But at the same time we must bear in mind that physics is not a deductive science, and that its body of first principles is by no means fixed and unalterable.
Max Planck, The New Science, 1959.
The 8 Tesla MRI system at OSU was assembled through a collaborations between university staff and numerous corporations, the most significant of which was MAGNEX Scientific, the magnet manufacturer. This system is currently the most powerful human MRI in the world. It operates at 340 MHz for proton imaging. The 8 Tesla system was conceived by the author and took nearly 3 years of planning and labor to assemble. The magnet for this scanner contains the most stored magnetic energy in the world (an awesome 81 MJoules). It is made from 414 km of superconductive Nb-Ti wire. The resulting MRI scanner has produced phenomenal images and has caused many in MRI to reevaluate their understanding of this technique. Indeed, prior to the assembly and successful operation of this scanner, many had predicted that it could never produce useful images. Problems related to RF power, RF penetration, dielectric resonances, magnetic susceptibility, magnet design, magnet stability and RF coil performance were all though to be potentially fatal for MRI studies at such high frequencies. Nonetheless, the 8 Tesla MRI project has been a phenomenal scientific success and has opened many questions related to our understanding of fundamental thermodynamics.