Acting as stellar archaeologists, scientists have found fossilized magnetism on long-dead stars known as "white dwarfs." This discovery may help explain how stars evolve from their "puffed out" red giant phase to their compact and smoldering white dwarf phase, a process our sun will undergo in around 5 billion years.
The team behind this research linked a theoretical model to observations of stars at different stages of their evolution, connecting evidence of magnetic fields at the surfaces of white dwarfs to magnetism detected at the cores of red giants. The team's model hinges on the idea that magnetic fields, which form early in a star's life, persist throughout all of their later stages, finally emerging on white dwarfs billions of years later as "fossil fields."
