Magnetic fields play an important—if sometimes underappreciated—part in planetary systems. Without a strong magnetic field, planets can end up as a barren wasteland like Mars, or they could indirectly ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. An award-winning reporter writing about stargazing and the night sky. Using 11 years of magnetic field measurements from the ...

High magnetic fields are a vital tool in many areas of science and technology that impact our everyday lives, from medical diagnostics through magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to drug discovery ...

It is not known when humans first noticed the attraction or repulsion between pieces of magnetic material. The first important device depending on these forces was the magnetic compass, which is ...

This photo shows an example of the 3.7 billion year-old banded iron formation found in the northeastern part of the Isua Supracrustal Belt. Geologists at MIT and Oxford University have uncovered ...

All celestial bodies—planets, suns, even entire galaxies—produce magnetic fields, affecting such cosmic processes as the solar wind, high-energy particle transport, and galaxy formation. Small-scale ...