The next time you visit deep space, don't forget to pack a compass. It might not be much use for navigation, but it will be one of the few ways you can take in one of space's sublimities, the magnetic fields. The lines of magnetic force twist and wind through the interstellar miasma and arch over millions of light-years of intergalactic wilderness. They are, astronomers have gradually realized, one of the great shaping forces of the universe. Now it seems that even the outermost of outer space—the chasms between clusters of galaxies—is pervaded by magnetic fields of unforeseen power and unknown origin. "These magnetic fields are the dominant free energy of the universe," says astrophysicist Stirling A. Colgate of Los Alamos National Laboratory.
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