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Space News

'Starquake' Cracks Star 84

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the real-rock-and-roll dept.
geekroot's dad writes "Space.com is reporting that a huge 'starquake' releasing as much energy as our sun does in 250,000 years, has cracked a nearby neutron star. The magnetar produced the brightest explosion ever seen by man outside of the milky way. Although it is 50,000 light-years away, the blast was so huge it temporarily blinded some satellites and briefly altered Earth's upper atmosphere!"
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'Starquake' Cracks Star More

'Starquake' Cracks Star

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  • gamma ray bursts (Score:5, Interesting)

    by sfcat ( 872532 ) on Wednesday September 28, 2005 @03:30AM (#13665044)
    When gamma ray detectors were first put on satellites (to detect nuclear bombs being detonated on Earth) huge gamma ray bursts were found coming from around the universe. I don't think we have ever explained what causes them but they are even more energetic than supernova. Would this even be a possible candiate for the cause of such bursts? Or is it not energetic enough? The current popular explaination is these bursts are black holes being born. Can any astronomers here to explain this to a humble programmer?
    • Do you mean pulsars [man.ac.uk]? Your description reminds me of the history I read of their discovery, although the one I read said that some scientists thought they were artificially-created "cosmic beacons" until they were better understood.

      • Re:gamma ray bursts (Score:3, Informative)

        by stevelinton ( 4044 )
        No. Pulsars flash regularly, but mainly radiate at optical and radio frequencies. They are pretty surely neutron stars and relatively nearby (within a few thousand light years). Gamma Ray Bursts are one-off events, probably very far away (billions of light years) and radiate mainly gamma rays. We are less sure what they are, but it's something VERY violent.

        The original topic. magnetars. are actually in between. They radiate pulses of lower energy gamma rays that repeat irregularly. We think they are highly

    • Re:gamma ray bursts (Score:5, Informative)

      by stevelinton ( 4044 ) <sal@dcs.st-and.ac.uk> on Wednesday September 28, 2005 @05:45AM (#13665358) Homepage
      You are thinking of Gamma Ray Bursts (GRBs). They are actually much MORE violent events than this one, but also MUCH further away.
      They are still being studied, and their causes are still somewhat ambiguous, but black holes are almost certainly involved. One theory, if I recall correctly is big bright short-lived stars in the early universse reaching the end of their life. The core of the star then collapses very suddenly, forming a black hole (in a regular supernova you get a neutron star) and the outer part of the star follows it in, and get heated and churned by the implosion, and then explodes out. Another theory is that a GRB represents the last moments a a neutron star falling into a black hole, or two neutron stars colliding to form a black hole.

      These magnetar related events are much less energetic, but loads nearer.
    • Obviously they are the results of a Glboal Thermonuclear War somewhere in a galaxy far far away :)

      Or a star destroyer saying bye-bye to some planets.

  • Starquake (Score:1, Funny)

    by Centurix ( 249778 )
    Awesome game, I vote best use of the ZX Spectrum colour palette ever (except maybe Dynamite Dan)

  • Starquake? We need a more... extreme name (Score:5, Insightful)

    by FirienFirien ( 857374 ) on Wednesday September 28, 2005 @03:43AM (#13665068) Homepage
    "Had this happened within 10 light-years of us, it would have severely damaged our atmosphere and possibly have triggered a mass extinction," said Bryan Gaensler of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA). Just yesterday I was looking through a link [nasa.gov] from a /. article in May; while the solar wind is usually strong enough to push off the interstellar wind (think of it as the sum of solar winds from the rest of the galaxy) at a distance 94 times that of the distance from the Sun to Earth.

    What's significantly impressive is that this explosion is strong enough to kick nearly multiple times as hard as the average of what the galaxy usually does to us.

    (I'm not quite sure on this figure - the power of the wind from our sun should decrease as r^3, ditto the power from the starquake; if r goes down to 1/94, r^3 is reaching for a million?! This would imply the quake is nearly a million times as strong as the average wind from the galaxy; granted there's likely to be drastic fluid dynamics contortions and things that effectively cut that number down to something more 'sane' (depending on how sane you think it is to try to calculate stellar force magnitudes...), but you still have a figure significantly bigger than the entire galaxy!)

    And then you get to the quote line from the article "We have observed an object only 20 kilometers across [12 miles], on the other side of our galaxy, releasing more energy in a tenth of a second than the Sun emits in 100,000 years."

    combine that with the distance from us (50000 light years = 6 trillion miles = 10 trillion km) and the bit where it says it rotates on its axis every 7.5 seconds and has the strongest magnetic field in the known universe... wow.

