In the universe, phenomena and celestial bodies that surpass mankind’s imagination are often discovered, and among them, the famous black hole is a black hole that has such a gravitational force that even light age escaped. Like a black hole, a magnetar is a celestial body with a strong magnetic force that causes the atoms that make up the body to become thin and collapse like needles when approached.
British astronomer Antony Hewish observes the universe at the Mallard Radio Observatory in Cambridge and discovers that radio signals are produced regularly every 1.33 seconds from the same place every night. After confirming that the radio waves were not coming from Earth, they saw that the signal was too regular and thought that the source of the radio waves could be an extraterrestrial civilization, so they named it LGM-1 after a typical astronaut (Little green men) in fiction.
As a logical explanation for LGM-1, astronomers hypothesized that it could be a neutron star, the remnant of a massive star that exploded as a supernova. However, since the neutron star is a small celestial body with high density, it was thought that it could not be observed.
Next, an artificial satellite called Bella, launched by the United States to monitor the Soviet nuclear test, observed radiation emitted by nuclear explosions from space. However, strong gamma rays were found to be emitted from space, not from Earth.
With the release of observational data from the Bella satellite, which had been private in 1973, astronomers learned that there are types of gamma-ray signals, and that astronomical objects known as annual gamma-ray repeaters literally emit gamma rays over and over again. A candidate for producing this phenomenon is a neutron star pulsar that has a strong magnetic field and rotates at high speed.
Through this discovery, the identity of LGM-1 as a pulse was revealed, and Huish was awarded the 1974 Nobel Prize in Physics for his discovery. Since then, it has been discovered that there are even more strongly magnetic neutron stars, and these celestial bodies have come to be called magnetars.
When a massive object reaches the end of its life, it explodes in what is known as a supernova. At this point, if the remaining nuclear mass is too large, it causes a gravitational collapse and becomes a black hole. This is a neutron star. In terms of how dense neutrons are, for example, a spoonful of neutron stars is thought to weigh around 100 million tonnes.
Because neutrons are hot, they behave like liquids and the remaining electrons and protons can move freely. In addition, when a neutron star rotates at a sufficient speed, a magnetic field is generated according to the dynamo principle due to rapid rotation, convection, and the movement of freely moving charges. The magnetic field is also produced in the Earth’s core on the same principle, but the magnetor is more powerful than this by an order of magnitude.
For example, the geomagnetic strength is 0.5 gauss. It is the most powerful rocky planet in the solar system, but powerful electromagnets, such as those used in MRI scans, can reach tens of thousands of gauss. However, the magneto magnetic force is more than 100 to 1,000 trillion gauss, and the interior is 10 times more than this. In other words, the magnetism of a magnet is 1 trillion times stronger than the earth, and 1 billion times stronger than the highest magnetic force that mankind can create.
Because the magnetic force is so strong, when a man approaches a distance of 1,000 km from the magnetor, he cannot carry out life’s activities and dies immediately. Moreover, when approaching the surface of the magnetor, the electron orbits that make up the atom stretch and eventually collapse into a needle shape with a width of only about 1% of the length. Of course, since atoms cannot hold bonds that form molecules, the human body approaching the magnetor literally disintegrates into atomic units.
Despite these extreme objects, only 24 magnetars have been discovered so far, most of them within the Milky Way. In addition, because magnetizers have a short life, it is believed that only a small part of them can be observed by people. According to estimates, it is estimated that around 30 million magnets in the Milky Way have reached the end of their lives. Relevant information can be found here.
