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Canadian Astronomers Discover a Magnetar
trotski writes "The Globe and Mail is running an article about the discovery of a magnetar star by Canadian astronomers. The star, named SGR 1806-20, is located 40,000 light-years from earth. This neutron star is one of only four magnetars ever discovered. Magnetars are characterized by their huge magnetic fields, billions of times stronger than any magnets on Earth. Apparently, if this star was located as far away as the moon, it could demag floppy disks and suck change right out of your pocket."
Having a star as close as the moon would probably be pretty warm, too.
Cogito ergo sum in Slashdot.
Wow, imagine what it could do if coins were actually ferrous!
If a star was about as far away as the moon, I think I'd worry about more than pocket change and floppy disks.
One future, two choices. Oppose them or let them destroy us.
Try going near an MRI machine with change in your pocket. I made that mistake once, and it was tugging hard at the coins from across the room. >1 tesla magnetic fields need to be treated with respect - people can get seriously hurt if anything metallic gets brought into the room - they can get ripped out of your hand or pocket and will fly straight down the central bore where the patient is. I've heard stories of people being killed when someone walked into an MRI room with a pair of scissors in their pocket.
if this star was located as far away as the moon, it could demag floppy disks
Yet another reason I'm glad I stayed with paper tape.
-- MarkusQ
See my previous comment. A strong enough magnetic field really doesn't care what metal something is made of.
Maybe the star is Democratic, not magnetic. A Demostar. Then it could suck the change out of your pocket.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Please tell me I'm not the only one here who thinks this sounds like a villain out of an 80's cartoon. Maybe Space Ghost, or Transformers.
Good judgment comes from experience.
Experience comes from bad judgment.
That pocket change isn't pure metal either. In every nickel in your pocket, I wouldn't be surprised to find more than a trace amount of iron. A big magnetic field would attract that.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
And that makes me the perfect candidate to post here. Seriously though, one would think that a neutron star's magnetic field would extend well past the distance from the moon to the Earth.
"Extending" and "being able to suck change out of pockets and slow down locomotives" are two very different things.
Dipole magnetic fields drop off with the cube of distance, so on the surface of the neutron star (about 80,000 times closer), it would be strong enough to produce very exotic effects.
Apparently, if this star was located as far away as the moon, it could demag floppy disks and suck change right out of your pocket.
Yes, and if this star was located as far away from earth as the moon, we would also be dead.
Sure it would be the end of history but it would be the biggest thing in Rock and Roll history. I think it's worth it.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
A concert at the end of the Universe? Wouldn't Disaster Area be a more appropriate act?
It had been thought that SGRs are neutron stars with magnetic fields of ~1e14 Gauss (compared to the Crab's ~1e12 G or Earths ~1 G). This is a huge field that has enough energy (proportional to magnetic field squared) to power the huge blasts of radiation.
This new work by Samar Safi-Harb shows that the magnetic field is actually ~1e15 Gauss: 10x as strong and 100x the energy.
Hmmm... several million times warmer than Winnipeg... ok, so a median of 20C, check... sucks change out of your pocket... check.... erases data from great distances... check.
Ladies and gentleman, I have located the 5th Magnetar... the good ole US of A!
--
Laugh while you still have the right..
If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
In every nickel in your pocket, I wouldn't be surprised to find more than a trace amount of iron.
Nickel (the element) is also ferromagnetic.
If there are any nearby planets with heavier elements and some range of chemistry, perhaps they could support life forms that derive their principal source of energy from such the magnetar's field.
Those life forms would have a leg up on us in terms of interfacing with electronic equipment more naturally than we do.
OTOH, maybe they'd miss out on all the visible spectrum features we make use of for our eyeballs.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
If there are any nearby planets with heavier elements and some range of chemistry, perhaps they could support life forms that derive their principal source of energy from such the magnetar's field.
This is an interesting thought. However, in this case, they (and the planet) would likely be boiled to vapour by the x- and gamma-ray bursts that let us know about the star's magnetic field in the first place.
Magnetic effects around gas giants, while far, far weaker, might still be strong enough to play a role in the evolution of any creatures on/in gas giant moons, though.
For a couple of interesting sci-fi books about life in and around neutron stars, check out "The Integral Trees"/"The Smoke Ring", by Larry Niven, and "Dragon's Egg", by Robert Forward.
I've heard stories of people being killed when someone walked into an MRI room with a pair of scissors in their pocket.
My father works in a hospital as a pharmacist. He has told me a story about how someone walking by the room door with an oxygen tank was killed... the tank was on the opposite side of them and they were basically crushed under it. It's not necessarily the fact that the magnetic field strength is one tesla, it is because the field does not weaken much when you walk away from it.
I've dealt with magnets that are over one tesla (neodymium), and they only put a very very very small force on any american change i put right next to them.
Request for information:
According to Biot-Savart's law, as well as coming directly out of Maxwell's equations and Ampiere's theorem, the strength of a magnetic field is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from the conductor...
Or, in other words, magnetic field strength drops off as a square of the distance you travel away from it... so yes, it should weaken much when you walk away -- unless MRIs work in some drastically different way?
-T
Hello, I just figured I'd check in and tell you that, as the apparent only other person on /. who saw 'Spies Like Us,' I got a chuckle out of your comment.
~Philly
Cobalt and nickel are magnetic, as well as Iron. There are apparently ceramics and other materials that have ordered magnetic. Ordered is an important distinction. In general, ordered magnetic materials are mostly based around the transition metals (there are others besides Co, Ni and Fe), and the rare earths. All rather heavy.
;p Just and espousing on magnetism. I like magnets.