    • Re:Starquake? We need a more... extreme name (Score:4, Informative)

      by FirienFirien ( 857374 ) on Wednesday September 28, 2005 @03:46AM (#13665076) Homepage
      Okay, Yikes. Missed this the first time round:

      Of the known magnetars, four are called soft gamma repeaters, or SGRs, because they flare up randomly and release gamma rays. The flare on SGR 1806-20 unleashed about 10,000 trillion trillion trillion watts of power.

      10 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 watts of power. No wonder my brain gave up trying to work out the numbers.

      • Re:Starquake? We need a more... extreme name (Score:2, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Well the current trend is to add mega to everything, so describing something genuinely gigantic will be a problem. Super is so 90s.

        ultramega xtreme magnetar shearing?
      • Imagine if we could harness this energy, that would really piss off the oil companies.

      • It's the Libyans! Run for it, Marty! (Score:1, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        10 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 watts of power.

        Great Scott!!

      • That's why we have exponential (aka scientific) notation. A trillion is 1 x 10^12, hence a trillion trillion trillion is 1 x 10^36. Of course, 10,000 (1 x 10^4) of those gives 10^40 watts. Your attempted decimal notation representation of the number is off by three orders of magnitude.

        "God created the integers, all the rest is the work of man." -- Leopold Kronecker
        • Ok while watts are energy per time, I'll assume this to be 10^40 watts per seconds. Which is about 8E37 Coulombs which is 5E57 electrons.Yes I know this energy wasn't all electrons, its just a an estimate. Total mass of the visible universe is about 3E55 grams.
          One electron weights about 9E-28 grams. So the univese weights about 3E82 electrons.
          So this blast was 1/3E27th of the universe matter :) and this is per second. Ah nevermind I'm just being silly. I'm sure my calculations are way off, throwing aroun
        • A million is 1000^2 or 10^6,
          a billion is 1000^3 or 10^9,
          a trillion is 1000^4 or 10^12,
          a quadrillion is 1000^5 or 10^15
          a quintillion is 1000^6 or 10^18
          a sextillion is 1000^7 or 10^21
          a septillion is 1000^8 or 10^24
          a octillion is 1000^9 or 10^27
          a nonillion is 1000^11 or 10^30
          a decillion is 1000^12 or 10^33
          a undecillion is 1000^13 or 10^36
          a duodecillion is 1000^14 or 10^39
          a tredecillion is 1000^15 or 10^40
          a quattuordecillion is 1000^16 or 10^42
          a quindecillion is 1000^17 or 10^45
          a sexdecillion is 1000^18 or 10^4

      • trillion ... zillion (Score:4, Informative)

        by mrthoughtful ( 466814 ) on Wednesday September 28, 2005 @09:20AM (#13666141) Journal
        A million is 1000^2 or 10^6,
        a billion is 1000^3 or 10^9,
        a trillion is 1000^4 or 10^12,
        a quadrillion is 1000^5 or 10^15
        a quintillion is 1000^6 or 10^18
        a sextillion is 1000^7 or 10^21
        a septillion is 1000^8 or 10^24
        a octillion is 1000^9 or 10^27
        a nonillion is 1000^11 or 10^30
        a decillion is 1000^12 or 10^33
        a undecillion is 1000^13 or 10^36
        a duodecillion is 1000^14 or 10^39
        a tredecillion is 1000^15 or 10^40
        a quattuordecillion is 1000^16 or 10^42
        a quindecillion is 1000^17 or 10^45
        a sexdecillion is 1000^18 or 10^48
        a septendecillion is 1000^19 or 10^51
        a octodecillion is 1000^20 or 10^54
        a novemdecillion is 1000^21 or 10^57
        a vigintillion is 1000^22 or 10^60 ....
        a zillion is 10^playground ....
        a googol is 10^100
        a googolplex is 10^googol (if you wrote this down in its expanded form, the paper would not fit into the volume of the solar system)

        So the wattage output of the SGR 1806-20 flare is just a piddly 1.0 tredecillion watts - or, you you adopt Jim Blower's Extended System of Units, that would be 10 tredawatts ..

