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“The nation that controls magnetism controls the universe,'' argued the fictional detective Dick Tracy in Chester Gould's 1962 comic strip.
But does magnetism also govern the universe?
Our home galaxy, the Milky Way, produces about seven stars every year. They are born from dust and eventually return to dust. Now, the image of the celestial object, the impressionistic swirl of color at the center of the Milky Way, represents the first step in understanding the role of magnetic fields in the cycle of star death and rebirth.
The image was created by physicist David Chass of Vanderbilt University in Nashville and an international team of astronomers. The project is known as FIREPLACE (Large Area CMZ Exploration with Far Infrared Polarimetry). The researchers' map reveals previously unseen details in the 500-light-year-wide central expanse of the Milky Way.
The colors represent the different temperatures of the interstellar dust. Green indicates cold, dense dust. Pink indicates warm dust. Running through these hues are lines that indicate the direction of magnetic forces within the cloud. The yellow stripes are jets of hot ionized gas that emit radio waves. The jet was first recorded two years ago by the MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa.
Every new generation of eyes sees a new version of our galaxy.
To map the galaxy's magnetic field lines, Dr. Chass and colleagues flew at an altitude of 45,000 feet aboard the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA), a Model 747 equipped for astronomy. A special spectrometer measured the polarization direction of the infrared light emitted by the dust, revealing the direction of the magnetic field point by point.
The center of the Milky Way is barely noticeable to the right of the center of the map, just below a small blob resembling a horizontal figure eight. At the center of the dusty mass is a monster black hole, around which the entire galaxy revolves like a carousel.
“The next step is to figure out what this means,” Dr. Chas said in an interview. Embedded in this map may be clues to nature's deepest and most complex processes, such as how stars, the source of all light and life in the universe, are born.
“It will provide the ability to test new theories and guide the development of the next generation of astronomical exploration,” Dr Chas said.
produced by antonio de luca and Elijah Walker.
Image: Villanova University/Pare, Karpovic, and Chus (PI).
