We combined radio measurements we made of the Zeeman effect and optical measurements of magnetic fields from starlight.

You can think of this structure as a giant, magnetic Slinky wrapped around a long, finger-like interstellar cloud. The magnetic field lines are like stretched rubber bands; the tension squeezes the cloud into its filamentary shape.

You can think of this structure as a giant, magnetic Slinky wrapped around a long, finger-like interstellar cloud. The magnetic field lines are like stretched rubber bands the tension squeezes the cloud into its filamentary shape.

This hydrogen gas emits radio waves with a wavelength of 21 centimeters, so they come in at about 1,420 megahertz on the radio dial. We were able to find that there is a magnetic field permeating this gas cloud and that its direction is pointing towards us above the cloud and then flips to pointing away from us on the bottom.

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.

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.