Timothy Robishaw
Timothy Robishaw
affecting believe dense directly fields magnetic molecular process role shape star strong takes
The process of star formation is obscured because it takes place in these dense molecular clouds, so it's not yet directly observable. Astrophysicists believe that magnetic fields play a strong role in regulating the star formation by affecting the shape of these molecular clouds.
hours january radio responds since spent telescope trying
First, we spent hundreds of hours since January 2003 trying to characterize how the telescope responds to radio waves.
analogy blank dial directly field location magnetic radio separated size small space station strength
An analogy would be when you're scanning the radio dial and you get the same station separated by a small blank space. The size of the blank space is directly proportional to the strength of the magnetic field at the location in space where the station is being broadcast.
dish dozens enormous exciting field hours incredibly magnetic number polarized radio responds results scientific signature successful telescope took type understand waves
These results were incredibly exciting to me for a number of reasons. There's the scientific result of a helical field structure. Then, there's the successful measurement: This type of observation is very difficult, and it took dozens of hours on the telescope just to understand how this enormous dish responds to the polarized radio waves that are the signature of a magnetic field.
clean designed response sensitive signals telescope
The telescope was designed to be very sensitive and have a very clean response to signals from the sky.
across field likely somehow tied
We wanted to make very high-resolution slices across the filament and see if the field really did reverse; if it did, then it's very likely that the field is somehow tied up in the filament.
combined effect fields magnetic optical radio
We combined radio measurements we made of the Zeeman effect and optical measurements of magnetic fields from starlight.