In a “back from the future” moment, I went back out to the seemingly abandoned west zone of CERN (see this early “zone” post). In an old building that no one else seems to inhabit (there’s even deceased scientists’ name-tags still on the doors), I discovered one of the most amazing experiments yet! Mike Korazinos, polymath and particle physics flaneur, has invented a revolutionary new type of magnet, which is 3D printed, with sinusoidal undulations embedded in its surface. This is something utterly unique – it is the first magnet of its kind in the world!!

This device is basically the first prototype of an accelerator magnet  for the proposed “Future Circular Collider”. Finally I have found a material manifestation of this future technology … and this thing is fucking amazing!!! I used my induction coil to detect its field and see how it resonates, and whether it “sings”, and the resonant  tones that came out were perfectly vibrant, way beyond the dirty dipole from the LHC I previously experimented with (see this post). Even though my detector broke in the process, it captured the magneto-acoustics, and at the very least, showed that the fields this magnet creates are very pure. In this obscure zone I could feel the future!