this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2025
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Paywalled and even if it weren't I'm not sure I'd understand much. Can someone please ELI5 why this magnet is different from regular magnets?
It seems really weird complicated but what I could gather is it's third sort of magnet with alternating electron spin. Your standard fridge magnet the electrons all spin in the same direction so that it's pulled, for example, towards your fridge. These new magnets have no outward macro magnetism because the fields all cancel each other out. We made a magnet that doesn't act like a magnet.
Appreciate the explanation. I'm still not totally getting what use it could have if it doesn't behave like a magnet at all, but that's a good start
So looking at it further, the use case is for a "spin faucet" that could be used to rapidly control the spin polarization of an electric current. I'm not really familiar with spintronics, but it could have big implications for computing hardware.