Why is the universe magnetized?

Why is the universe magnetized? This is a question that scientists have been asking for decades. Now an international team of researchers seems to have found the answer: it was a spontaneous process. Their findings are published in the Jan. 26 issue of the journal Nature .

Using high-energy lasers in a French laboratory, the researchers created some of the conditions at the beginning of the universe, when galaxies were forming. With their experiment they showed that the theory known as the Biermann battery process is probably correct. Discovered in 1959 by the German astronomer Ludwig Biermann, this process predicts that a magnetic field can arise spontaneously simply from the motion of charged particles . This can occur in the plasma that floods interstellar space.

Scientists suggest that large clouds of gas that collapsed like galaxies sent elliptically shaped bubbles in waves through the early universe initiating flows of electrical current in the plasma of the intergalactic medium.