Magnetic fields are found in all sorts of places, and scientists have had a good understanding of why they work and how they behave for a long time. One of the many places in the universe that generates powerful magnetic fields is within stars. These magnetic fields are what cause things like solar flares and sunspots.

The magnetic field is from the movement of the material in the star as well as the movement of the star itself. Researchers have found that the faster a star rotates, the stronger the magnetic field will be, which makes sense. For the most part, scientists have been able to predict just how strong the field would be based on a variety of factors, including the size and type of the star, the speed at which it spins, and more.

When looking at some stars, however, the magnetic fields are not behaving as expected. Not even close.

One example of this is when the speed at which a star rotates increases, the strength of the magnetic fields of the stars goes up. This is expected, but if the star is rotating faster than about once every 3-10 days, the strength of the magnetic field goes up at a slower rate than predicted.

It is almost like the magnetic field gets saturated so that it is more difficult for it to increase, though it is not clear why that would happen.

A new study published in Nature Astronomy throws another wrench in the normal predictions. They say that this drop off in the magnetic field strength increase only happens for solo stars and binary stars that have an orbit that is less than about 30 days. Those stars in binary systems that orbit each other every 30 days or less seem to have a magnetic field that continues to increase as the speed of their rotation goes up.

Most binary star systems have very large orbital paths, taking far more than 30 days, so the number of examples of this found is still relitively low. The researchers still don’t even have a proposed idea as to why this weird finding would be the case, so lots more research is needed. Teams will also want to look at how these extremely high magnetic field environments might impact the planets that exist in their systems as well.

Space really never ceases to surprise us.

If you think that’s impressive, check out this story about a “goldmine” of lithium that was found in the U.S. that could completely change the EV battery game.