magnetic fields tagged posts

New Images reveal the Magnetic Fields in the Horsehead Nebula

Magnetic field detections overlaid on a two-color composite of Hubble Space Telescope image taken at two near-IR wavelengths (Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes). Black and orange segments show magnetic field orientations inferred from JCMT and Palomar Observatory. Credit: Hwang et al. 2023.

Located near the summit of Maunakea, Hawaii, the 15-meter (~49 ft) James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) at the East Asia Observatory (EAO) is the largest telescope in the world designed to operate exclusively in the submillimeter-wavelength. In 2018, Molokai’i High School alumna Mallory Go was awarded time with the JCMT under the Maunakea Scholars program. With the assistance of EAO astronomer Dr...

Read More

Do Earth-like Exoplanets have Magnetic Fields? Far-off Radio Signal is Promising Sign

Exoplanet and dwarf star
An artist’s conceptual rendering of interactions between a prospective exoplanet and its star. Plasma emitted from the star is deflected by the exoplanet’s magnetic field then interacts with the star’s magnetic field, resulting in an aurora on the star and the emission of radio waves.
Credit: National Science Foundation/Alice Kitterman

Earth’s magnetic field does more than keep everyone’s compass needles pointed in the same direction. It also helps preserve Earth’s sliver of life-sustaining atmosphere by deflecting high energy particles and plasma regularly blasted out of the sun...

Read More

Plasma Jets reveal Magnetic Fields far, far away

A black hole (marked by the red x) at the centre of galaxy MRC 0600-399 emits a jet of particles that bends into a ‘double-scythe’ T-shape that follows the magnetic field lines at the galaxy subcluster’s boundary.
(Image Credit: Modified from Chibueze, Sakemi, Ohmura et al. (2021) Nature Fig. 1(b))

Radio telescope images enable a new way to study magnetic fields in galaxy clusters millions of light years away. For the first time, researchers have observed plasma jets interacting with magnetic fields in a massive galaxy cluster 600 million light years away, thanks to the help of radio telescopes and supercomputer simulations. The findings, published in the journal Nature, can help clarify how such galaxy clusters evolve.

Galaxy clusters can contain up to thousands of galaxies bound to...

Read More

Quantum Materials quest could benefit from Graphene that buckles

Graphene buckling
Simulated mountain and valley landscape created by buckling in graphene. The bright linked dots are electrons that have slowed down and interact strongly. Image: Yuhang Jiang

Cooled graphene mimics effect of enormous magnetic fields that would benefit electronics. Graphene, an extremely thin two-dimensional layer of the graphite used in pencils, buckles when cooled while attached to a flat surface, resulting in beautiful pucker patterns that could benefit the search for novel quantum materials and superconductors, according to Rutgers-led research in the journal Nature.

Quantum materials host strongly interacting electrons with special properties, such as entangled trajectories, that could provide building blocks for super-fast quantum computers...

Read More