetic stream compression has been around since the 1940s, but in the early days, scientists used large amounts of TNT to create an explosion large enough to squeeze a magnetic field.
Experiments of the 1940s fell into the category of “one-off modeling” , because after the test, the device was destroyed in a giant explosion. Moreover, it is too difficult to reproduce and control an explosion with TNT.
Instead of using TNT, the Japanese researchers pumped the magnetic field with a whopping 3.2 megajoules of energy into the generator, causing the small magnetic field to be forced in rapidly at 32,000km/h. The test required a current of 4 million amperes to flow through the generator. When the pressure is large enough, it will explode, a strong shock wave will destroy everything in its path.
To protect themselves from testing and protect the laboratory from destruction, they erected an iron heart for the generator. However, they only built the cage so that it could withstand 700 Tesla of destructive power, in fact, the force emitted up to 1,200 Tesla. That’s why the iron cage in the short clip was all blown up.
“I didn’t expect it to be so powerful,” said Shojiro Takeyama, a physicist at the University of Tokyo. “Next time, we’ll make the lab more solid.”
When the pressure is large enough, it will explode, a strong shock wave will destroy everything in its path.
As the researchers describe, the experiment not only tells us how each material responds to a strong magnetic field, but also opens the way for future fusion technology. Fusion machines need a magnetic field as strong as thousands of Tesla to work effectively, so we must first find a way to limit the destructive power of the magnetic field to get clean energy from fusion.
The next test, the Japanese researchers will build a stronger cage, try with a strong magnetic field of 1,500 Tesla.
The researchers concluded in the report:
“Just 40 years ago, a strong 1,000 Tesla magnetic field was very difficult to generate, and we had to rely on terrifying and unsafe explosive systems that could not be controlled. So we can say for sure that The present results open up a new era, a new step forward in the generation and use of extremely strong magnetic fields to study solids, as well as plasma substances in fusion reactions, for application in research. similar”.