Astronomers have mapped a vast "magnetic superhighway" powering intense star formation and violent 1.1 million miles per hour (500 kilometers per second) galactic winds inside the merging galaxy system Arp 220. Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), the international research team has produced the most detailed magnetic map ever made of this cosmic collision.
Arp 220, located about 250 million light-years from Earth, is an ultraluminous infrared galaxy (meaning it shines as bright as one hundred or more Milky Way galaxies) formed by the ongoing merger of two spiral galaxies. Shrouded in thick dust, it shines intensely in infrared light and serves as a nearby stand-in for the extreme, star-forming galaxies that dominated the early universe. By studying Arp 220, astronomers gain a rare window into processes that shaped massive galaxies more than 10 billion years ago.
