Bringing galaxy-scale magnetic fields down to size in the lab
Researchers at the Laboratoire pour l’Utilisation de Lasers Intenses (LULI), along with colleagues at various universities, have successfully simulated the magnetic fields that form in early galaxies. Naively, there seems to be no correspondence between the experiment and the real astrophysical system. The lab set-up is very small, works on a very short time frame, and uses carbon rods and lasers; the real environment for galaxy formation is clouds of gas and dark matter, and the time-scale is hundreds of millions of years. Nevertheless, a magnetic field strength (along with other effects) has been observed in the lab that corresponds to that experienced by early protogalaxies.
