China’s latest idea is to have the world’s most powerful magnet in Wuhan (it has already started building it)

It seems that breaking records suits China well. The Asian country has undertaken in recent years some of the most ambitious projects on the planet. From a huge hydroelectric power plant, almost the size of the Eiffel Tower, to the largest liquid battery in the world, to mention just a few examples.

According to South China Morning Post, the new challenge that China has set itself is to build a facility to achieve the largest pulsed magnetic field in the world. We are talking about a system capable of offering a 110 tesla inductionwhich is equivalent to being more than two million times more powerful than that of our planet.

A tool for the development of medicine, communications and more

The project is in charge of the Huazhong University of Science and Technology, who has years of experience studying magnetic fields. The $276 million (2 billion yuan) facility will be located in National Center for Strong Pulsed Magnetic Field Sciencesin Wuhan.

In fact, construction has already begun, but given the magnitude and complexity of the process, it is estimated that will be ready in five years. By then it will have surpassed the current most powerful pulsed system in the world, that of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, located in the state of New Mexico, United States, which reaches 100 teslas.

Now, there are few facilities like these in the world. This is mainly because huge technical challenges need to be overcome. During construction, workers will wear hazmat suits as they wrap metal cables around the magnet in a confined atmosphere full of toxic gases.

The construction must also have a structure mounted with special materials that can absorb the heat and stress generated by the operation of the magnet at full capacity. And, as if that were not enough, it must have its own electrical supply system to offer at least one gigawatt of power.

In 2018, researchers at the University of Tokyo managed to develop a controlled magnetic field of 1,200 Tesla (although the original idea was to reach only 700 Tesla). But a problem arose: the experiment had been so ambitious that the lab’s blast doors were destroyed.

If all goes well, the Chinese system will be used by researchers to develop scientific breakthroughs in next generation communications, superconductors and semiconductors. Also for “high power electromagnetic projects” classified.

In addition, according to those responsible, they hope to attract talent from around the world so that they can carry out their own investigations. In a few years we will begin to know the results of this colossal project.

Image: Los Alamos National Laboratory