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(CNN) -- George Hadjipanayis' assistant came to him with perplexing news: Some incredibly strong magnetic field had caused their lab instruments to go haywire.
"You're out of your mind," Hadjipanayis recalls telling him in the early 1980s. "You have something wrong; go back" and try the experiment again.
Nothing was wrong, though, and Hadjipanayis soon realized that his team accidentally had created what was then, and continues to be, the world's strongest magnet -- made of a strange and little understood "rare earth" element called neodymium. That magnet would help revolutionize technology, powering wind turbine motors and giving juice to electric cars.
But the luck wouldn't last.
"You're out of your mind," Hadjipanayis recalls telling him in the early 1980s. "You have something wrong; go back" and try the experiment again.
Nothing was wrong, though, and Hadjipanayis soon realized that his team accidentally had created what was then, and continues to be, the world's strongest magnet -- made of a strange and little understood "rare earth" element called neodymium. That magnet would help revolutionize technology, powering wind turbine motors and giving juice to electric cars.
But the luck wouldn't last.
The race to make the world's strongest magnet
George Hadjipanayis' assistant came to him with perplexing news: Some incredibly strong magnetic field had caused their lab instruments to go haywire.
edition.cnn.com
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