        • Re:trillion ... zillion (Score:4, Funny)

          by RevAaron ( 125240 ) <revaaron AT hotmail DOT com> on Wednesday September 28, 2005 @09:43AM (#13666308) Homepage
          a googolplex is 10^googol (if you wrote this down in its expanded form, the paper would not fit into the volume of the solar system)

          What if you got one of those Japanese rice-writers to do the writing on paper? I mean, we're talking about a font size like 0.01 points. We should get someone on that.
          • Taking a generous estimate of the radius of the solar system to be 100AU (1 AU is the distance from the earth to the sun), using a simple spherical model for the shape of the solar system, and if we have a Japanese rice writer (called Takahiro), who can write zeros at 0.01mm on very thin paper 0.01mm thick, we can work out just how many zeros Takahiro can fit into the universe. (To be clear, we are stating that Takahiro can write a zero on a piece of paper 0.01mm x 0.01mm x 0.01mm, so along a strip of paper
            • Interesting numbers. That implies, incidentally, that if the universe were squeezed into a sphere 100AU across, it would be on the order of 1000 times denser than diamond (based on the standard estimate of the universe as having ~10^70 particles).
        • a googolplex is 10^googol (if you wrote this down in its expanded form, the paper would not fit into the volume of the solar system)

          In fact, you (probably) couldn't write a googolplex in straight decimal at all, even if you used subatomic particles for zeros, as current estimates suggest there are only about 10^70 particles in the universe.

        • But only in America is a billion 10^9 For us more linguistically aware UK people a Billion may well still relate to bi-million, and therefore be 10^12 Alas this older and more accurate usage is losing ground here so we should now always state the explicit power of ten, to be sure that both sides of the Atlantic (and Indian) Ocean are in agreement. (I love the concept of 10^playground!)
      • 10 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 watts of power.

        Oh man, I sense an FCC fine coming on! How do ya like that, magnetar!

    • r^3 (Score:3, Informative)

      by Morosoph ( 693565 )
      Don't you mean r^2? Volumes are cubic, but the flux through the surface of a volume is inverse square, surely?

      I agree that in general it's not that simple: gravity pulls the wind back, so that it falls off faster than that, but with a "quake" like this, gravity's going to have a hard job.

    • I agree. Starquake is not extreme enough. How about "Death Star?" That sounds scary.
      • Deathstars refer to Gamma Ray Bursts [ Nova [pbs.org]] and are violent events that take out all life, sanitizing part of the galaxy where it happens.

        Which reminds me of a idea I had when first hearing about these events as it relates to the SETI project.

        If one were to map out a significant amout of these objects and a general approx of there historic path through the galaxy, one could rule out entire regions of galaxy where if life did begin would have been destroyed. The regions far enough away from these objects th
    • "We have observed an object only 20 kilometers across [12 miles], on the other side of our galaxy, releasing more energy in a tenth of a second than the Sun emits in 100,000 years."

      This has "Alcubierre Drive" [wikipedia.org] written all over it.
    • I think it is safe to say that the people in the space station now have super powers and at least one is now evil.
    • ". . . at a distance 94 times that of the distance from the Sun to Earth."

      So . . . how far is that in AU?
  • From TFA:

    The magnetic field around one [magnetar] is about 1,000 trillion gauss, strong enough to strip information from a credit card at a distance halfway to the Moon

    I admit that 1,000 trillion gauss is not an easy number to grasp but why would someone want to present it like this? It's not as if everybody knows the strength of a magnetic field required to wipe a credit card at a distance of 1 meter....

  • Cracks me up (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Markus Registrada ( 642224 )
    It always cracks me up when they announce what must have caused each new, completely unexpected (i.e. unpredicted) event. They really have no idea, and just make it up as they go along. Dark matter, dark energy, inflation, billion-solar-mass black holes. Now we have cracks in neutron stars. It's especially comical whenever they invoke "magnetic reconnection" (as in the Febrary story linked), a process known only to astronomers that has no meaning in the maths of electrodynamics as practiced by people who

  • Sorry about it (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    There was a small civilization in that neighbourhood trying to develop weapons of mass destruction. They wouldn't listen to reason, so we had to strike first. We are now occupying the remains of their worlds, and expect to restore democracy in a few billion years. We apologize for the inconvenience this may have caused nearby civilizations.

    Sincerely

    M' uldh pGar
    Chief of PR Intergalactic Council

  • Spacehips laden with supplies for refugees on the launchpads.
  • "Had this happened within 10 light-years of us, it would have severely damaged our atmosphere and possibly have triggered a mass extinction," said Bryan Gaensler of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA)."

