Tag Archive for 'Magnetic field'

Forced magnetic reconnection, caused by a prominence from the Sun, was seen for the first time in images from SDO. This image shows the Sun on May 3, 2012, with the inset showing a close-up of the reconnection event imaged by SDO’s Atmospheric Imaging Assembly instrument, where the signature X-shape is visible. Image credit: NASA / SDO / Abhishek Srivastava / IIT.

Solar Dynamics Observatory Observes Forced Magnetic Reconnection in Sun’s Corona

Dec 18, 2019 by News Staff

NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) has directly observed a new type of magnetic explosion — called forced reconnection — in the solar...

Magnetic fields in the spiral galaxy Messier 77, also known as M77 and NGC 1086, are shown as streamlines over a visible light and X-ray composite image of the galaxy from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR), and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. The magnetic fields align along the entire length of the massive spiral arms of Messier 77, implying that the gravitational forces that created the galaxy’s shape are also compressing the its magnetic field. This supports the leading theory of how the spiral arms are forced into their iconic shape known as ‘density wave theory.’ SOFIA studied the galaxy using far-infrared light (89 microns) to reveal facets of its magnetic fields that previous observations using visible and radio telescopes could not detect. Image credit: NASA / SOFIA / JPL-Caltech / Roma Tre University.

Magnetic Fields Play Important Role in Shaping Spiral Galaxies

Dec 11, 2019 by News Staff

New infrared observations from NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) of Messier 77, a spiral galaxy located 47 million light-years...

SDO image of the solar corona in UV light (yellow lines represent the magnetic field on the surface of the Sun). Image credit: NASA / SDO / AIA / LMSAL.

Researchers Crack Mystery of Sun’s Magnetic Waves

Dec 3, 2019 by News Staff

For more than six decades, observations of our Sun have shown that as magnetic waves leave its interior they grow in strength, but until now there has...

NGC 4631 is seen edge-on, with its disk of stars shown in pink; the filaments, shown in green and blue, extend beyond the disk into the galaxy’s extended halo; green indicates filaments with their magnetic field pointing roughly toward us and blue with the field pointing away; this phenomenon, with the field alternating in direction, has never before been seen in the halo of a galaxy. This VLA image shows a companion galaxy -- a small elliptical galaxy called NGC 4627 -- just above NGC 4631. Image credit: Jayanne English, University of Manitoba / Silvia Carolina Mora-Partiarroyo & Marita Krause of the Max-Planck Institute for Radioastronomy / Maria Patterson & Rene Walterbos, New Mexico State University / Arpad Miskolczi, University of Bochum / NRAO.

Astronomers Spot Huge Magnetic Structures in ‘Whale Galaxy’

Nov 28, 2019 by News Staff

Astronomers using NSF’s Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) have captured a new image of the edge-on barred spiral galaxy NGC 4631 (also known as ‘Whale...

This composite image shows the Orion A molecular cloud, the nearest known massive star factory, as seen by ESA’s Herschel and Planck space observatories. Located approximately 1,630 light-years away, Orion A is one of the two giant molecular clouds in the Orion molecular cloud complex. The other cloud is Orion B, which lies east of Orion’s Belt. Orion A is packed full of gas -- it contains so much material, in fact, that it would be capable of producing tens of thousands of Sun-mass stars. Different colors visible here indicate the light emitted by interstellar dust grains mixed within the gas, as observed by Herschel at far-infrared and sub-millimeter wavelengths, while the texture of faint gray bands stretching across the frame, based on Planck’s measurements of the direction of the polarized light emitted by the dust, show the orientation of the magnetic field. Image credit: ESA / Herschel / Planck / J.D. Soler, Max Planck Institute for Astronomy.

Magnetic Fields Play Role in Structuring Interstellar Medium in and around Star-Forming Clouds: Study

Nov 19, 2019 by News Staff

In a new study published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, Dr. Juan Soler of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy used observations from ESA’s...

NASA’s Voyager 2 Spacecraft Sends Back New Data on Interstellar Space

Nov 5, 2019 by News Staff

In November 2018, NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft became only the second human-made object to cross the outer edge of the Sun’s heliosphere, the bubble...

An artist’s impression of FRB 181112 traveling through the halo of a massive galaxy 4 billion light-years from Earth. Image credit: M. Kornmesser / ESO.

Fast Radio Burst Exposes Halo of Massive Galaxy

Sep 30, 2019 by News Staff

In November 2018, CSIRO’s Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) detected a new fast radio burst, an enigmatic blast of cosmic radio waves...

Earth’s magnetic field connects the North Pole (orange lines) with the South Pole (blue lines) in this NASA-created image. Image credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

Most Recent Reversal of Earth’s Magnetic Field Lasted 22,000 Years

Aug 8, 2019 by News Staff

Earth’s magnetic field is produced in the planet’s liquid iron outer core as it spins around the solid inner core, and protects the surface from harmful...

Hot Jupiters Have Powerful Magnetic Fields

Jul 23, 2019 by News Staff

Hot Jupiters — massive gaseous exoplanets orbiting close to their host stars — have surprisingly powerful magnetic fields, many times stronger...

