Wednesday, October 3, 2018

Earlier this year, researchers at the University of Tokyo accidentally created the strongest controllable magnetic field in history and blew the doors of their lab in the process.



Instead of using TNT to generate their magnetic field, the Japanese researchers dumped a massive amount of energy—3.2 megajoules—into the generator to cause a weak magnetic field produced by a small coil to rapidly compress at a speed of about 20,000 miles per hour. This involves feeding 4 million amps of current through the generator, which is several thousand times more than a lightning bolt. When this coil is compressed as small as it will go, it bounces back. This produces a powerful shockwave that destroyed the coil and much of the generator.

To protect themselves from the shockwave, the Japanese researchers built an iron cage for the generator. However they only built it to withstand about 700 Teslas, so the shockwave from the 1,200 Teslas ended up blowing out the door to the enclosure.

6 comments:

  1. I'm glad WW-II Pacific ended when it did.

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  2. This happened almost every week in the old Star Trek on the Starship Enterprise. Panels would blow off the walls & sparks would fly! I used to wonder if somehow circuit breakers had been forgotten technology.

    But then, I've been an electronics tech for a long time, and know that circuits are designed to protect the 10¢ fuse at all costs; probably that fuse is still intact!

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    1. Not sure they make a 4million amp fuse.

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    2. inflation, that 10 cent fuse now costs $4300.00 and are made by the lowest bidder. Some things never change, even in the 26th century.

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  3. everyone knows the starship enterprise was built by the same people who built the submarine Seaview which richard baseheart constantly tried to implode.

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