The Sun’s magnetic field is invisible to our eyes, but it quietly shapes everything from the shimmering auroras over the poles to the reliability of GPS on a jet’s navigation screen. When that ...

How does a magnetic compass work? Well, it’s all down to basic physics and human ingenuity. The key component of a standard baseplate compass is its magnetized needle, which is allowed to spin freely ...

The Sun's magnetic field impacts the movement of plasma on the sun's surface, but it does not actually impact the amount of heat the sun emits. Solar flares, for example, are huge explosions that ...

In physics, we have a bunch of constants that are used in models to explain how the world works. These are fixed numbers that we plug into equations along with our variables. For example, the ...

"As the magma cooled to form what is today the world's solid outer crust, magnetism was locked into minerals containing iron, such as magnetite." When you purchase through links on our site, we may ...

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. Amid the roilings of the Milky Way, immense pockets of gas coalesce into clouds where stars are born. In this process, there is a hidden ...

Widespread magnetism dating from our solar system’s earliest beginnings some 4.57 billion years ago likely played a major role in creating orbital order out of chaos. But until now, magnetism’s role ...

Libor Šmejkal has a fondness for the artwork of M. C. Escher, whose work was often inspired by mathematics. One of Šmejkal’s favourite pieces is Horseman, a striking picture that features an elaborate ...

MIT physicists have demonstrated a new form of magnetism that could one day be harnessed to build faster, denser, and less power-hungry "spintronic" memory chips. The new magnetic state is a mash-up ...

In collaboration with international partners, researchers at the University of Stuttgart have experimentally demonstrated a previously unknown form of magnetism in atomically thin material layers. The ...