Array of 1 mm magnetic droplets: fluorescent green droplets are paramagnetic without any jammed nanoparticles at the liquid interface; red are paramagnetic with nonmagnetic nanoparticles jammed at the interface; brown droplets are ferromagnetic with magnetic nanoparticles jammed at the interface. Image credit: Xubo Liu et al / Berkeley Lab.

Researchers 3D Print Ferromagnetic Liquid Droplets

Jul 19, 2019 by News Staff

Using a modified 3D printer, an international team of researchers led by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has made a new material that is both liquid...

Single magnetic atoms are deposited on a surface of magnesium oxide; they are imaged by the magnetic tip of a scanning tunneling microscope which allows researchers to perform an MRI scan of the atom’s magnetic field. Image credit: Willke et al.

Physicists Use MRI to Scan Individual Atoms

Jul 3, 2019 by News Staff

A team of experimental physicists from the Institute for Basic Science, the Ewha Womans University and the IBM Almaden Research Center has performed the...

A new type quasiparticle discovered in graphene double-layer structure. This so-called composite fermion consists of one electron and two different types of magnetic flux, illustrated as blue and gold colored arrows in the figure. Composite fermions are capable of forming pairs, such unique interaction lead to experimental discovery of unexpected new quantum Hall phenomena. Image credit: Michelle Miller & Jia Li, Brown University.

Physicists Observe Exotic Quantum States in Double-Layer Graphene

Jun 26, 2019 by News Staff

An international team of physicists from the United States and Japan has demonstrated a series of fractional quantum Hall effect states that arise in double-layer...

An artist’s impression of the GRB 190114C jet over time, and the small patches of magnetic fields. Image credit: Laskar et al.

Astronomers Capture First Polarized Radio Signal from Gamma-Ray Burst

Jun 21, 2019 by News Staff

Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are the most energetic explosions in the Universe, beaming out mighty jets which travel through space at 0.99 times the speed of...

The superconducting quantum refrigerator is similar to a conventional refrigerator, in that it moves a material between hot and cold reservoirs. However, instead of a refrigerant that changes from a liquid state to a gas, the electrons in a metal change from the paired superconducting state to an unpaired normal state. Image credit: Michael Osadciw, University of Rochester illustration.

Physicists Developing Superconducting Quantum Refrigerator

Jun 11, 2019 by News Staff

A research team led by University of Rochester physicists has conceived an idea for a superconducting quantum refrigerator, which would cool atoms to nearly...

LOFAR image centered on the Abell 0399-Abell 0401 system; color and contours show the radio emission at 140 MHz; the faceting of the field is shown with red lines. Image credit: Govoni et al, doi: 10.1126/science.aat7500.

LOFAR Telescope Sees Ridge of Radio-Emitting Plasma between Two Merging Galaxy Clusters

Jun 10, 2019 by News Staff

Astronomers using the Low-Frequency Array (LOFAR) telescope network have detected a vast ridge of radio emission connecting the merging galaxy clusters...

An electron is trapped in a quantum dot, which is formed in a 2D gas in a semiconductor wafer. However, the electron moves within the space and, with different probabilities corresponding to a wave function, remains in certain locations within its confinement (red ellipses). Using the gold gates applied electric fields, the geometry of this wave function can be changed. Image credit: University of Basel.

Physicists Determine Geometry of Electrons in Quantum Dots

May 24, 2019 by News Staff

A team of physicists at the University of Basel has experimentally mapped out the shape and orientation of electrons trapped in quantum dots. An electron...

This image of Jupiter was taken on February 12, 2019, as Juno performed its 18th close flyby of the planet. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI / MSSS / Kevin M. Gill.

Jupiter’s Winds Interact with Its Magnetic Field, Scientists Say

May 22, 2019 by News Staff

Planetary researchers from NASA’s Juno mission made the first detection beyond Earth of an internal magnetic field that changes over time — a phenomenon...

Macleod et al analyzed the properties of vacuum Cherenkov radiation in strong laser pulses and the magnetic field around a pulsar. Image credit: Gerd Altmann.

High-Velocity Charged Particles Emit Cherenkov Radiation in Quantum Vacuum

May 6, 2019 by News Staff

According to new research published in the journal Physical Review Letters, charged particles traveling through empty space can emit Cherenkov radiation...

Wang et al report a strong, specific human brain response to ecologically-relevant rotations of Earth-strength magnetic fields. Image credit: Gerd Altmann.

First Neuroscientific Evidence that Humans Have Geomagnetic Sense

Mar 19, 2019 by Enrico de Lazaro

An international team of neuroscientists and geoscientists from Caltech, the University of Tokyo, Princeton University and Tokyo Institute of Technology...

This composite image shows the starburst galaxy Messier 82. The magnetic field detected by SOFIA, shown as streamlines, appears to follow the bipolar outflows (red) generated by the intense nuclear starburst. The image combines visible starlight (gray) and a tracing of hydrogen gas (red) from the Kitt Peak Observatory, with near-infrared and mid-infrared starlight and dust (yellow) from SOFIA and NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope. Image credit: NASA / SOFIA / E. Lopez-Rodriguez / Spitzer / J. Moustakas et al.

SOFIA Observes Galactic Superwind in Messier 82

Mar 6, 2019 by News Staff

Astronomers using NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) have discovered that the galactic wind flowing from the center of Messier...

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