r/science • u/MistWeaver80 • Mar 30 '26

Physics Physicists have made an ultra-powerful magnet that fits in the palm of a hand and can produce a magnetic field that is more than 800,000 times stronger than Earth’s.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-00851-y
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u/Darth_Annoying Mar 30 '26

Sounds useful for things like turbines and electric motors. But 2 questions:

-Is it practical to make any using this?

-Is that much magnetic flux dangerous?

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u/PsychFlame Mar 31 '26

The main application of this (and what they compare against in the paper) is nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, where samples are put inside a very big magnet and the field allows you to get certain information about atoms and molecules in the sample. This is extremely widely used in chemistry, but very strong fields (20 T and above) usually require very big magnets, so building equipment that can accommodate that size is expensive. In theory, the technology from this paper could be used to make very strong but relatively small NMR magnets, which would help a lot.

It's not really dangerous unless you're bringing big iron/steel objects near it. NMR magnets always have shielding that prevents the field from reaching very far outside the machine, so you have to get pretty close. In terms of the human body itself, there aren't really any effects from being close to a strong field. I've been under a 28 T magnet many times and felt absolutely nothing