Exotic material boosts electromagnetism safely

Scientists from Duke University and Boston College believe they can greatly enhance the forces of electromagnetism (EM), one of the four fundamental forces of nature, without harming living beings or damaging electrical equipment. EM works by alternating between current sources to generate both electric and magnetic fields, and increasing one of them generally leads to the increase in the other, but electrical fields can cause problems if they get too high. The solution to this problem comes from the recent ability to fabricate exotic composite materials known as metamaterials, which are not so much a single substance, but an entire man-made structure that can be engineered to exhibit properties not readily found in nature. This finding could have broad implications for such applications as magnetic levitation trains, which ride inches above the tracks without touching and are propelled by electromagnets.