Amid the roilings of the Milky Way, immense pockets of gas coalesce into clouds where stars are born. In this process, there is a hidden hand at play: magnetism.

“There’s this fantastic quote: You can measure a man’s ignorance by the strength of his magnetic field,” said Susan Clark, an astrophysicist at Stanford University. “In other words, when we have a piece of a problem historically in astrophysics that we don’t fully understand, just blame the magnetic field. Just wave our hands and say, ‘Ah! The magnetic field!’”

Exactly how this fundamental force helps sculpt our galaxy has long eluded scientists, largely because measuring the galactic magnetic field is a considerable challenge. Unable to detect it directly, astronomers tease out clues by studying dust that has been aligned by the magnetic field and the light that passes through this dust.

While much remains unknown, new tools and methods are bringing us closer to perceiving the influence of magnetism on the evolution of stars and galaxies, and Clark is one of the scientists spearheading this effort. As the leader of the Cosmic Magnetism and Interstellar Physics group at Stanford, she uses a combination of novel observational techniques, simulations and theory to unravel the puzzles of galactic magnetism. This year, she was awarded the Sloan Research Fellowship for “outstanding early-career faculty who have the potential to revolutionize their fields of study.”

“We are trying to not have it be a measure of our ignorance, but really understand the detailed physics of how the magnetic field affects things,” Clark said.

Quanta recently caught up with Clark at a conference in Santa Barbara, California, to learn more about her progress in probing the unseen forces of the galaxy. The interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.