In collaboration with physicists from Laboratoire d’Optique Apliquée (LOA), EPP researchers have tested a model for the origin of large-scale magnetic fields in the universe. The origin of magnetic fields in astrophysics is an outstanding scientific mystery, which has been investigated using powerful telescopes that probe our universe. Observations from telescopes can be viewed as data from experiments whose initial conditions cannot be controlled and tuned by human beings. In order to face this limitation, researchers have recently begun to reproduce astrophysical conditions under controlled environments in the laboratory. EPP team members Jorge Vieira and Luís Silva and LOA researchers have now used intense lasers in plasmas to test a model for the origin of cosmic magnetic fields in the laboratory. The work involving experiments, theory and simulations was published in Nature Physics and can be found here.