Cosmology; Does electromagnetism vary across the universe (Introduction)

by David Turell , Saturday, February 10, 2018, 01:22 (2270 days ago) @ David Turell

The universe is filled with magnetic fields. The cause is now clarified:

https://phys.org/news/2018-02-astrophysicists-cosmic-debate-magnetism-planets.html

"The universe is highly magnetic, with everything from stars to planets to galaxies producing their own magnetic fields. Astrophysicists have long puzzled over these surprisingly strong and long-lived fields, with theories and simulations seeking a mechanism that explains their generation.

"...a team led by University of Chicago scientists experimentally confirmed one of the most popular theories for cosmic magnetic field generation: the turbulent dynamo. By creating a hot turbulent plasma the size of a penny, that lasts a few billionths of a second, the researchers recorded how the turbulent motions can amplify a weak magnetic field to the strengths of those observed in our sun, distant stars, and galaxies.

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"Confirming decades of numerical simulations, the experiment revealed that turbulent plasma could dramatically boost a weak magnetic field up to the magnitude observed by astronomers in stars and galaxies.

"'We now know for sure that turbulent dynamo exists, and that it's one of the mechanisms that can actually explain magnetization of the universe," said Petros Tzeferacos, research assistant professor of astronomy and astrophysics and associate director of the Flash Center. "This is something that we hoped we knew, but now we do."

"A mechanical dynamo produces an electric current by rotating coils through a magnetic field. In astrophysics, dynamo theory proposes the reverse: the motion of electrically-conducting fluid creates and maintains a magnetic field. In the early 20th century, physicist Joseph Larmor proposed that such a mechanism could explain the magnetism of the Earth and Sun, inspiring decades of scientific debate and inquiry.

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"The team also used FLASH simulations to develop two independent methods for measuring the magnetic field produced by the plasma: proton radiography, the subject of a recent paper from the FLASH group, and polarized light, based on how astronomers measure the magnetic fields of distant objects. Both measurements tracked the growth in mere nanoseconds of the magnetic field from its weak initial state to over 100 kiloGauss—stronger than a high-resolution MRI scanner and a million times stronger than the magnetic field of the Earth.

"'This work opens up the opportunity to verify experimentally ideas and concepts about the origin of magnetic fields in the universe that have been proposed and studied theoretically over the better part of a century," said Fausto Cattaneo, Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Chicago and a co-author of the paper."

Comment: There have been comments about an electromagnetic universe fields in previous dicussions, and we certainly need to learn more about them, as electromagnetism in one of the four basic forces of the universe.