magnetic field tagged posts

A hidden magnetic twist inside the Milky Way may rewrite what scientists know about how our galaxy is held together. Astronomers have uncovered a strange magnetic “flip” hidden inside the Milky Way. Using a new radio telescope, researchers mapped the galaxy’s magnetic field in unprecedented detail and discovered that a mysterious reversal in the Sagittarius Arm cuts diagonally across space. The finding could reshape how scientists understand the structure and future evolution of our galaxy.

For hundreds of years, astronomers have studied the night sky in an effort to understand ...

From birth to death, stars generally slow by 100 to 1,000 times their initial rotation rates; in other words, they “spin down.” The sun’s total angular momentum has declined as material is gradually blown off at the surface as solar wind. By observing this, astronomers have theorized the interaction between magneticfields and plasma flow to be the most efficient way to spin down stars.

Why and how this happens has long int...

Deep beneath the surface of distant exoplanets known as super-Earths, oceans of molten rock may be doing something extraordinary: powering magnetic fields strong enough to shield entire planets from dangerous cosmic radiation and other harmful high-energy particles.

Earth’s magnetic field is generated by movement in its liquid iron outer core—a process known as a dynamo—but larger rocky worlds like super-Earths might have solid or fully liquid cores that cannot produce magnetic fields in the sam...

A flexible screen inspired in part by squid can store and display encrypted images like a computer—using magnetic fields rather than electronics. The research is reported in Advanced Materials by University of Michigan engineers.

“It’s one of the first times where mechanical materials use magnetic fields for system-level encryption, information processing and computing...