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Spanish researchers have designed what they call the world's first "anti-magnet," a magnetic cloak that can act as a shield they envision helping the military and saving lives. For example, some types of mines in the ocean are set to detonate upon detection of magnetic fields from ships passing above them. Military ships could use an anti-magnet to stop their magnetic fields from tripping the mines.

?It was a big explosion in science [in 2008] -- the possibility of cloaking electromagnetic waves,? professor Alvar Sanchez from from Universitat Aut?noma de Barcelona in Spain and the lead author of the design told FoxNews.com. ?So we came up with the idea of trying to make something similar with magnetic fields, and now we have come up with a device we hope can be constructed eventually that will have these properties of an anti-magnet.?

An anti-magnet could protect medical patients as readily as military ships, the researchers theorize. Potentially, those using pacemakers could interact more readily with medical equipment.

?For example, in magnetic resonance imaging [MRI], in principal, you can protect the pacemaker from the field, but often you would need to distort the magnetic field, so then the quality of the images is bad,? Sanchez told FoxNews.com. ?We hope in the future our device can be put on the chest of the patient to prevent the magnetic field from entering, while at the same time not causing any distortion.?

The concept for the anti-magnet consists of two main parts. The first component is a superconductor, which serves to shield the magnetic field. That superconductor would need to be surrounded by magnetic layers, finely tuned and configured to combat distortion. Sanchez and his team envision a cylinder made of superconductive material, with a magnet placed inside. The magnet?s field would be unable to reach outside the cylinder.

The team?s design is purely theoretical at this point, but they're looking to change that.

Their study will be published in the Institute of Physics and German Physical Society?s New Journal of Physics.

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