A Group of Astronomers Find Evidence of the First Observation of the Magnetic Field of the ‘Cosmic Web’ Spanning the Universe

Latest News, International – A group of astronomers claim to have found the first observational evidence of a magnetic field pervading the universe, which has long been theorized to exist but remains too abstract for humans to detect.

On the intergalactic scale, astronomers have long observed superclusters of galaxies, or groups of galaxies moving through the universe together and surrounded by a barren, empty space.

Stretched between them are long filaments of plasma, a runny gas full of ionized particles. The filament was observed for the first time in 2021 using the MUSE instrument, a 3-D spectrograph installed on the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile.

However, what these scientists found was evidence of a faint magnetic field created by the filament as it ionized.

Ionization means the atom has taken an extra electron from another atom or lost an electron to another atom. As the electrons move, they generate an electric current along the wire (filament), and an electric current in the general electromagnetic field. These ions can also emit electromagnetic radiation in the form of light waves. Famous examples are neon lights and the Aurora borealis.

However, while searching for magnetic fields billions of light years away, it is currently impossible to detect them, so scientists look for evidence of these fields by looking for the radio waves they emit – another type of electromagnetic radiation such as visual light.

Another problem then arose: many objects emit radio signals throughout the universe, and most are much louder and closer to Earth than these filaments. Fortunately, scientists only need polarized radio light, which they say is easy to separate from other types of radio emission.

As reported by Sputnik News, scientists used data from a collection of all-sky radio maps, layered them and compared them to look for evidence of polarized radio signals they thought might be there. And there they are.

“Our interpretation is well supported by detailed comparisons with state-of-the-art cosmological simulations,” they said.

The scientists summarized their findings in a new paper in Science Advances, a peer-reviewed journal published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.