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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.'

11 of 207 comments (clear)

  1. The ring by Plazmid · · Score: 5, Funny

    Oh great, now that NASA posted pictures on the internet of a ghostly ring, a lot of people are going to die seven days from now.

    1. Re:The ring by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      I wouldn't worry abo...Whoa wait a minute. A ghostly ring, posted on Slashdot can mean only one thing. Do not RTFA! For the love of God DO NOT RTFA!

    2. Re:The ring by SBrach · · Score: 5, Funny

      In all fairness, they kept on rickrolling me.

    3. Re:The ring by dfm3 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Do not RTFA! For the love of God DO NOT RTFA! I wouldn't be so worried about that. This is Slashdot, after all...
  2. 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 SBrach · · Score: 5, Funny

      Is that more or less than a Brazilian?

    2. 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.
    3. Re:Pssst! by pablomme · · Score: 5, Insightful
      Only if by "all over the world" you mean English-speaking countries and Brazil. Citing Wikipedia,

      Most countries and languages in the world use the traditional long scale somewhat in contrast with your statement.
      --
      The state you are in while your HEAD is detached... - wait, what?
    4. 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.

  3. Re:I for one welcome . . . by pembo13 · · Score: 5, Interesting

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

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