“Relatively confined magnetic fields like those in the Earth and Sun are generated by the turbulent mixing of conducting fluids in their cores. But large-scale fields tangled within galaxies and clusters of galaxies are harder to explain by fluid mixing alone. That is because most galaxies have rotated only a few dozen times since they formed.

…Now, researchers led by Kiyotomo Ichiki of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan in Tokyo have used standard physics to explain the seed field. They say the field began before the first atoms formed, when the universe was a hot soup of protons, electrons and photons – a state that lasted for the first 370,000 years after the big bang.” (New Scientist)