BANG!!!!

[wireframe]

If you take a coke can and crush it down to a billionth its original size or something like that, you'd be hard-pressed to squeeze in any coke in it despite it was originally a coke can...

Not really. You would just have to 'squeeze' the Coca-Cola liquid down to one billionth of its original size and "your drink is served, sir!" It would be very difficult to drink...especially through a straw...

PS. I thought your question was a good one and I know what you meant by your example. Just playing along.

Here is one explanation of how neutron stars can have magnetic fields: link

 

[StefanS]

I never meant with my comment I meant I didn't know they have magnetic fields, I just said it's curious they do, as magnetism in ordinary matter comes from the movement of electrons in the structure of the object and neutrons obviously have no electrons circling them...

Nonsense, absolute and utter nonsense...

 

[Unknown Soldier]

I wonder, would people and other organisms on the far side of the Earth be able to survive such an event?

Hmm.. damn 'roaches would most probably survive.

US

 

[Diplo]

 

[MuFu]

It can't *not* have one, being a collapsed star.

I never meant with my comment I meant I didn't know they have magnetic fields, I just said it's curious they do, as magnetism in ordinary matter comes from the movement of electrons in the structure of the object and neutrons obviously have no electrons circling them...

Besides, I dunno what the star reference's supposed to be about - the structure of a neutron star isn't anything like that of an ordinary star. If you take a coke can and crush it down to a billionth its original size or something like that, you'd be hard-pressed to squeeze in any coke in it despite it was originally a coke can...

Well, say it was an iron coke can . If you crush it down to a billionth of it's original size, even if the result is just a tiny spot of neutrons it must still have a magnetic field - magnetic flux can't just disappear into nothing. Not only that, but you've reduced the surface area by several orders of magnitude so the field strength is going to be millions of times stronger than that of the original can. I can't remember who did the derivation of this - Maxwell maybe.

 

[mito]

The neutron star described above is 50,000 light-years from here. Telescopes around the world focusing on that star are observing what happened 50,000 years ago, right?

 

[RussSchultz]

The neutron star described above is 50,000 light-years from here. Telescopes around the world focusing on that star are observing what happened 50,000 years ago, right?

Yes-ish.

 

[mito]

The neutron star described above is 50,000 light-years from here. Telescopes around the world focusing on that star are observing what happened 50,000 years ago, right?

Yes-ish.

Thankish.

 

[Simon F]

The neutron star described above is 50,000 light-years from here. Telescopes around the world focusing on that star are observing what happened 50,000 years ago, right?

Yes-ish.

Thankish.

Although, apparently, what they are currently observing is the effect of the blast on surrounding matter. The blast itself was over in, err, a flash.

 

[KimB]

in layman's term: neutrons have a magnetic moment (the so-called anomalous m. m.) due to their inner structure. It's one the reasons why neutron scattering is widely used.

The interior of a neutron star seems to be unknown at present, actually, and thus there may be charged particles responsible for generating some of the magnetic field.

Edit: Just by the way, when this event was discovered, we had a couple of discussions about it in the Cosmology/Astrophysics department here at Davis. Some of the astronomers thought the name magnetar was just absolutely idiotic "It's a neutron star with a magnetic field! I mean, come on!"

 

[mito]

any updates to this?

 

[DemoCoder]

For a chuckle, lookup the "Oh My God" particle sometime. Some *very very very very* energetic cosmic rays have been detected hitting the earth. The speed at which this particle was traveling is nothing sort of amazing. We're talking a proton traveling so close to the speed of light that it had the momentum of a baseball traveling at 55mph, or the rest mass of an E. Coli bacterium!

 

[KimB]

For a chuckle, lookup the "Oh My God" particle sometime. Some *very very very very* energetic cosmic rays have been detected hitting the earth. The speed at which this particle was traveling is nothing sort of amazing. We're talking a proton traveling so close to the speed of light that it had the momentum of a baseball traveling at 55mph, or the rest mass of an E. Coli bacterium!

Yup, those things are pretty cool, and are the reason why there is no concern at all for future high-energy particle accelerators to do anything seriously harmful. Presumably you all have heard the claims that pop up from time to time that the next generation particle accelerator will produce black holes which will suck up the Earth? Yeah, if that could happen, it already would. To give you an idea of this, the next generation particle accelerator will be capable of energies of about 10^13eV. The highest energy cosmic rays have been measured at around 10^22eV (yes, that's a billion times more powerful).

As far as I know, we're still not sure as to exactly where these ultra high energy cosmic rays come from. It must be somewhere relatively close (i.e. within our own galaxy), because such high energy particles just don't get very far before colliding with CMB photons and losing energy. Some options have been proposed, but I am not up on the status of various proposed production techniques.

 

[Fred]

Afaik, the problem was precisely that people felt they weren't coming from within our galaxy, and were thus in conflict with known particle physics (in general cosmic rays can't get far b/c they interact with the cmb and lose energy) So various mechanisms were proposed (eg weakly interacting particle carrier intermediaries, and of course some people think there is instrumental error or that there are hidden local sources etc.

Cosmic ray physics is a fascinating field, full of tantalizing mini problems. Its also extremely imprecise due to the obvious experimental limitations. Every few years theres an anomalous event and everyone gets excited about. Centauro events and the like.

 

[weaksauce]

God Damn America and our SUVs!
8)

Ya, who would have thought it would be a "magnetarr"..:smile:

 

[soylent]

The Oh-My-God particle observed by Fly's Eye 2 in 1991 had a velocity so close to the speed of light that a trip from the galactic nucleus to us would be percieved as lasting only a couple of seconds(!!!) in it's restframe.

 

[Simon F]

The Oh-My-God particle observed by Fly's Eye 2 in 1991 had a velocity so close to the speed of light that a trip from the galactic nucleus to us would be percieved as lasting only a couple of seconds(!!!) in it's restframe.

Now if they could only get this into refrigerator technology I would be able to ignore those pesky use-by dates.