over the last few weeks pokã©mon go has takenthe world by storm. visit the beach and you'll see dozens of peoplebattling to catch water-type pokã©mon like magikarp or krabby. take a walk in the countryside and you'llfind yourself surrounded by grass-type caterpies. but what type of pokã©mon would you find inspace? while the sun is obviously not a pokã©mon,it actually has a lot in common with an electric-type pokã©mon called magneton. 'discharge' and 'zap cannon' are two of magneton'smost powerful attacks. similarly, the sun can create powerful stormscapable of knocking out communication satellites
and damaging electrical power systems on earth! these storms are caused by 'magnetic fields'on the sun. a magnet (like those you can stick to yourrefrigerator) creates an invisible force field all around it, called a magnetic field. the sun acts like a magnet. but how the sun, and stars like the sun, createtheir magnetic fields is a bit of a puzzle. the inside of a star is made of layers. there's a zone where the star's energy movesoutwards, and another where the energy circles up and down.
many scientists believe that stars' magneticfields are produced in the area where these two layers meet. however, stars much less massive than thesun don't have both these layers, as you can see in the picture above. yet a new study has just found that they stillhave magnetic fields similar to stars like the sun! it looks like our theory of magnetic fieldsneeds to be re-examined!