The World's Largest Magnet is Being Built in India

If your microwave suddenly whizzes out your house and down the road, you'll know India's successfully built the world's largest magnet. The 50,000 tons of magnetised iron will be housed underground, making CERN's 37,500-ton magnet shrink in shame.

Why does India need such a large magnet? It's for their neutrino observatory, which must be built underground so cosmic rays and other radiation don't interfere with the 30,000 detectors located there.

This particular observatory, dubbed INO (Indian Neutrino Observatory) will see neutrinos interacting with the iron to eject charged particles, that will be recorded by the various detectors and provide insight into the astronomy world. Only two sources have been located so far by other observatories (the sun and supernova SN1987A) but the INO is hopeful it will find others—otherwise they wouldn't have coughed up a budget of $250 million for the project.