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It is very interesting that mainstream media is picking this up finally. CBS has pictures and an interview. Well I really don’t have enough actual information to have a clear opinion, for anyone to even consider ‘voting’ someone out of the classroom leaves me with a feeling beyond words. Anyway, the point is the interest in the story globally.
Jun. 3rd, 2008
Slashdot | Ghostly Ring Found Circling Dead Star
“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.’
“Magnetars possess magnetic fields a million billion times stronger than the magnetic field of the Earth,” Figer says. The magnetic field of a magnetar is one petagauss (10 to the 15th or 1,000,000,000,000,000 gauss) while, in comparison, Earth’s magnetic field strength registers at 0.5 gauss, the Sun at one gauss and a sunspot at about 1,000 gauss. These extreme fields stretch the very fabric of matter, contorting atoms into thin cigar-shaped structures.