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Ghostly Ring Found Circling Dead Star

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the check-your-optics dept.

Roland Piquepaille writes "An international team of scientists has found a strange ring around a dead star by using images taken by NASA's Spitzer space telescope. This star, called SGR 1900+14, belongs to a class of objects known as magnetars. According to NASA, a magnetar is 'a highly magnetized neutron star and the remnant of a brilliant supernova explosion signaling the death throes of a massive star.' So far, about a dozen magnetars have been found. An amazing thing about these stellar objects is their magnetic field. One of the researchers said that 'magnetars possess magnetic fields a million billion times stronger than the magnetic field of the Earth.'

4 of 207 comments (clear)

  1. Pssst! by Sta7ic · · Score: 5, Informative

    "A million billion" is 10^6 * 10^9 = 10^15 ... we also call that "a quadrillion".

    I'd be pretty excited about studying these things, were I a physical scientist. When you get some massively powerful EMF, electrons and protons must have very "interesting" behavior.

    1. Re:Pssst! by fyoder · · Score: 5, Informative

      Well, that depends... iirc, a billion in the UK is not the same thing as a billion here. A billion here is 10^9, whereas if memory serves me correctly a billion in the UK is a million million, or 10^12. Long and short scales

      Had to look that up because it sounded nuts. However, looks like you're sort of right, other than for the fact that UK has abandoned the long scale in favour of the short. So a quadrillion there is now a thousand trillion as well, rather than a 'billiard'.
      --
      Loose lips lose spit.
    2. Re:Pssst! by ceoyoyo · · Score: 5, Informative

      He meant the 5 Gauss line. It's not enough to rip things off you, but you can stick paper clips to the wall. Or erase all the credit cards in your pocket.

  2. Link with pic by IronChef · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/Media/releases/ssc2008-08/release.shtml