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The Week in Germany: Focus on Saxony
	Today, TWIG begins a multi-week look at the Free State of Saxony. With the reopening of the baroque treasure trove the Grünes Gewölbe and Dresden's 800 year celebrations, Saxony's past has received a great deal of attention this summer. This week, however, we will focus on Saxony's role as an emerging center for research and technology. With one of the most vibrant economies among the new German states, Saxony has attracted investment from companies like BMW, VW, Porsche, and the high-tech firms AMD and Infineon.

September 15, 2006

Hold on to Your Fillings: Scientists at the Rossendorf Research Center are Building the Strongest Magnet in the World

Scientists at a research facility just outside Dresden have announced that they are quick on the heels of American scientists in the magnet race. The Los Alamos National Laboratory announced at the end of August that it had begun building the outer core of a magnet capable of achieving 100 tesla, a new world record. Wasting no time, the researchers at Rossendorf announced that they would begin winding their 100 tesla magnet this week.

Dresden's other Green Vault: 500 green capacitors store the enormous electrical charge that powers the magnet. Photo: dpa

These researchers are not out to rack up tesla – magnets capable of 2,800 tesla have already been built in the U.S. The trick is building a super-powerful magnet that will not explode. The scientists who built that magnet had to take shelter in a bunker during the experiment.

As Joachim Wosnitza of the Rossendorf Research Center told the Berliner Zeitung this week, he and his colleagues are not interested in those kinds of fireworks. “You don’t have to worry about cleaning up after the experiment, because there’s nothing left to clean up,” he said. If the magnet does not self-destruct, scientists can use it to test the behavior of materials under the influence of extremely strong magnetic fields.

This can have far-reaching implications for the study of physics. For example, Wosnitza’s colleagues used a 71.4 tesla magnet to demonstrate that the electrical resistance of a metal does in fact change in response to strong magnetic fields, as had been theorized.

Electro-magnets are coils made of efficient conductors, and all of the conductors that are suitable for building a magnet are also influenced by magnetic fields. This is why extremely powerful magnets explode, and it also necessitates some interesting precautions at the magnet lab. The magnets are housed behind steel-reinforced concrete walls that are 90 cm thick. Ports that open to equalize extreme pressure are built into the ceiling. The signal that triggers the magnetic pulse travels through a fiber-optic cable rather than a metal wire, which would be subject to magnetic attraction.

The Rossendorf Research Center was founded in 1992 at the site of the former nuclear research center of East Germany. When it was created in 2004, the €24.5 (31 million) magnet laboratory was one of the largest scientific investments in the Free State of Saxony and the largest of three facilities created for research in the fundamental natural sciences in the new German states. Scientists from all over the world can use the magnets at no cost for their research.

Links:

Research Center Rossendorf

Los Alamos National Research Laboratory in a 100-tesla quest

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