Giant magnet to map melted matter

A 20-ton superconducting magnet has completed its journey from California to New York. Why did the 40,000-pound superconducting magnet cross the country? The full answer to this twist on the old joke is complicated, but here’s the short version: to unlock the secrets of the atom. Pristine, particle-tracking magnets are rare enough to count on two hands. Most of these one-of-a-kind engineering feats sit at the heart of some of the most ambitious physics experiments in history and were built spe...