The tesla, named after Nikola Tesla, measures magnetic field strength. One tesla is 30,000 times stronger than Earth’s magnetic field. The most powerful superconducting electromagnets produce fields of about 20T. The most powerful continuous magnetic field measures 45T, while the most powerful destructive pulse magnet measures about 850T. Medical MRI typically claims a field strength of 2T.
The tesla is an SI unit for measuring the strength of a magnetic field. Its symbol is T. The unit is named after the famous inventor Nikola Tesla, who discovered alternating current, among hundreds of other phenomena. A one tesla magnetic field is about 30,000 times stronger than the earth’s magnetic field. However, since the amount of tesla is calculated by dividing the total magnetic flux (power) by area, high tesla magnetic fields can be obtained by concentrating them in a small space.
For a magnetic flux density to equal 1 tesla, a force of 1 newton must act on a 1 meter long wire carrying 1 ampere of current. One newton – the force required to accelerate a 1 kg weight at one meter per second squared – is an enormous force for a magnetic field to exert and is not easily obtainable. The most powerful superconducting electromagnets only produce magnetic fields of about 20T.
The most powerful continuous magnetic field ever generated measures 45T and the most powerful destructive pulse magnet about 850T. A gauss, another unit for measuring magnetism, is 1/10,000 of a tesla. Gamma, yet another unit used in geophysics to measure magnetic fields, is one-billionth of a tesla.
A weber, another SI unit, is used to measure magnetic flux, while the tesla is used to measure magnetic flux density, commonly understood as a magnetic field. It is possible for a given material to become completely saturated by the magnetic flux. For example, 10 tesla is considered the upper limit of niobium-titanium accelerator magnets.
Medical MRI typically claims a field strength of 2T. A large speaker magnet generates 1T. Exotic cosmic objects such as the magnetar, a neutron star with a huge magnetic field, produce between 0.1 and 100 gigatesla. This is enough to cancel a credit card at a distance equivalent to the space between the Earth and the Sun.
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