As researchers finally conducted their first direct measurement of a young, far galaxy's magnetic field, the result shocked them, since it was found to be ten times stronger than the Milky Way's, exactly the opposite of what they had originally predicted.

The 6.5 billion light years away young galaxy DLA-3C286 has recently been measured by astronomer Arthur Wolfe and his team from the University of California, San Diego, with the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank radio telescope in West Virginia. Generally, charged particles that emerge from supernovae collapse-generated debris and leftovers are circled by small “seed fields”. During billions of years, these are amplified and aligned by newly-formed galaxies, helping them shape in turn. But this particular galaxy seems to have been able to leap over the slow process. “We never thought we'd find something this strong,” said Wolfe.

DLA-3C286 contains a large amount of dust and gas which is lit by a quasar located behind it in relation to our position. Tracking how hydrogen absorbs light at two near wavelengths instead of just one (a phenomenon determined by the magnetic fields' alteration of the manner in which photons are absorbed by atoms), scientists managed to deduce that the 4 billion-year-old galaxy's magnetic field stretches for over 600 light years. The process of its formation also eluded them, since their estimation that the charged particles required for the field development might have been derived from a vast series of stellar blasts along its history was proved wrong. Supernovae generate a large amount of heavy elements, which lack in this one, ergo, there were too few explosions in order to fuel the magnetic fields of the galaxy.

More specifically, this type of early galaxies are believed to have been the hot source of stars assembly, but their strong magnetic fields (created by cool gases that would generally merge in order to form stars) are prone to pushing matter particles apart, preventing star formation. As Wolfe reported to Discovery News, “The field we see may have been amplified by a shock wave caused by the collision of two galaxies”. “The theory is that it should be weaker, not stronger,” he said.

Rainer Beck, an astronomer from the Max-Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany, stated that a recent activity increase may explain the field's strength, but not its size. This kind of fields are extremely difficult to simulate, but if such strong fields are to be discovered more often, “it might mean we have to rewrite all the models of galaxy evolution because magnetic fields play a big role,” claimed Beck. They expect data analysis from another galaxy which is found even further away and is believed to have taken only about a billion years to seed its field. If that proves similarly powerful, “I'd say that would be very difficult for the dynamo theory,” said Wolfe.