This has huge implications. If this can be mass produced, it will change the world in ways we can't imagine
this post was submitted on 14 Mar 2026
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Still requires liquid nitrogen
Well, we can't make that. Too bad. Sounded useful.
To make, or to use?
Using it. Those magnets depends on superconducting, which is only possible at low, really low temperatures (often close to absolute zero at 0K). Also the energy that generates the magnetic field also generates a lot of heat. So we cool those magnets with liquid nitrogen.
Also the problem isn't the liquid nitrogen but rather the liquid helium that is needed to reach the really low temperature ranges. Because helium is more scarce and expensive.
It's described as "high-temperature superconducting" in the article, so "only" needs liquid nitrogen
Ah then I didn't read the method section long enough. I just read to the part where they describe they used helium to cool to 4 K. Thx for the correction!
An MRI has a couple of Tesla, and everybody knows how dangerous ferromagnetic materials are close by.
This new magnet here has 42 Tesla.
I don’t even comprehend how you can turn this thing on without having forks and knives fly around 100m away.
Inverse square law my beloved
And Tesla is probably a linear scale. Then what are they excited about mere 42 Tesla. We need 40 kilotesla next.
We have no magnetic monopoles, so at maximum this is a dipole field with inverse cube. Given they must be focusing in the field as much as possible, I'd expect it to drop off much faster than that.
See I started with inverse cube and then edited it because I'm a coward
Now I am curious: What kinda things can be done if we can make magnets magnitudes stronger than we currently have that can not already be done?
Cheaper, more powerful, and efficient electric motors and generators.
more powerful
what does "more powerful" mean in this context? higher efficiency? or higher max torque?
More torque per weight of motor, or more power generated per torque applied to it.
i see so just more lightweight motors/generators then.
which makes sense considering that magnets are the functional part of the device and everything else is just there to provide mechanical stability.
Also better efficency. If you're throwing 10% of your output power just heating up a regular motor, then you grt a 10% boost using a superconducting motor. Or something like that.
Much higher efficiency these take little power relatively.
You can build much smaller NMR machines with same or even better resolution. And MRT as well.
Currently those are big machines that fill rooms. If you can build smaller machines, you can maybe even make portable versions (but then the question of mobile electricity and cooling are needed to be solved). But better resolution in MRT means health problems could be detected earlier (because the problem is still smaller but can now be detected) or that measuring could be done faster, meaning more people could be helped in the same time. For research it means you can measure faster as well, meaning you can get bigger datasets. So more things for researcher to analyze. Or experiments can now be done, that before were deemed as taking to much time on the machine and therefore weren't allowed.
There are a lot of NMR experiments that take a long while to do and better magnets might enable to finally do them .
Contactless autonomous cranes.. space elevators.. perhaps fusion or fabrication advancements.
space elevators
i remember doing a bit of math around space elevators a year ago and figuring out that if you make a cable hang from outer space to Earth, then the tensile strength is not strong enough to carry the weight of the cable itself. if you use any materials available today such as steel or carbon nanotubes. how would magnets change this?
Off subject but they found dangling a long cable into the atmosphere from low orbit or whatever they could generate a lot of electricity, the cable broke off after a while though when they tried it.
I'm not actually sure, but I do know that there will be applications for this tech that will change everything. If it can be replicated and mass produced cheaply enough
I’m not actually sure, but I do know that there will be applications for this tech that will change everything.
"a solution in search of a problem" does remind me of cryptocurrency a lot
While a lot of the time the applications of a technology precede it's discovery, it's certainly not ultra rare for the discovery to prompt the applications, because nobody ever gave much thought to 'what can we do with X'.
Hah yeah that reminds me of the IBM CEO in 1952 saying "there's a world demand for maybe 5 computers" because he couldn't fathom what could be done with them. it was a pretty great article overall, discussing how the same was true for solar ... nobody could imagine it powering the world just 20 years ago.
https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth
The difference is, we already use magnets everywhere.
Would be great for magnet fishing
Find MH370
Unfortunately, Boeing 777s are made of aluminum. Non-ferrous.
At these field strengths you can probably wiggle the magnet and pull up the plane via eddie currents.
Change the moon's orbit, or even the Earth's orbit around the sun? Sure would be an interesting method of dealing with global warming...
With magnets? How would that work?
When it comes to global warming, I could see using them to bolster the natural field of the earth to stop more cosmic particles getting to the planet, but how could you change the orbit with magnetism?
I dunno. I'm just an overly tired & poorly educated idiot who's watched too much sci-fi. I really should be asleep, but my natural inclination has always been to fight it until I inevitably lose (sometimes the battles are incredibly intense and drawn out). I know one day it'll be different, tho - one day I won't wake up and be forced to admit defeat.
Can you say “Rail Gun”?
Oh yeah this could make that more feasible. A lot more feasible as it takes way less electricity and material.
For those not wanting to click through to learn the meaning of the initialism HTS:
The results, published in Science Advances, describe two compact all-high-temperature superconducting (HTS) magnets…