each sphere is a checkerboard pattern of inwards and outwards going magnetic field lines. As the checkerboard pattern of the static spheres is rotated, the rotor rotates. In this construction no axis is made stable on the cost of making another axis unstable, but all axes are neutral and the electronic regulation is less stressed and will be more dynamically stable. Hall effect sensors can be used to sense the rotational position and the other degrees of freedom can be measured capacitively. Maximum pressure At atmospheric pressure, the mean free path of air is about 70 nm. A turbomolecular pump can work only if those molecules hit by the moving blades reach the stationary blades before colliding with other molecules on their way. To achieve that, the gap between moving blades and stationary blades must be close to or less than the mean free path. From a practical construction standpoint, a feasible gap between the blade sets is on the order of 1 mm, so a turbopump will stall (no net pumping) if exhausted directly to the atmosphere. Since the mean free path is inversely proportional to pressure, a turbopump will pump when the exhaust pressure is less than about where the mean free path is about 0.7 mm. Most turbopumps have a Holweck pump (or molecular drag pump) as their last stage to increase the maximum backing pressure (exhaust pressure) to about 1–10 mbar. Theoretically, a centrifugal pump, a side channel pump, or a regenerative pump could be used to back to atmospheric pressure directly, but currently there is no commercially available turbopump that exhausts directly to atmosphere. In most cases, the exhaust is connected to a mechanical backing pump (usually called roughing pump) that produces a pressure low enough for the turbomolecular pump to work efficiently. Typically, this backing pressure is below 0.1 mbar and commonly about 0.01 mbar. The backing pressure is rarely below 10−3 mbar (mean free path ≈ 70 mm) because the flow resistance of the vacuum pipe between the turbopump and the roughing pump becomes significant. The turbomolecular pump can be a very versatile pump. It can generate many degrees of vacuum from intermediate vacuum (≈10−2 Pa) up to ultra-high vacuum levels (≈10−8 Pa). Multiple turbomolecular pumps in a lab or manufacturing-plant can be connected by tubes to a small backing pump. Automatic valves and diffusion pump like injection into a large buffer-tube in