Scientists attracted to interstellar magnetism

The solar system is passing through an interstellar cloud with a strong magnetic field, according to a report in the Dec 24 issue of Nature. A team of scientists explain how NASA’s Voyager spacecraft was involved in the discovery.

“Using data from Voyager, we have discovered a strong magnetic field just outside the solar system,” says Merav Opher, a NASA Heliophysics expert from George Mason University. “This magnetic field holds the interstellar cloud together and solves the long-standing puzzle of how it can exist at all.”