The misterious antimagnets
"Scientists have taken their first look inside antiferromagnets, a mysterious kind of antimagnet, using high-powered x-rays.
"This is the kind of magnet that actually does not stick to your refrigerator," says Dr Oleg Shpyrko, who led the research at the Center for Nanoscale Materials at Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago.
In the typical type of magnet, or ferromagnet, individual atoms line up in response to an external magnetic field.
But in antiferromagnets, the atoms do not line up in the same direction as their neighbours.
Instead, the atoms are antiparallel. Each one lines up opposite its neighbour, leaving the material magnetically neutral overall."
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