The strange magnetic field of the star

Astronomers have discovered the most bizarre cosmic object flashes 40 times before disappearing. It is possible that this is a missing link in the neutron star family, the first case of an object with an amazingly strong magnetic field that produces short and visible light.

First, this strange object was mistaken for a gamma ray explosion that ended the life of a distant star in the pillar. But then, it shows special activities that show its origin quite close to us. After the first gama ray explosion, astronomers observed 40 flashes of light in three days. For the next 11 days, the short infrared rays were recorded by ESO's Extra Large Telescope. After that no activity was recorded.

Alberto J. Castro-Tirado, author of the new article in Nature, said: 'We encountered an object that had been dormant for decades before entering a short period of activity.'

The brightest candidate for this mysterious object is the "magnetar" located in our Milky Way galaxy , about 15,000 light-years away from the constellation Vulpecula, the fox constellation. Magnetars are young neutron stars with extremely strong magnetic fields, billions of billions of times the Earth's magnetic field. Co-author Antonio de Ugarte Postigo said: 'Mangetar can wipe information on all credit cards from a distance of half the distance to the Moon. Magnetar 'hibernated' for decades, It is likely that there are many similar objects in the Mikly Way galaxy, although only about a dozen of them have been discovered. '

Astronomers discovered a magnetar that flashed 40 times before disappearing.Magnetar are young neutron stars with super strong magnetic fields, 1 billion billion times more than the Earth's magnetic field.The twisted magnetic fields can cause 'starquakes', which eventually lead to a soft gamma ray explosion.The light that reaches Earth may be due to ions being pushed off the magnetar surface and spinning around the magnetic field.(Photo: ESO / L.Calcada)

Some scientists emphasize that magnetar may develop in a 'pleasant' way when its magnetic field weakens, but no source of information has been identified so far as evidence for this hypothesis. The newly discovered object, called SWIFT J195509 + 261406, first appeared as a gamma ray explosion (GRB 070610), the first candidate. The magnetar hypothesis for this object reinforced by another analysis, based on another set of data, also appeared in Nature.

42 scientists use data collected from 8 telescopes globally, including BOOTES-2 telescopes at EELM-CSIC, WATCHER telescopes at Radio Boyden (South Africa), 0.8 telescopes. -m IAC80 at Teide Observatory (Spain), 1.2-m Flemer telescope at the del Roque de los Muchachos Observatory (Spain0, 1.34-m Tautenburg telescope (Germany), telescope 1.5-m at the Sierra Nevada Observatory (IAA-CSIC), 6.0m BTA telescope in Russia, 8.2-m VLT telescope at ESO, Chile and IRAM telescope 30-m Pico Veleta y Plateau de Bure, along with SWIFT (NASA) and XMM-Newton satellite (ESA).

Neutron stars

The neutron star is the remaining concentrated and supporting part of a large star, and is 8 to 15 times larger than the Sun. This star's outer layer is expelled from a star by a supernova explosion. Such stars are about 20 km in diameter, but still larger than the Sun. Magnetar is a neutron star with a magnetic field hundreds of times stronger than the average magnetic field of a neutron star. The liberating energy of a flash in the cycle of magnetar activity is equivalent to the solar energy released in 10 000 years.

Refer:
Castro-Tirado et al.Flares from a candidate Galactic magnetar suggest a missing link to dim isolated neutron stars.Nature, 2008;455 (7212): 506 DOI: 10.1038 / nature07328