Astronomers from Bonn and Tautenburg in Thuringia (Germany) used the 100-m radio telescope at Effelsberg to observe several galaxy clusters. At the edges of these large accumulations of dark matter, stellar systems (galaxies), hot gas, and charged particles, they found magnetic fields that are exceptionally ordered over distances of many million light years. This makes them the most extended magnetic fields in the universe known so far.
The results will be published on March 22 in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.
Galaxy clusters are the largest gravitationally bound structures in the universe. With a typical extent of about 10 million light years, i.e. 100 times the diameter of the Milky Way, they host a large number of such stellar systems, along with hot gas, magnetic fields, charged particles, embedded in large haloes of dark matter, the composition of which is unknown. Collision of galaxy clusters leads to a shock compression of the hot cluster gas and of the magnetic fields. The resulting arc-like features are called "relics" and stand out by their radio and X-ray emission. Since their discovery in 1970 with a radio telescope near Cambridge/UK, relics were found in about 70 galaxy clusters so far, but many more are likely to exist. They are messengers of huge gas flows that continuously shape the structure of the universe.
Radio waves are excellent tracers of relics. The compression of magnetic fields orders the field lines, which also affects the emitted radio waves. More precisely, the emission becomes linearly polarized. This effect was detected in four galaxy clusters by a team of researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn (MPIfR), the Argelander Institute for Radio Astronomy at the University of Bonn (AIfA), the Thuringia State Observatory at Tautenburg (TLS), and colleagues in Cambridge/USA. They used the MPIfR's 100-m radio telescope near Bad Münstereifel-Effelsberg in the Eifel hills at wavelengths of 3 cm and 6 cm. Such short wavelengths are advantageous because the polarized emission is not diminished when passing through the galaxy cluster and our Milky Way. Fig.1 shows the most spectacular case.
Relics in galaxy clusters at high radio frequencies (open, DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/201629570) (DX) (arXiv)
(Score: 1) by anubi on Thursday March 23 2017, @10:21AM (1 child)
Any way to interact with the field ( large superconductor electromagnetic ring ) so as to provide a force vector on a ship?
The only way we can seem to make a ship go forward now is to hurl stuff out the back end as hard as we can... and we run out of stuff to hurl.
That kinda puts a damper on what we can do.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Thursday March 23 2017, @12:32PM
I imagine it would be better just to accelerate interstellar dust as in an ion drive...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 23 2017, @12:54PM (2 children)
...there's electricity. ;)
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 23 2017, @06:34PM (1 child)
Are you the electric universe guy? Do you know where he is? This is his big chance!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 23 2017, @10:23PM
Hence the wink.
(Score: 2, Informative) by budgenator on Thursday March 23 2017, @06:40PM (1 child)
Not being An Astrophysicist, I found a clearer explanation at the Max Planck Institute Giant Magnetic Fields in the Universe [mpifr-bonn.mpg.de]. The interesting thing about the magnetic fields is it seems to imply the Universe has a direction.
(Score: 2) by cubancigar11 on Friday March 24 2017, @05:21AM
How does it imply that universe has a direction?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 23 2017, @07:29PM (2 children)
We need some of the guys struggling to get funding for $100B telescopes to come back into the terrestrial sphere and solve some practical problems. I love this stuff - polarized fields due to ... something - but on the ground where I am the people are struggling with long division. Help!?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 23 2017, @09:06PM (1 child)
The solution is simple. Stop doing it. Do you think these $100B telescope guys do long division? No, they have a computer do the calculations.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 23 2017, @09:57PM
Genius! If you want to do stuff properly... stop doing it at all. Mark solved - thanks.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 23 2017, @11:03PM (2 children)
because he thought stars and galaxies were shaped by electric fields and the orthodoxy did not want that studied:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Halton_Arp [wikipedia.org]
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/07/science/space/halton-c-arp-astronomer-who-challenged-big-bang-theory-dies-at-86.html [nytimes.com]
"Halton C. Arp, a provocative son of American astronomy whose dogged insistence that astronomers had misread the distances to quasars cast doubt on the Big Bang theory of the universe and led to his exile from his peers and the telescopes he loved, died on Dec. 28 in Munich. He was 86."
Search also on "Electric Universe".
"Halton Arp and the Electric Universe"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfxrEFf3Wuc [youtube.com]
The orthodoxy at Wikipedia purges info on that:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Electric_universe_(concept) [wikipedia.org]
See also "Disciplined Minds" by Jeff Schmidt.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 24 2017, @01:42PM (1 child)
What is your point, that this vindicates him and his theories? Are you aware that the Electric Universe idea doesn't even hold up to the lightest of scrutiny [blogspot.com], such as making demonstrably false statements, some of those being trivial to refute? In that way it is the Trump version of cosmology.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 25 2017, @11:02PM
The comments at the link you posted attempt to refute the blog entry. Lots of mainstream theories make some potentially false statements (or even non-falsifiable statements) and are upheld. Considering the original article is "Giant Magnetic Fields in the Universe", that is at least some evidence for the Electric Universe theory even if some specifics in some variants of the EU theory my be wrong.
As one comment on the page you linked: "TimothyB14 March 2014 at 12:52
Peer Review would require a peer structure that was amenable to reviewing your work. Not the case with Plasma Cosmology, at this point. Not for lack of trying.. Halton Arp, A. Peratt, D. Scott (all PhD holders) have all published papers, but journals like Nature or JOA won't review them. Why? Certainly not because they lack merit. It is because the culture of science is not what people claim it to be. It is top down, and authoritarian. Go too far off the beaten path, and you get slapped.
So, they have gone the other way. Create interest, attract skill, work on the theories and the organs of support, and build a base. It's the only way to truly dissent in science, since real dissent is always treated as pseudoscience, even if it is well researched and there is mountains of evidence to back it up.. like the EU model."
See also the book "Disciplined Minds" by Jeffery Smith (a physicist). Or search on "peer review as censorship".