A JUDDERING magnet has inspired a scientist at the US Department of Energy to
investigate a bizarre new way of propelling a spacecraft.
The idea for a “judder-drive” struck David Goodwin when he noticed that
powerful cryogenically cooled superconducting magnets often jolt in one
direction for a centimetre or two when you first turn them on.
“If you have something metal in the magnetic field as it is forming, you see
the magnet physically shift,” Goodwin, who works at the Office of High Energy
and Nuclear Physics in Germantown, Maryland, told Â鶹´«Ã½.
Superconducting magnets are cooled to such a…
