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Ghostly Ring Found Circling Dead Star
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.'
Who said it was a test?
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
Interesting that we can generate a field strong enough to noticeably deform atomic orbitals.