Magnetic field

Scientists at North Carolina State University have created a magnetic “metasheet” that can move objects and liquids around without needing robot arms or grippers.

Inspired by the color-changing skin of squids and other cephalopods, researchers have developed a flexible screen capable of storing and displaying encrypted images without using electronics – just tiny magnetic particles.

Magnetic levitation is used to float things like lamps and trains, but usually it requires a power source. Now, scientists in Japan have developed a way to make a floating platform that requires no external power, out of regular old graphite.

Everybody’s favorite wonder material, graphene, continues to surprise. MIT physicists have discovered yet another brand new electronic state hiding in this overachieving little material – something they give the bizarre name of “ferro-valleytricity.”

Taking a plot point from the 1990 Sean Connery movie thriller The Hunt for Red October, DARPA is working on a super-silent submarine drive that has no moving parts and provides propulsion through the water using magnets and electricity.

Researchers have created a new class of robots that can shift between solid and liquid forms on demand. In a series of tests, these new bots could change shape to run obstacle courses, carry objects, or even escape from a jail cell like a Terminator.

Stars are hot balls of plasma, but astronomers have now spotted a super strange one that may have a solid surface. Its intense magnetic field is strong enough to overcome its blistering temperatures and “freeze” its outer layers into a solid crust.

If you want to maximize the number of trains that can operate on one line simultaneously, it's crucial that you know the exact location of each train at all times. A new system is designed to help, by analyzing the magnetic properties of the rails.

While stellarator fusion reactors have conventionally featured irregularly shaped magnetic coils, scientists have now developed simpler and straighter versions they say can offer some important benefits.

A new technology representing a "revolutionary change" in how magnets are made for tokamak reactors could form a key piece of the nuclear fusion power puzzle, by facilitating the type of sustained streams of plasma needed for it to become a reality.

Fermilab physicists have developed a next-generation magnet that can generate a magnetic field with great efficiency, and used it to demonstrate what they describe as the world’s fastest ramping rates for particle accelerator magnets.

As revolutionary as they could be, quantum computers still have a few issues, such as controlling more than a few dozen qubits. Now researchers have found a way to control potentially millions of qubits at once, by adding a crystal prism to the chip.