Scientists create strongest magnetic force in the universe

Scientists think they've been able to demonstrate how the strongest magnetic force detected in the universe actually works.

It's a potentially huge move, made by scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory.

There are loads of reactions and physical situations that can generate magnetic fields - and some of them are microscopically small. According to the statement announcing the discovery, one suspected cause of these fields has long been "off-center collisions of heavy atomic nuclei such as gold, also known as heavy ions".

Roger Stoutenburgh and Jen Abramowitz/Brookhaven National Laboratory

Now that's been proven, thanks to painstaking research using a particle collider, one of science's most powerful and intimidating tools.

The indication is that the charges set loose by these incredibly rapid collisions can cause unbelievably strong magnetic fields - ones that outstrip even the pull of a massive neutron star. That sort of star's magnetic pull is so powerful it could destroy you from hundreds of miles away.

It's hard to wrap your head around - but there's a saving grace. In the case of these charged particles, along with being incredibly minute and therefore less worrying, the magnetic fields are incredibly short-lived.

In fact, they only exist for "ten millionths of a billionth of a billionth of a second" according to the scientific team, which makes them extremely hard to observe. Consequently, the team instead searched for evidence of those particle's impact around them, rather than the fields themselves.

Tiffany Bowman and Jen Abramowitz/Brookhaven National Laboratory

By checking how the motion of the charged particles created in the collisions was changing, the team was able to demonstrate that these movements were caused by the existence of these theorized magnetic fields, a discovery that must have been pretty thrilling.

Amazingly, they were both successful on this front and were also able to demonstrate the theory in multiple tests of different tiny materials, which shows that it applies at multiple scales.

As with all intricate and complicated scientific discoveries, this one is a milestone - but also leads pretty directly to more research and work. The team now have some properties they can rely on, but there's much more to do.

If you're intrigued by this discovery, it might be time to start reading up on some of science's most complicated and intriguing things - the quark-gluon plasma - which is at the center of this experiment. Hey - every day's a school day, particularly when exciting moves like this are made.