What is the black hole-class dangerous space monster 'Magnetar'?
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Phenomena and celestial bodies beyond human imagination are often found in the universe, and the most famous of them is the gravity that even light cannot escape, and it is broken apart just by approaching with extreme tidal force. It is a black hole that ends up. Similar to a black hole, Ars Technica, an overseas media, talks about the celestial body ' Magnetar ', which has an unbelievably strong magnetic force that 'when approaching, the atoms that make up the body become elongated like needles and collapse'. Explains.
Behold the Magnetar, nature's ultimate superweapon | Ars Technica
https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/06/behold-the-magnetar-natures-ultimate-superweapon/
◆ Background of the discovery of magnetar
The magnetar was discovered by two coincidences. The first coincidence was every night when British astronomer Antony Hewish and his student graduate student Jocelyn Bell Burnell were observing space at the Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory in Cambridge. I found that radio signals were repeatedly emitted from the same place at regular intervals of 1.33 seconds.
After confirming that the radio waves did not originate from the earth, they thought that the signal was so regular that 'the source of the radio waves may be an extraterrestrial civilization,' and they are typical of appearing in fiction. Named 'LGM-1' after the alien Little green men .
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As a rational explanation for 'LGM-1', astronomers hypothesized that it might be a neutron star, the wreckage of a giant star that caused a supernova explosion. However, since neutron stars are small celestial bodies with extremely high density, it was thought that they would not be observable.
The second coincidence is the Vela satellite , an artificial satellite launched by the United States to monitor Soviet nuclear tests. The Vera satellite, which was observing the radiation emitted by a nuclear explosion from space, caught the repeated emission of powerful gamma rays from space, not from the earth.
In 1973, when the observation data of the Vela satellite, which was not disclosed, was released, astronomers have different types of gamma ray signals, and in particular, celestial bodies called soft gamma repeaters emit gamma rays repeatedly as the name suggests. I found out. Pulsar , a neutron star that has a strong magnetic field and rotates at high speed, has been erected as a candidate for causing such a phenomenon.
From these discoveries, it became clear that the identity of 'LGM-1' was a pulsar, and Mr. Hewish won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1974 for his first discovery of a pulsar. After that, it was found that some neutron stars had extremely strong magnetic force, and such objects were called magnetars.
◆ Magnetic force of magnetar
When a celestial body with a large mass ends its life, it causes an explosion called a supernova. At this time, if the mass of the remaining nucleus is too large, it causes gravitational collapse and becomes a black hole, but if it does not, it goes through the process of reverse beta decay in which electrons and protons are fused by extremely high pressure. , Is a mass of almost pure neutrons. This is a neutron star. The density of neutrons is said to be that a teaspoon of neutron stars weighs about 100 million tons.
Since neutrons are extremely hot, they behave like liquids and the remaining electrons and protons are free to move. Furthermore, when a neutron star is rotating at a sufficient speed, high-speed rotation, convection, and free-moving charge behavior generate a magnetic field on the principle of dynamo. Magnetic fields are generated on the same principle in the Earth's core, but magnetars are orders of magnitude stronger.
For example, the geomagnetic field has a strength of about 0.5 gauss, which is the strongest rock-shaped planet in the solar system, but powerful electromagnets such as those used for MRI examinations can reach tens of thousands of gauss. However, the magnetic force of the magnetar is more than 100-1000 trillion gauss, and the inside is more than 10 times that. In other words, the magnetic force of the magnetar is about 1 trillion times stronger than that of the earth, and 1 billion times stronger than the highest magnetic force that human beings can produce.
The magnetic force is so strong that when humans approach a distance of about 1000 km from the magnetar, they cannot maintain their vital activities and die instantly. Furthermore, as it approaches the surface of the magnetar, the orbits of the electrons that make up the atom become elongated and eventually collapse into a needle-like shape with a width of only about 1% of the length. As a matter of course, it is not possible to maintain the bonds that the atoms are bound to form a molecule, so the human body that approaches the magnetar will literally be decomposed at the atomic level.
Magnetar is such an extreme object, but only 24 have been found so far, and most of the discoveries are in the galaxy. Also, since magnetars have a short lifespan, it is thought that human beings can observe only a small part of them, and one estimate estimates that there are about 30 million magnetars that have reached the end of their lifespan in the Milky Way galaxy. It has been.
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