How this cosmic map of magnetic fields could help illuminate one of the universe’s most mysterious forces

A cosmic map of magnetic fields – the largest ever produced – could help scientists delve into one of the major and most mysterious forces in the universe. A global team led by Australia’s national science agency, the CSIRO charted the magnetic fields by measuring light from nearly 4m galaxies as it twisted and travelled through intergalactic space. Sign up for the Breaking News Australia email Dr Alec Thomson, a CSIRO astronomer and astrophysicist said the Earth, stars, galaxies – and the material between galaxies – all had magnetic fields, so the map would enable scientists to investigate fundamental questions about the physics of the universe, and the galaxy we live in. “We still don’t actually know how magnetic fields started in the universe, or how they’ve changed across time since the big bang. And so this type of map helps us start to answer those questions and be able to look at the details of the magnetic universe.” CSIRO’s ASKAP radio telescope at Inyarrimanha Ilgari Bundara, at Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory. Photograph: CSIRO/Alex Cherney The encyclopaedic chart, now published and named “SPICE_RACS” (Spectra and Polarisation In Cutouts of Extragalactic Sources from the Rapid ASKAP Continuum Survey), was made possible by the country’s most powerful radio telescope array, the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder – located at the Inyarrimanha Ilgari Bundara observatory in Western Australia. …