One magnet, any shape: physicists have learned to sculpt magnetic fields to order

Physicists at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden and the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona in Spain have demonstrated what they call magnetic omniconversion: by arranging ferromagnetic and superconducting materials around one simple coil or magnet, they can reshape its field into almost any desired pattern with mathematical exactness. Their cooled prototype turned a messy coil field into a near-perfectly uniform one, and the team has filed a patent. One adaptable magnet could one day serve MRI scanners, atomic clocks and quantum computers that today each need bespoke, resource-heavy systems. The work is published in Science Advances.