A new, state-of-the-art zero magnetic field laboratory is about to open in the Northwestern city of Sopron, Hungary. According to a Facebook post by the HUN-REN Institute of Earth Physics and Space Science, the new facility is entering its test phase within a few weeks.

The project is done in collaboration with the HUN-REN Wigner Research Centre for Physics, and with funding from a grant from the government’s Economic Development and Innovation Operational Programme.

HUN-REN’s official website writes this about the new lab:

‘The laboratory aims to create an electromagnetically “clean” laboratory chamber, in which the static and variable geomagnetic field can be compensated, and by the efficient shielding of the remaining field, the Earth’s magnetic field can be reduced by about five orders of magnitude. Thus, a magnetic environment, typical for interplanetary space, can be created.’

The Facebook announcement goes on to write that

‘The laboratory, which is the only one of its kind in the world to exclude the effects of magnetic fields,

can help in space developments, medical diagnostics innovations, biophysics and materials science experiments.’

HUN-REN is a national research network, created by an act of the National Assembly of Hungary on 1 August 2019.

It comprises eleven research centres and seven research institutes, of which the Institute of Earth Physics and Space Science, which just made the exciting announcement of their new facility, is one.

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