cerebral
Oct 28, 2006, 05:56 PM
A major new research facility for high magnetic field science at Los Alamos National Laboratory is set to open for national and international researchers.
The laboratory announced Tuesday that after 10 years of preparation, the world's most powerful pulsed, non-destructive magnet has been commissioned for user operation at 85 tesla.
A tesla is a measuring unit for magnetic fields and gets its name from Nikola Tesla, a Serb-American, whose inventions formed the foundation of our alternating current system.
The laboratory's magnet, which has achieved 87.8 tesla and is expected to reach 100 tesla in time, is the most powerful of its kind in the world, said Alex Lacerda, who leads the National High Magnetic Field (NHMFL) -Los Alamos Center.
At 100 tesla the magnet would be 200,000 times stronger than the earth's magnetic field.
"It's a tremendous scientific and engineering accomplishment," he said in a telephone interview this morning. "It's like a very powerful microscope that allows you to zoom into any material."
The lab says the generator supplies 1.4 billion watts of power and is itself the largest magnetic power source, with enough power to supply the entire state of New Mexico for a couple of minutes. The generator was rescued from an abandoned nuclear power project in Tennessee and holds the record as the heaviest object ever to move on New Mexico highways.
The generator produces power that is stored and then pulsed to create the powerful magnetic fields. Only magnets created by destructive explosions are more powerful.
Combining very low temperatures with a powerful magnetic field, researchers can examine materials at a nanometer scale, a billionth of a meter.
Among anticipated applications are investigations of large organic molecules, such as drugs.
Lacerda said researchers are lined up to use the equipment, but most of the current work is being done internally.
"It's like a new car. You want to drive it around a little bit before driving it to California," he said.
The supermagnet is located at Technical Area 35 in the NHMFL's Pulsed Field Facility, a designated international user facility.