The new record was set on September 22 at the Steady High Magnetic Field Facility (SHMFF) in Hefei, narrowly edging out the previous record of 41.4 tesla held by another resistive magnet at the National High Magnetic Field Lab in Florida since 2017.
As for why scientists are so determined to push the limits of magnetism, physicist Joachim Wosnitza from Germany's Dresden lab explained that it opens up all kinds of bizarre new realms of physics to explore. Essentially, the stronger the magnetism, the greater the chances of discovering new states of matter.