Breakthrough as a delicate silicon shell fitted with a guidance chip is shot from an electromagnetic rail gun, survives and records the ride
3-MIN READ3-MIN ListenStephen Chenin BeijingPublished: 4:00pm, 9 Jun 2026Updated: 4:03pm, 9 Jun 2026Inside a metal shell being hurled from a standstill to a speed many times faster than sound, the pressure could be as high as an elephant standing on every square inch of a human body. To make matters worse, an invisible, violent magnetic storm is raging through its path.
A breakthrough, published in the Journal of North University of China (NUC) in May, has just told the world that the nightmare is now over.
In a real-life firing test, a Chinese smart projectile prototype not only survived this journey but also recorded the entire ride.
“The electromagnetic rail gun experiment verified that it can survive an extreme environment of an 8 ms pulse width, 20,000g-force overload, and a 7 T magnetic flux density,” wrote the team led by associate professor Ge Shuangchao with NUC.
