TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL) — It's the largest and highest-powered magnet lab in the entire world and it's in our own back yard.
"This is the center of the Universe for high magnetic field research, for powerful magnets, for scientists who want to make discoveries using high magnetic fields and for people who are interested and love science," Kristin Roberts, MAGLAB's public affairs director said.
The National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, or MagLab, designs and build the world's most powerful magnets and shares them with the community and nearly 2,000 scientists a year who come to conduct important research.
"We have scientists who are physicists or bio-chemists or Geo-chemists who are all using high field magnets to make important discoveries," Roberts said.
Like conducting research on health and diseases and exploring how to improve the environment and protect the planet all using magnets.
"So at the MagLab we have resistance magnets, super-conductor magnets - magnets that combine both technologies to yield high fields.
It's not like there's just one type of magnet and it's quite different than the one on your fridge," Roberts said.
A "Tesla" is a unit of magnetic field strength.
So if you think about the magnet on your fridge that's about .02 Tesla.
A junkyard magnet that can pick up a whole car that's about 1 Tesla.
If you've been in the center of a hospital MRI - you've probably been inside 1.5 Tesla MRI magnet.
At the MagLab, they have a 21-Tesla MRI and their most powerful magnet is more than a million times stronger than the Earth's magnetic field.
Roberts says the scientists who visit the MagLab create huge impact in our local economy by visiting Tallahassee, staying in local hotels, eating at restaurants and most importantly, making decisions that will improve our world.
For more information on the MagLab, go to nationalmaglab.org.
