{"id":461750,"date":"2026-06-05T04:05:10","date_gmt":"2026-06-05T04:05:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/461750\/"},"modified":"2026-06-05T04:05:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T04:05:10","slug":"this-cosmic-map-of-magnetic-fields-could-help-illuminate-one-of-the-universes-most-mysterious-forces-csiro","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/461750\/","title":{"rendered":"This cosmic map of magnetic fields could help illuminate one of the universe\u2019s most mysterious forces | CSIRO"},"content":{"rendered":"

A cosmic map of magnetic fields \u2013 the largest ever produced \u2013 could help scientists delve into one of the major and most mysterious forces in the universe.<\/p>\n

A global team led by Australia\u2019s national science agency, the CSIRO<\/a> charted the magnetic fields by measuring light from nearly 4m galaxies as it twisted and travelled through intergalactic space.<\/p>\n

Sign up for the Breaking News Australia email<\/a><\/p>\n

Dr Alec Thomson, anastronomer who works with CSIRO<\/a>, said the Earth, stars, galaxies \u2013 and the material between galaxies \u2013 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe still don\u2019t actually know how magnetic fields started in the universe, or how they\u2019ve 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

CSIRO\u2019s ASKAP radio telescope at Inyarrimanha Ilgari Bundara, at Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory. Photograph: CSIRO\/Alex Cherney<\/p>\n

The encyclopaedic chart, now published and named \u201cSPICE_RACS\u201d (Spectra and Polarisation In Cutouts of Extragalactic Sources from the Rapid ASKAP Continuum Survey), was made possible by the country\u2019s most powerful radio telescope array, the Australian Square Kilometre Array (SKA) Pathfinder \u2013 located at the Inyarrimanha Ilgari Bundara, the CSIRO Murchison radio-astronomy observatory in Western Australia. The instrument is capable of scanning immense areas of the sky and deep into the far reaches of distant galaxies.<\/p>\n

Prof Naomi McClure-Griffiths, an author of the paper and chief scientist of the SKA observatory, said previous efforts to map magnetic fields didn\u2019t even cover the southern sky.<\/p>\n

\"TheThe largest cosmic map of the universe ever produced<\/p>\n

\u201cFor the past 20 years we have been working with essentially the same dataset,\u201d she said. \u201cNow, we can finally answer some big questions with a much better picture of the universe\u2019s magnetic structures.\u201d<\/p>\n

The dataset, which was five times larger and much more detailed than previous efforts, has been made available<\/a> to scientists around the world, and published by the Astronomical Society of Australia.<\/p>\n

Prof Lisa Harvey-Smith, an astrophysicist at the UNSW Sydney, who was not an author of the paper, said there were the two big forces that moved things in space \u2013 gravity and electromagnetism.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re really familiar with gravity because it pulls us to the Earth. It keeps us on the planet. It makes the Earth orbit the Sun, it makes the moon orbit the Earth and so on,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Electromagnetic forces were the other major ingredient. Magnetic fields are a naturally occurring phenomenon, used in magnets and old-fashioned compasses for navigation, but also responsible for creating light and colour. A magnetic field is a physical property that could be created by the movement of charged particles or molten metals in the Earth\u2019s core.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Earth is actually a magnet, it creates its own invisible magnetic field,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd that tells us which way is north and south, that\u2019s really handy.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you extend that into space, we actually learn that other objects are magnets as well. Things like stars and galaxies create magnetic fields. And in fact, when you look throughout the emptiest, vastest regions of space we still see magnetic fields.\u201d<\/p>\n

Harvey-Smith said it was \u201cwonderful\u201d that the data was being made available as a \u201ctrue open repository for any person to use\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe result of creating the map is not the end product \u2013 the end product will be over the next few years with scientists dipping in and doing their own studies of particular star-forming regions or particular galaxies. And there\u2019ll be so many discoveries that flow on from this map.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A cosmic map of magnetic fields \u2013 the largest ever produced \u2013 could help scientists delve into one…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":461751,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[111,139,69,147,392],"class_list":["post-461750","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=461750"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461750\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/461751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=461750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=461750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=461750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}