CSIRO-led team releases largest-yet radio map of cosmic magnetic fields using ASKAP

A global team led by Australia’s national science agency, the CSIRO, produced the largest map of cosmic magnetic fields by measuring light from nearly 4 million galaxies as it twisted while traveling through intergalactic space. The map, named SPICE_RACS, was published by the Astronomical Society of Australia and made available to scientists worldwide.

The dataset is five times larger and more detailed than previous efforts.

It was created using the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder radio telescope array at the Inyarrimanha Ilgari Bundara observatory in Western Australia. Dr Alec Thomson, a CSIRO astronomer and astrophysicist, said the map would help answer fundamental questions.

“We still don’t actually know how magnetic fields started in the universe, or how they’ve changed across time since the big bang,” he said.

Prof Naomi McClure-Griffiths, an author of the paper and chief scientist of the Square Kilometre Array observatory, noted that earlier maps left out the southern sky. “For the past 20 years we have been working with the same dataset,” she said. ” Prof Lisa Harvey-Smith, an astrophysicist at UNSW Sydney who was not an author, said two major forces shape motion in space.

“We’re really familiar with gravity because it pulls us to the Earth,” she said. ” Harvey-Smith added that magnetic fields appear throughout the emptiest regions of space. She described the release as a “true open repository for any person to use,” with further studies expected over the coming years.