Neutron Stars - Magnetars

Hello ATS, I have recently been interested in Magnetars, and neutron stars. It is completely mind boggling to me that these stars exist, and even in our cosmic neighborhood. I wanted to create this thread so that I/we could learn a little more about these star cores. If anyone has any information to offer or corrections to make, it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, and have a great day friends!

Einstein once stated, “If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.” Well this is what I am trying to prevent. I want to understand it better.
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Neutron star- Discovered March 5th, 1979 when two Soviet spaceshuttles were hit by a gamma burst 2 thousand times stronger than the average amount of radiation detected on constant (Background radiation??). The density of a magnetar is such that a speck of its substance would weigh over 50 million tons. Magnetars are created when a star collapses into a neutron star, the heat and rotational energy are converted into a dramatically increased magnetic field.
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This video is from a History channel documentary on the Universe. It really helped me better understand these complex bodies.



I am at work and am currently being forced off the computer, but will be adding more later. Feel free to add anything relevant to the subject. Other things that I will be touching base on later will be; Ionizing radiation, the difference between Alpha, Beta, and Gamma rays and also what role this plays in the understanding of our universe.. Also I just thought of this but have we ever recorded a Magnetar entering a supermasive blackhole? If so, what were the effects of this occurrence. Thanks for reading thus far and for your patience with me.

I watched the whole The Universe series and found it quite enjoyable. I truly had very little knowledge of such things occupying our universe. I had to go out and get a telescope afterwards.

Since you are so interested in the stars do you yourself own a telescope? If not I recomend getting one.

I don't have very much to add except that I will be looking forward to more of this thread once you are able to spend more time on it.

Here is an article I found which you might find some interest in

www.huffingtonpost.com...

Keep an open mind.

Astronomers observe these various energy bursts from distances that throw huge uncertainties in. We also observe high energy cosmic rays and other radiation here on Earth. The best Science can do is try and fit the observations into some coherent model. It's all very fun to noodle over but there are too many unknowns to get locked into this or that theoretical construct. It doesn't merit being thought of as real IMO. Ideas simply compete with other ideas until one idea completely destroys the others.

Quasars are observable, but the term quasar represents a whole class of objects we can't totally explain.

Super dense objects/regions we can observe indirectly fairly well because of gravity but magnetars are theoretical. 80+% of the mass required for the classic gravitational model is missing and the best science can do is a placeholder (dark matter/dark energy) for the time being. That should give you an idea of how the conventional model performs. It amazes me that dark matter is talked about like it's real --it's a placeholder used to hold the conventional model together. That's not "real" in my view.

reply to post by jeenyus2008

These a mind-boggling objects.

Nautron stars are thought to have liquid interior and a solid crust, which you hypothetically could stand on, if you weren't crushed by the titanic gravitational forces. www.space.com...

The gravitational acceleration on the surface of a neutron star is 100 billion g's. If you were to hypothetically jump from the height of 1 meter, you'd hit the ground at an incredible speed of thousands of km per second. www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu...

Gravitational distortion of space-time around a neutron star is so strong, that you would be able to see more than half of it from some distance. wordpress.mrreid.org...

reply to post by brandiwine14

Just snuck back on to post a reply, but wow that huffingtonpost link is incredible!

I too have watched the whole series, and boy is it a lot of information to take in. I read somewhere that if a magnetar was the 93,000,000 miles from us (distance from Earth to the Sun) it would begin to wipe all data from computers, debit cards, ect. If it were any closer it would then begin to pull on alloys (earrings, necklaces, ect.) And within a few million miles it would begin to pull apart atoms. Let's hope they stay at a distance

In reply to InverseLookingGlass: "Ideas simply compete with other ideas until one idea completely destroys the others."
It's a lot like Copernicus, Hubble, Galileo, Newton, Einstein, Kepler, Georges Lemaitre, Alan Guth, and so on. Each one of these people postulated theories and worked off prior theories to improve data. Georges Lemaitre squashed the Steady State theory overnight. We are constantly changing ideas and running into dead end, but that's the beauty about science. It will never cease to discover new theories or information. I mean Gravity is still a theory but 99% of people have accepted it as a fact.


In reply to Americanist: I'm sorry I don't have sound but wil be sure to check out that video after work. Thank you

In reply to Wildespace: Thank you for the additional information on the topic.
"The gravitational acceleration on the surface of a neutron star is 100 billion g's. If you were to hypothetically jump from the height of 1 meter, you'd hit the ground at an incredible speed of thousands of km per second."--- This statement really helps give magnitude to how strong the magnetic force really is. Thank you for that again!


I will be back to add to my OP after work. Hopefully they don't kill me for taking a 15 minute smoke break

reply to post by jeenyus2008


Alpha decay is the process by which an atom emits an alpha particle (helium nuclei) thus changing from one element into another with less atomic mass. Beta decay is the process by which an atom emits a beta particle (an electron or positron) in order to become more stable. Ionizing radiation is simply radiation with enough kinetic energy to knock loose an electron from it's orbit (thus ionizing the atom). A gamma ray is simply the highest energy photon that we know of.