Chinese researchers have reached a new milestone in superconducting technology. On Sunday, they announced the successful generation of a steady magnetic field of 351,000 gauss using a fully superconducting magnet. This breaks the previous world record of 323,500 gauss.

For comparison, Earth itself acts as a giant magnet but generates a geomagnetic field of only about 0.5 gauss. That means the newly achieved field is more than 700,000 times stronger than Earth’s natural magnetic field.