And in this corner, weighing in at an astonishing 110 tons is a Barrel Toroid, the world’ largest superconducting magnet. This huge magnet is one of the vital components of Atlas, a particle detector housed at the European Organization for Nuclear Research’s (CERN’s) Large Hadrom Collider (LHC).

The Barrel Toroid has eight superconducting coils, is 16 feet wide and 82 feet long. Because of this gargantuan magnet Atlas is able to create and collide beams of speeding, highly energetic atomic or subatomic particles by smashing two beams of protons together in some of the most energetic collisions ever created. So how does this 110 ton Barrel Toroid help Atlas do this?

The Barrel Toroid will generate an enormous magnetic field that will bend the paths of charged particles. By using the angle of the deflection in conjunction with readings from other instruments, scientists will hopefully be able to determine what particles were created.

It took six weeks to cool the Barrel Toroid down to -459 degrees Fahrenheit in order for scientists to make sure it was working. Afterward, it was slowly powered back up to an astonishing 21,000 amps. The magnetic energy stored in it was then safely discharged. The energy was equivalent to 10,000 cars traveling at 43 miles an hour. Wow!

Scientists hope to someday discover what dark matter is, to study the fundamentals of matter and energy and to see what the rest of the universe is made of.

Superconductivity is relatively still in its infancy stages of research. The staff at the Magnet Lab, located at Florida State University isn’t letting that little fact hold them back, however. The lab is home to one of the most powerful superconducting magnets found anywhere in the world.

This bad boy is a 900 megahertz machine that is used for nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). It delivers an astonishing field of 21 tesla. When you consider that one tesla is equivalent to 10 gauss and the earth only has approximately 0.6-0.3 gauss that’s a pretty remarkable thing by any standards. And it doesn’t stop there.

Scientist are continuing their efforts to break new ground and build larger magnets, as they try to reach beyond the point at which superconducting material cease to superconduct. Introducing the 45 tesla hybrid.

This magnet weighs in at a whopping 35-tons, and stands 22 feet tall. A large part of the magnets structure are intricate systems that push approximately 400 liters of water per second onto the it in order to keep it cool enough to operate. There are almost 4 miles of superconducting cable in the 45 tesla hybrid magnet. It has enough copper wire in its makeup to completely wire 80 homes, and is kept to a remarkable -452 degrees Fahrenheit to -269 degrees Celsius.

If this magnet should reach room temperature, it would take no less than six weeks to cool it down to proper operating temperatures again.

Trudi Buck blogs about how to choose among online MRI technician schools.

Tags: Barrel Toroid, magnet, science, The Largest Magnets in the World

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 3rd, 2009 at 4:21 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.