The magnetic field of a spiral galaxy
Click for full image.
Using a variety of telescopes, especially the Jansky Very Large Array radio telescope, astronomers have successfully mapped the magnetic field lines of a spiral galaxy seen edge on and 67 million light years away.
The image to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, shows what they have found.
The magnetic field lines extend as much as 22,500 light-years beyond the galaxy’s disk. Scientists know that magnetic fields play an important role in many processes, such as star formation, within galaxies. However, it is not fully understood how such huge magnetic fields are generated and maintained. A leading explanation, called the dynamo theory, suggests that magnetic fields are generated by the motion of plasma within the galaxy’s disk. Ideas about the cause of the kinds of large vertical extensions seen in this image are more speculative, and astronomers hope that further observations and more analysis will answer some of the outstanding questions.
Our understanding of these kinds of gigantic magnetic fields is poor, to put it mildly. This data really only begins the research.
The support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in this year has the propaganda mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Even today NASA and Congress refuse to recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation:
5. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.
Click for full image.
Using a variety of telescopes, especially the Jansky Very Large Array radio telescope, astronomers have successfully mapped the magnetic field lines of a spiral galaxy seen edge on and 67 million light years away.
The image to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, shows what they have found.
The magnetic field lines extend as much as 22,500 light-years beyond the galaxy’s disk. Scientists know that magnetic fields play an important role in many processes, such as star formation, within galaxies. However, it is not fully understood how such huge magnetic fields are generated and maintained. A leading explanation, called the dynamo theory, suggests that magnetic fields are generated by the motion of plasma within the galaxy’s disk. Ideas about the cause of the kinds of large vertical extensions seen in this image are more speculative, and astronomers hope that further observations and more analysis will answer some of the outstanding questions.
Our understanding of these kinds of gigantic magnetic fields is poor, to put it mildly. This data really only begins the research.
The support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in this year has the propaganda mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Even today NASA and Congress refuse to recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation:
5. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.
OK, I’m not sure that I want to do this, but…
Robert cites this from the NARO site:
“The magnetic field lines extend as much as 22,500 light-years beyond the galaxy’s disk. Scientists know that magnetic fields play an important role in many processes, such as star formation, within galaxies. However, it is not fully understood how such huge magnetic fields are generated and maintained. A leading explanation, called the dynamo theory, suggests that magnetic fields are generated by the motion of plasma within the galaxy’s disk.”
According to my old college physics, it’s ELECTROmagnetism, and you can’t have one without the other. Likewise the motions of plasma are hypothesized as the origin of such fields.
Again, I am loathe to even broach this subject, but it all sounds a lot like the “alternative” cosmology of the Thunderbolts Project.
While a lot of the Thunderbolts adherents seem to be classic “true believers” and don’t seem to tolerate much dissent from the One and Only Holy Faith, it seems to me that they do make some very telling points, particularly about the behavior of comets. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34wtt2EUToo
That said, you can talk rationally — I hope! — about the role of plasma and EM phenomena in the universe without maintaining the obligatory Velikovsky-inspired belief that one day Jupiter spat out Venus and that it later settled into an almost perfect circular orbit around the sun, etc. But that there is a lot of “crackpottery” here does not mean that they are *totally* wrong in wanting to investigate plasma / EM effects. Likewise, you can — again I hope — advance arguments about how this may be a better model for cometary behavior without being shouted down as a lunatic so long as you can produce credible evidence. Indeed, science used to “work” this way, and back in the day, even astronomers with the credibility of Otto Struve, writing in Sky and Telescope, advocated further research into this.
Could we at least look objectively at the evidence?
Milt
People see things so differently.
I thought that link had almost exactly no information. How did they make the image? Why do the field lines look like a kindergartner painted them on?
What Milt read didn’t occur to me.
Milt Hays, Jr. noted: “According to my old college physics, it’s ELECTROmagnetism, and you can’t have one without the other.”
The plasma is matter that has some, most, or usually all of its electrons stripped from it. This plasma is the “electro” part. Ionized hydrogen (a proton without its electron) is a common component of the solar wind.
John asked: “How did they make the image?”
To get high resolution, like this, a radio telescope has to be very large. It can be a large array rather than a single dish antenna, and that is one of the purposes of the Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) radio telescope, with a possible equivalent diameter of 26 miles.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very_Large_Array#Characteristics
Edward: I should have noted in my post that the galaxy in this image is from optical telescopes. Jansky provided the info for the magnetic field lines (the white streaks above and below the galaxy’s plane).
It appears the radio data overlays the optical image, and because much of it is computer generated (as they combine the pieces from the radio array), it has the look of an artist’s impression.