The mysterious properties of meteorites will be transformed into music and performed live at the Cambridge Festival this Saturday (21 March). Presented by experts from Anglia Ruskin University and the University of Cambridge, the event will allow the audience to experience space science in a new way by turning the microscopic textures and mineral structures of meteorites into melodies.

Magnetic fields are observed throughout the universe, including in very young galaxies where they extend across thousands of light-years. The standard explanation for the origin of these fields is the dynamo mechanism, in which turbulent motions in an ionized gas amplify weak seed magnetic fields over time. However, conventional dynamo theory predicts that building large-scale magnetic fields in galaxies should take several billion years. Observations of galaxies in the early universe that already host strong magnetic fields therefore present a major puzzle.

In a study published in Physical Review Letters, researchers propose a mechanism that may help resolve this discrepancy. They show that the gravitational collapse of plasma clouds during galaxy formation can significantly accelerate the amplification of magnetic fields.

Most visible matter in the universe exists as plasma — an ionized gas that can be stirred by gravity, temperature gradients, and rotation, producing turbulence. Turbulent flows contain swirling structures known as eddies, and the rate at which magnetic fields grow depends on how quickly these eddies turn over. The study finds that during gravitational collapse the properties of turbulence evolve in a way that leads to super-exponential growth of magnetic fields, allowing large-scale fields to develop up to possibly a hundred times faster than predicted by standard dynamo theory.

These results suggest that magnetic fields in galaxies could have formed much earlier than previously thought, potentially influencing galaxy evolution across cosmic time.

s human-caused climate change continues to raise temperatures across the globe, understanding how birds regulate their temperature is vital for their conservation. But how much heat birds emit—an invisible spectrum of radiation known as mid-infrared—has never been studied, until now. Published in the journal Integrative Organismal Biology, a groundbreaking collaboration between material engineers and museum biologists explored the impact of mid-infrared on birds for the first time in history, reflecting the hidden prism of light, heat, and color in bird feathers.  

It’s long been known that habitat plays a role in bird coloration, a phenomenon described by biologists through things like Gloger’s rule, which predicts that animals like birds living in hot, humid areas will be visibly darker than those in dry, cool areas. Color is part of the electromagnetic spectrum, a visible wavelength that humans can see part of (the visible spectrum), and birds can see even more of (the ultraviolet spectrum), but heat, or infrared, exists outside the bounds of what either humans or birds can see. Infrared is broken down into the heat animals absorb (near-infrared) but not the heat they emit (mid-infrared). The interdisciplinary team of scientists measured both in the new study.

Environmental and sustainability compliance reporting is getting increasingly dependent on geospatial data and workflows. However, understanding of the connection between new European Union (EU) regulations and existing Earth Observation (EO) and Geographic Information System (GIS) technologies is limited. A new review study highlights how close alignment of law, data, and corporate practices can ensure that the geospatial workflows are fit for purpose in environmental and sustainability compliance reporting.