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Mag Lab Retakes World Record Title

Tom Flanigan

Tallahassee is once again on top of the world when it comes to the size of a special kind of research magnet. The announcement came Tuesday, Aug. 22 from the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory.

Mag Lab Associate Director Eric Palm said the new device is able to crank out more than 41 tesla of magnetic power.

“This is a new world-record magnet,” Palm explained. “It’s a resistive magnet so we have to keep putting power into it and water through it to take the heat out of the magnet. And as long as we keep paying our power bill, we can keep running it.”

That Energizer-Bunny ability to keep going and going is what will make it so valuable to researchers. And Palm said that also will keep the rest of the Tallahassee facility a world-beater.

“Nobody else in the world is doing the breadth of research that we’re doing, have the number of users that are coming from all over the world that are doing the different kinds of research. We have strong competition across the world, but we remain the largest and highest-power magnet lab in the world,” he said.

As well as being an enviable feather in Tallahassee’s technological cap.

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Tom Flanigan has been with WFSU News since 2006, focusing on covering local personalities, issues, and organizations. He began his broadcast career more than 30 years before that and covered news for several radio stations in Florida, Texas, and his home state of Maryland.

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