If you want to use the term "magnetic" to mean something that responds to a magnetic field, I would love to see a material that isn't magnetic.
ferromagnetism - Iron, nickel, cobalt and some of the rare earths (gadolinium, dysprosium) exhibit a unique magnetic behavior which is called ferromagnetism because iron (ferric) is the most common and most dramatic example. Ferromagnetic materials exhibit a long-range ordering phenomenon at the atomic level which causes the unpaired electron spins to line up parallel with each other in a region called a domain. Ferromagnets will tend to stay magnetized to some extent after being subjected to an external magnetic field. This tendency to "remember their magnetic history" is called hysteresis.
antiferromagnetic Applied to a ferromagnetic (in the wide sense) substance in which the magnetic lattices are magnetized in exactly equal and opposite directions. Such a substance does not have an external magnetic field in its pure form, but a distorted lattice may result in a parasitic magnetization. This occurs below a certain temperature, called the Néel temperature, when an ordered array of atomic magnetic moments spontaneously forms in which alternate moments have opposite directions. There is therefore no net resultant magnetic moment in the absence of an applied field. In manganese fluoride, for example, this antiparallel arrangement occurs below a Néel temperature of 72 K. Below this temperature the spontaneous ordering opposes the normal tendency of the magnetic moments to align with the applied field. Above the Néel temperature the substance is paramagnetic.
ferrimagnetism a type of magnetism exhibited by the ferrites [[defined as: A member of a class of mixed oxides MO.Fe2O3, where M is a metal such as cobalt, manganese, nickel, or zinc. The ferrites are ceramic materials that show either ferrimagnetism or ferromagnetism, but are not electrical conductors. For this reason they are used in high-frequency circuits as magnetic cores]]. In these materials the magnetic moments of adjacent ions are antiparallel and of unequal strength, or the number of magnetic moments in one direction is greater than those in the opposite direction. By suitable choice of rare-earth ions in the ferrite lattices it is possible to design ferrimagnetic substances with specific magnetizations for use in electronic components
paramagnetism the atoms or molecules of the substance have net orbital or spin magnetic moments that are capable of being aligned in the direction of the applied field. They therefore have a positive (but small) susceptibility and a relative permeability slightly in excess of one. Paramagnetism occurs in all atoms and molecules with unpaired electrons; e.g. free atoms, free radicals, and compounds of transition metals containing ions with unfilled electron shells. It also occurs in metals as a result of the magnetic moments associated with the spins of the conducting electrons.
diamagnetism the magnetization is in the opposite direction to that of the applied field, i.e. the susceptibility is negative. Although all substances are diamagnetic, it is a weak form of magnetism and may be masked by other, stronger, forms. It results from changes induced in the orbits of electrons in the atoms of a substance by the applied field, the direction of the change (in accordance with Lenz's law) opposing the applied flux. There is thus a weak negative susceptibility and a relative permeability that is slightly less than one.
This wasn't mean to be snarky
Legalize the constitution. Think for yourself question authority.
Tesla. 1 Tesla is 10,000 Gauss. Ten thousand gauss equals 1 Tesla. The earth's magnetic field has been calculated to be 5x10-5 Tesla, thus 1.0 Tesla is 20,000 times stronger than the Earth's magnetic field. A refrigerator magnet typically equals 0.01-0.035 Tesla.
Field effect is fairly well understood and things don't have to be magnetic to be affected by magnetic field, as show by the frog and the water.
I find the use of a superconductor (you can induce a charge around this solenoid and the charge will remain forever creating a permanent magnetic field so long as the superconducting material is kept cold enough, so no perpetual machines for you mad quack scientists) quite impressive. Now to pin point a superconductors that operates at a reasonable temperature, not 138K@1ATM.
The world record Tc of 138 K is now held by a thallium-doped, mercuric-cuprate comprised of the elements Mercury, Thallium, Barium, Calcium, Copper and Oxygen. The Tc of this ceramic superconductor was confirmed by Dr. Ron Goldfarb at the National Institute of Standards and Technology-Colorado in February of 1994. Under extreme pressure its Tc can be coaxed up even higher - approximately 25 to 30 degrees more at 300,000 atmospheres.
Anyways, most of these super X men magneto stories are urban legends brought into the world by the same pseudo science types that concoct warp nacelles and wormholes, I hope these are possible and am unable to prove or disprove these constructs. I hate to piss on the parade, people, let's start with more plausible things. But someone recently was crushed an oxygen tank in a hospital near an MRI (which is an application of NMR, nuclear magnetic resonance imaging) because the tank wasn't properly secured against the wall. I don't buy the scissors in the pocket bull. Because an 8 Tesla field would make short work of and kill people with pacemakers, so because of this (2 million Americans have pacemakers so it's not exceedingly rare) they post all sorts warnings all over the damn place where high field magnets are stored. Also there are permittivity issues; "space" is a good insulator for fields, electrical gravitational just about any disturbance the field tends to rapidly loose strength. So all you Dr. Evil types thinking of ways to abuse a 16 Tesla field think again.
Seriously though, would be scientists and sky watchers x-filers conspiracy theorists and general bullshit artists could do so much better for their cause if they were better educated. In a network of words, rife with information, a whole internetwork that sprung forth from intellectual endeavors, it amazes me the levels of pseudo-science, quackery, pseudo-intellectualism bullshit and other assorted trash that ended up turning a potentially awesome source of information a better source of misinformation. Would be genius who are kings in their own minds are allowed to pump trash at an alarming rate and the hallucinate hoards of drones bleating like sheeple to lick up every last word of quack science they promulgate.
Legalize the constitution. Think for yourself question authority.