Scientists from the University of Sydney have discovered that the majority of stars possess strong magnetic fields, contrary to previous belief that this was somewhat of a rare occurrence. The findings were made using data gathered from NASA's Kepler mission and found that stars just slightly bigger than the sun contain magnetic fields that are up to 10 million times that of Earth, a finding that will alter our current understanding of how stars evolve.
"This is tremendously exciting, and totally unexpected," Dennis Stello, lead researcher of the study, said in a press release. "Because only 5-0 percent of stars were previously thought to host strong magnetic fields, current models of how stars evolve lack magnetic fields as a fundamental ingredient. Such fields have simply been regarded insignificant for our general understanding of stellar evolution. Our result clearly shows this assumption needs to be revisited."
The research builds off previous research that discovered a method of inferring the presence of strong magnetic fields in stars using sound waves. Using results from this research, the new study looks at more than 700 evolved versions of our sun that were found to show strong magnetic fields, some of them so strong that their oscillations were cancelled out by the force of the fields.
"Because our sample is so big we have been able to dig deeper into the analysis and can conclude that strong magnetic fields are very common among stars that have masses of about 1.5-2.0 times that of the Sun," Stello said.
The findings will allow scientists to dig deeper into theories of how magnetic fields are created and evolve inside of stars as well as the magnetic processes that affect the communication systems and cloud cover that surround the Earth.
"Now it is time for the theoreticians to investigate why these magnetic fields are so common," Stello concluded.
The findings were published in the Jan. 4 issue of Nature.
