Missing Something Big From The Big Picture
Where we muse about big discoveries about space and magnetism!
In the last couple of weeks, there have been several new papers that reported on discoveries of magnetic fields in space. Truly, each one more exciting than the last. They also made me face a truth within myself:
I do not fully understand electromagnetism, and even less so when it comes to space.
Like, I remember the formulas from my undergrad and its quantum description in my master's, but I had no further courses, and to be honest, I never had to deal with the complexities that are magnetic fields in space. And they are complex. Truly the Insane Clown Posse was right: "Fucking magnets, how do they work?"
Don't miss the planetary conjunction tonight!
Dr Alfredo Carpineti
Gravity is incredibly weak compared to electromagnetism. It doesn't look like it, but it is. Gravity's advantage is that it's only additive, so you can have bigger and bigger objects with more and more gravity, while electromagnetism can be cancelled out.
The time of no longer discounting magnetism in astronomy (to make our lives easy) might be upon us.
It is actually extraordinary just how much we can learn about magnetic fields in other star systems, across the stars, and even in intergalactic space.
Last week, researchers published the largest ever map of galactic and intergalactic magnetic fields. It's five times larger than all previous efforts combined, and the team believes that a map such as this will help uncover the role of magnetism in the formation of cosmic structures.
Another incredible story from last week is the first ever evidence of magnetic fields around giant exoplanets. We know that the giant planets in the solar system have enormous magnetic fields, so it is not surprising that exoplanets would have them. But so far we had failed to see them.
The team wasn't even looking for the fields. They were studying the winds of these exoplanets and discovered that there's something slowing down the winds on the hottest planets. The only thing that makes sense is magnetic fields.
With this first piece of evidence, researchers expect to be able to observe those magnetic fields directly.
I think I really need to learn more about the role of this cornerstone of the universe. And I think I am not the only astronomer that needs to do that!
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