A 70-Year-Old Cosmic Puzzle Solved: How Giant Magnetic Fields Emerge from Chaos

Unraveling the Role of Turbulence in Space

According to НВ — Техно: Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have uncovered that turbulence in space can generate large, organized magnetic fields, provided a steady velocity gradient is present. The study was led by Bindesh Tripathi, with co-author Paul Terry. To test their models, the team conducted roughly 90 simulations using the Anvil supercomputer at Purdue University.

What the Simulations Revealed

These simulations spanned 137 billion points across three-dimensional space and produced approximately 0.25 petabytes of data. Notably, the computations required nearly 100 million processor hours. Laboratory experiments performed in 2012 at the Wisconsin Plasma Physics Laboratory align with the new theoretical framework developed from this work. For about 70 years, the question of how large magnetic fields form remained unresolved, as most models only generated small, disordered structures.

'Turbulence is typically seen as a destructive force, so the question was how it could possibly create large, organized magnetic fields,' said Bindesh Tripathi.

Tripathi further explained that 'initially, small disturbances produced chaotic, tiny magnetic structures, but over time, they evolved into large, orderly fields.' Paul Terry emphasized that 'the problem of forming large magnetic fields has remained unsolved for nearly 70 years, since most models only produced small and disordered structures.'

These findings could significantly advance our understanding of magnetic fields in space and their role in shaping planetary systems. The study was published on May 26.

Identifying the mechanism by which turbulence can lead to the formation of large magnetic fields opens up new avenues for exploring cosmic phenomena. This research may serve as a foundation for future work in astrophysics and plasma physics, ultimately deepening our insight into processes occurring across the universe. Potential practical applications include improving models of space physics and enhancing predictions of magnetic fields under various cosmic conditions.