Timothy Robishaw
Timothy Robishaw
analogy blank dial directly field location magnetic radio separated size small space station strength
An analogy would be when you're scanning the radio dial and you get the same station separated by a small blank space. The size of the blank space is directly proportional to the strength of the magnetic field at the location in space where the station is being broadcast.
dish dozens enormous exciting field hours incredibly magnetic number polarized radio responds results scientific signature successful telescope took type understand waves
These results were incredibly exciting to me for a number of reasons. There's the scientific result of a helical field structure. Then, there's the successful measurement: This type of observation is very difficult, and it took dozens of hours on the telescope just to understand how this enormous dish responds to the polarized radio waves that are the signature of a magnetic field.
clean designed response sensitive signals telescope
The telescope was designed to be very sensitive and have a very clean response to signals from the sky.
hours january radio responds since spent telescope trying
First, we spent hundreds of hours since January 2003 trying to characterize how the telescope responds to radio waves.
across field likely somehow tied
We wanted to make very high-resolution slices across the filament and see if the field really did reverse; if it did, then it's very likely that the field is somehow tied up in the filament.
combined effect fields magnetic optical radio
We combined radio measurements we made of the Zeeman effect and optical measurements of magnetic fields from starlight.
confident hours reliable science telescope time took
It took hundreds of hours of telescope time before we were confident that we could do reliable science.
affecting believe dense directly fields magnetic molecular process role shape star strong takes
The process of star formation is obscured because it takes place in these dense molecular clouds, so it's not yet directly observable. Astrophysicists believe that magnetic fields play a strong role in regulating the star formation by affecting the shape of these molecular clouds.
clouds evidence field fields indeed magnetic major might molecular mystery piece role solve star stars strongly tells trying
What we see strongly suggests that the magnetic field is indeed helical. If it is so, then this tells us a lot about the role magnetic fields might play in molecular clouds and star formation. It would be a major piece of evidence in trying to solve this mystery of how stars form.
cloud field lines magnetic rubber stretched structure tension wrapped
You can think of this structure as a giant, magnetic Slinky wrapped around a long, finger-like interstellar cloud. The magnetic field lines are like stretched rubber bands; the tension squeezes the cloud into its filamentary shape.
above cloud direction field flips gas hydrogen magnetic pointing radio towards waves
This hydrogen gas emits radio waves with a wavelength of 21 centimeters, so they come in at about 1,420 megahertz on the radio dial. We were able to find that there is a magnetic field permeating this gas cloud and that its direction is pointing towards us above the cloud and then flips to pointing away from us on the bottom.