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 gravitational force that not even light can escape. 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 thin and collapse like needles when brought near.
British astronomer Antony Hewish observes the universe at the Mallard Radio Observatory in Cambridge and discovers that radio signals are generated at regular intervals every 1.33 seconds from the same place every night. After verifying that the radio waves are not from Earth, they saw that the signal was too regular and thought that the source of the radio waves might be an extraterrestrial civilization, so they named it LGM-1 after a typical astronaut (Little green men) in fiction .
As a rationale for LGM-1, astronomers speculated 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, high-density celestial body, it was thought that it could not be observed.
Later, an artificial satellite called Bella, launched by the United States to monitor the Soviet nuclear test, observed the radiation emitted by nuclear explosions from space. However, strong gamma rays were found to be emitted from space, not Earth.
With the release of observation data from the Bella satellite, which had been privately held in 1973, astronomers learned that there are types of gamma-ray signals, and that astronomical objects called annual gamma-ray repeaters literally emit repeating gamma rays. A candidate for generating this phenomenon is a neutron star pulsar that has a strong magnetic field and rotates at high speed.
Through this discovery, LGM-1’s identity was revealed to be a pulsar, and Huish was awarded the 1974 Nobel Prize in Physics for his discovery. Since then, even stronger magnetic neutron stars have been discovered to exist, and these celestial bodies have been called magnetors.
When a massive object reaches the end of its life, it explodes in what’s called a supernova. Right now, if the remaining nuclear mass is too large, it causes gravitational collapse and becomes a black hole. This is a neutron star. Regarding neutron density, for example, a spoonful of neutron stars is thought to weigh about 100 million tons.
Since the neutrons are hot, they behave like liquids and the remaining electrons and protons can move freely. Also, when a neutron star rotates at a sufficient speed, a magnetic field is generated according to the principle of a dynamo due to high-speed rotation, convection and the movement of freely moving charges. The magnetic field is also generated in the earth’s core according to the same principle, but the magnetor is an order of magnitude more powerful than this.
For example, the geomagnetic force is 0.5 gauss. It’s 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 magnetomagnetic strength is between 100 and 1,000 trillion gauss, and the interior is 10 times that. In other words, the magnetism of a magnetor is 1 trillion times stronger than the earth’s and 1 billion times stronger than the highest magnetic force mankind can create.
Because the magnetic force is so strong, when a human gets close to a distance of 1,000km from the magnetor, he cannot maintain life activities and dies instantly. Also, as one approaches the surface of the magnetor, the orbit of the electron that makes up the atom lengthens and eventually collapses into a needle-like shape with a width only about 1% of the length. Of course, since atoms cannot maintain the bonds that form molecules, the human body literally disintegrates into atomic units as it approaches the magnetor.
Despite these extreme objects, only 24 magnetors have been discovered so far, most of which are found within the Milky Way. Also, because magnetors are short-lived, it is believed that only a small fraction of them can be observed by humans. According to estimates, there are an estimated 30 million magnets in the Milky Way that have reached the end of their life. Related information this placecan be found in
