The most powerful manmade magnetic fields have been created by using explosives to compress the magnetic field inside an electromagnet as it is pulsed; these are called explosively pumped flux compression generators. The implosion compresses the magnetic field to values of around 1000 T for a few microseconds. While this method may seem very destructive, charge shaping redirects the blast outwardly to minimize harm to the experiment. These devices are known as destructive pulsed electromagnets. They are used in physics and materials science research to study the properties of materials at high magnetic fields.