Still, the basic picture — a fierce corkscrew of magnetized plasma unleashed by a frantically spinning black hole — is valuable for quasar researchers, says astrophysicist Ramesh Narayan of the Harvard - Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge. (sciencemag.org)
Such highly magnetized plasmas have so far been seen only near the center of the Milky Way, which has its own massive black hole. (sciencedaily.com)
Though absent today, this ancient field is recorded in rocks retrieved from the moon's surface and in magnetized patches of crust spied by orbiting spacecraft. (sciencenews.org)