    Possible explaination for the mass extinction of the dinosaurs, and others?

  • A book by the same name exists (Score:3, Informative)

    by Vilim ( 615798 ) <ryanNO@SPAMjabberwock.ca> on Wednesday September 28, 2005 @08:55AM (#13665963) Homepage

    Interestingly enough, a physicist by the name of Robert Forward (did alot of work with space tethers) published a book called Dragons Egg about life on a neutron star. He actually said it was really a book on neutron star physics described as a science fiction book. Anyways the sequel to it was called Starquake where exactly this happened. Both books were interesting reads, and although this is kind of off topic, it just reminded me of them.

    • The event in starquake was a whole lot LESS violent than this one. Magnetars are MUCH weirder than neutron stars.
      An explosion on a magnetar features in Steven Baxter's Exultant.
    • Both "Dragon's Egg" and "Starquake" are worth reading.

      The physics used to keep a human-crewed spaceship in close orbit around a neutron star without tidal forces ripping the crew apart are interesting. The appendicies to "Dragon's Egg" have interesting "hard" (well, not really: high school physics should be enough to understand them) derivations.

  • Is it a neutron star ot not??? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Muad'Dave ( 255648 ) on Wednesday September 28, 2005 @11:07AM (#13667037) Homepage

    From TFA:
    There are millions of neutron stars in the Milky Way galaxy ... [some] ... of which are called magnetars.
    Ok, so a magnetar is a type of neutron star with an extremely strong magnetic field. Also from TFA:
    A magnetar's interior is a dense, liquid-like mix of neutrons, protons, and electrons ...
    So, is it a neutron stat or not? I was under the impression that neutron stars were called that because the immense gravitational field squished all the protons and electrons together into neutrons, forming an all-neutron star. It would seem that Wikipedia's definition [wikipedia.org] supports the idea of a non-homogeneous neutron composition. When did it change from being all-neutrons to having a yummy mostly-neutrony center?
    • Electrons and protons (almost) certainly could not exist in a magnetar. If you collide a proton with an electron, you get a neutron. And at the densities of a magnetar, such collisions would be inevitable. I guess it would be possible to have electrons but NO protons, or protons with NO electrons, but you certainly couldn't have both.
      • I guess it would be possible to have electrons but NO protons, or protons with NO electrons, but you certainly couldn't have both.

        No way. Or at least not to any significant proportion. Unless the number of electrons is the same as the number of protons to an unbelievably high tolerance, the star will blow itself apart. The electromagnetic force is far more powerful than the gravitational.

    • Ahahaha...

      Check out this image [wikipedia.org] from the article.

      I'll PayPal $10 to anyone who can changes "Solid crust" to "Thin candy shell" and "Heavy liquid interior" to "Yummy mostly-neutrony center".

    • First of all, IANAABIAAPAGDDILA (I am not an astronomer, but I am a physicist, and god damn do I love acronyms).

      I believe that the confusion you're pointing out comes from two places:

      1. The simplistic model of a neutron star being "pure neutrons" is probably intended to get the main point across to lay people. The complexities involved in analyzing the composition of a typical neutron star as a function of radial distance are simply staggering, and it's difficult enough to explain the basic concept of

      • Thank you for a well-reasoned and informative reply! IANAAEBIDMIP (I an not an astronomer either, but I did minor in Physics).

        On another tangent, wouldn't a magnetar's extreme magnetic field work to either trap or expel any unbound electrons either in the star itself or around it? As I recall, magnetic fields exert a force on a moving charged particle something like -qVxB, forcing the particle to travel in a helix. What effect would such an extreme field have on electrons inside the star? If there were diff

        • Hmm... I'm really not sure. Large magnetic fields in the vicinity of a magnetar are supposed to do really wierd things, like stretching electron clouds from their usual shapes into something elongated in the direction of the magnetic field. If there are *moving* and *unbound* electrons near the magnetar, what you're saying would probably happen.

          But more likely, the only electrons on the magnetar would be in the thin shell of relatively normal matter that sits on top of the star. Because they would be b

  • The magnetar produced the brightest explosion ever seen by man outside of the milky way

    How far outside of the milky way does man now travel?

  • The magnetarin question is actually in our galaxy [wikipedia.org], albeit on the other side of it... so it's hard to imagine how it was the "brightest explosion ever detected outside of the Milky Way."

  • So why is this news today, Sept. 2005?
  • Another rockin' performance by Disaster Area!

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