Free Astronomy Magazine November-December 2023

22 NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 2023 ASTRO PUBLISHING how the magnetic fields of galaxies like our own Milky Way came to be. Lots of astronomical bodies in the Universe have magnetic fields, whether it be planets, stars or galaxies. “Many people might not be aware that our entire galaxy and other galaxies are laced with mag- netic fields, spanning tens of thou- sands of light-years,” says James Geach, a professor of astrophysics at the University of Hertfordshire, UK, and lead author of the study published in Nature . “We actually know very little about how these fields form, despite their being quite fundamental to how galaxies evolve,” adds Enrique Lopez Rodriguez, a researcher at Stanford University, USA, who also Furthest ever detection of a galaxy’s magnetic field by ESO Bárbara Ferreira U sing the Atacama Large Mil- limeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), astronomers have detected the magnetic field of a galaxy so far away that its light has taken more than 11 billion years to reach us: we see it as it was when the Universe was just 2.5 billion years old. The result provides as- tronomers with vital clues about