Physicists Create Weakest Magnetic Field in the Solar System with Shielding Device

How do you halt magnetic fields? You'd think it's impossible to stop something that easily penetrates matter. However, physicists have created a shielding device that dampens low frequency magnetic fields more than a million-fold, which has allowed them to create a space that boasts the weakest magnetic field of our solar system.

Magnetic fields exist everywhere in the universe. On Earth, we are permanently exposed to both natural and artificial magnetic fields. In Central Europe, as an example, the magnetic field measures 48 microtesla.

Now, though, researchers have managed to dampen this field. They've created a 4.1 cubic meter space in which permanent and temporally variable magnetic fields are reduced.

How does it work? The physicists use a magnetic shielding comprised of various layers of a highly magnetizable alloy. The ensuing magnetic attenuation results in a residual magnetic field inside the shield that's even smaller than that in the depths of our solar system.

So why reduce the magnetic field? Reducing electromagnetic noise is key for many high-precision experiments in physics. The scientists plan to use this device in order to conduct further experiments on the miniscule effects in phenomena that drove the early development of our universe.

Currently, the researchers are developing an experiment to determine the charge distribution in neutrons, referred to by physicists as the electric dipole moment. Neutrons are nuclear particles that have a tiny magnetic moment but are electrically neutral. They're made up of three quarks, whose charges cancel each other out.

"This kind of measurement would be of fundamental significance in particle physics and swing wide open the door to physics beyond the Standard Model of particle physics," said Peter Fierlinger, one of the researchers, in a news release.

The findings are published in the Journal of Applied Physics.

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