This is from August 2000!

Since them, much more detailed magnetic fields maps have been made of the Milk Way: https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2019/09/23/this...

Also for other galaxies: https://www3.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de/staff/rbeck/PSSS18.pdf

My undergraduate advisor (David Chuss) at Villanova and some of his students recently put together a really nice visualization of the magnetic fields at the center of our galaxy.

Last I talked to him about it, he said that the results were surprising. I think he said no one really knew yet how to explain the vertical yellow streaks representing hot plasma.

http://www62.homepage.villanova.edu/david.chuss/FIREPLACE_Po...

A galaxy is so large (e.g. the milky way is ~ 1 billion billions km in diameter!), and bodies are so far from each other that it is far from intuitive that there should even be a magnetic field, and it's even neatly aligned along the arms!

Still wishing for a space. ycombinator .com (or spacetime. )

Could link to a custom, cached search?

Tried playing with the algolia search and the API but it doesn't seem to properly support multi-keyword searches and OR logic.

Easy to build a list of keywords to search titles and first-posts

This might be a dumb question, but how does this interact with dark matter observations? Do magnetic fields in any way help explain higher than expected galactic orbital rates?

Could we use this magnetic field for propulsion?

Does it have an electric field?

Galaxies with no black hole at the heart have the same arms?