Record-breaking, fast-spinning magnet could help uncover new physics — SkimNews
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- Tao Wang and colleagues at the Agency for Science Technology and Research placed a roughly 30-micrometre neodymium-iron-boron sphere in a lead cylinder inside a vacuum chamber, then cooled the setup with liquid helium to about -269°C (-452°F), where the lead became superconducting and its Meissner effect levitated the magnet.
- The magnet reached 138 million revolutions per minute after a magnetic coil set it spinning, and Wang called it the fastest magnetically levitated rotor; the fastest-rotating human-made object overall is a nano-sized, laser-levitated sphere invisible to the naked eye.
- Tao Wang said the spinning speed would take 17 days to decrease by 50%, and compared the rotor’s number of turns before slowing significantly with Earth’s own rotation.
- The rotor was successfully tested as a vacuum gauge at very low temperatures, and Wang identified builders of quantum computers as potential users because those systems often must be kept extremely cold and isolated.
- Benjamin Stickler said the levitating spinning magnet could be used to precisely sense and measure magnetic fields.
- Andrea Vinante identified proposed tests involving dark-matter effects, gravitational waves at previously unexplored frequencies, and the interaction of quantum mechanics with gravity at micrometre scales.
Why it matters: For quantum-computer builders, Wang pointed to the rotor’s already-tested vacuum-gauge function as a potential fit with the extreme-cold conditions those systems require. At 138 million rpm and with a 17-day half-speed time, the rotor provides unusually persistent motion for proposed magnetic-field sensing, dark-matter tests and gravitational-wave measurements.
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