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Asked by shasow15 to Colm, Eoin, Joseph, Lauren, Stephen on 15 Nov 2013.
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Eoin O Colgain answered on 15 Nov 2013:
Yes, stars have magnetic fields. This is because there will be moving charged particles. Moving charges produce magnetic fields.
There is a connection here to the ITER project on nuclear fusion. Stars produce energy through nuclear fusion processes and the explosions are contained by gravitational fields. To have a star on earth, one cannot use gravity and one must use other methods to constrain the star from exploding. This is where magnetic fields should be useful.
So if one wants to make a star on earth, one option is to use a magnetic field.
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Joseph Roche answered on 15 Nov 2013:
Yes, but some are more magnetic than others. Check out “magnetars”. They’re a type of neutron star with an extremely powerful magnetic field!
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colm bracken answered on 18 Nov 2013:
Can’t really add much to the other guys answers, I would have probably also talked about magnetars which are really cool stars. The Suns magnetic field stretches way out into the solar system. Sometimes them magnetic field lines in the Sun get all tangled up until the field lines ‘snap’ and there is a sudden release of a huge amount of energy and particles into space. If these are aimed at Earth then we will see amazing Northern and Southern lights dancing in the polar skies!
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Lauren Mc Keown answered on 18 Nov 2013:
Yes they are! The magnetic structure of the atmospheres on stars such as the Sun causes a lot of observable events. For example, when the magnetic behaviour on the Sun results in a huge outflow of material or Solar wind interacts with the Earth’s magnetic field, we can get something called a geomagnetic storm, which can cause problems for electric fields here on Earth and can be why there are sometimes disturbance in communications signals for us.
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