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 ...

NASA’s Apollo missions brought back moon rock samples for scientists to study. We’ve learned a great deal over the ensuing decades, but one enduring mystery remains. Many of those lunar samples show ...

Scientists may have solved the mystery of why the moon shows ancient signs of magnetism although it has no magnetic field today. An impact, such as from a large asteroid, could have generated a cloud ...

Just as the amplified magnetic field peaked, these electrons settled again, locking in the strong field’s direction. Benjamin Weiss, an MIT professor and study co-author, explains the process like ...

For decades, scientists have puzzled over why lunar rocks show signs of strong magnetism when the moon itself has no global magnetic field today. New simulations suggest the answer may lie in a ...

a) In a weak magnetic field, broad cyclotron orbits suppress the orbital contribution, allowing spin polarization to dominate, (b) In strong magnetic fields, tight cyclotron orbits enhance orbital ...

The moon may be silent and still today, but billions of years ago, it likely crackled with magnetic activity. Though the moon now lacks a global magnetic field, its rocks—especially those on the far ...