ONE of the world’s most sensitive magnetic field detectors, called a SQUID,
can be used to spot the corrosion that fatally weakens aircraft.
A plane’s fuselage is made from overlapping sheets of aluminium and the
joints between them slowly corrode from the inside out. You can’t spot the
damage eating away at the joints without taking them apart every few years. But
physicists have devised a way to detect corrosion before it becomes a problem:
by sensing its magnetic field.
Such fields are up to 100 000 times weaker than the Earth’s magnetic field.
But physicists John Wikswo and Grant…
