CALL it a magnet’s answer to optical fibres: a hose that can carry magnetic fields a long distance.
The strength of a magnetic field drops off quickly, which is why fridge magnets don’t fly across the kitchen. Now, Carles Navau of the Autonomous University of Barcelona in Spain and colleagues have sent a field 4 centimetres.
They made a hose from a cylinder of superconducting material filled with a highly magnetic cobalt-iron alloy, then ran a current through a coil at one end to produce a field (arxiv.org/abs/1304.6300). The field that leaked out of a crack in the tube 4 cm away was only about 40 per cent weaker than at the centre of the coil. Much longer distances should be possible, they say.
This article appeared in print under the headline “A hose for magnetic fields”
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