THE discovery of magnetic "fossils" around young stars in the Milky Way has boosted the case for the existence of magnetic fields right after the big bang.
If primordial magnetic fields existed, they would have influenced how the universe evolved. For instance, they could have skewed its expansion in one direction.
Now, Claude Catala of the Paris Observatory in France and colleagues believe they have found "fossils" of primordial magnetic fields. The team were attempting to answer a puzzle in astronomy: why a small fraction of so-called main sequence A/B stars have very strong and ordered magnetic fields. These could have formed via two methods: a dynamo mechanism, due to their rotation, or by inheriting fossil fields that existed in the interstellar medium, the gas and dust between stars.
The team focused on the precursors to such stars, known as HAeBe stars, which are in a stage of evolution ...