
Astrophysicists detect the strongest magnetic field in the universe - blnqr
https://www.nanowerk.com/news2/space/newsid=56092.php
======
_Microft
Magnetars are even more mindblowing than blackholes, in my opinion.

Here is an excerpt from the Wikipedia article on Magnetars, to blow _your_
mind as well:

 _" X-ray photons readily split in two or merge. The vacuum itself is
polarized, becoming strongly birefringent, like a calcite crystal. Atoms are
deformed into long cylinders thinner than the quantum-relativistic de Broglie
wavelength of an electron." In a field of about 10^5 Tesla atomic orbitals
deform into rod shapes. At 10^10 Tesla, a hydrogen atom becomes a spindle 200
times narrower than its normal diameter._, from
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetar)

Edit:

 _" Die Massendichte, die einem derartigen Magnetfeld über seine Energiedichte
in Kombination mit der Äquivalenz von Masse und Energie gemäß E = m c^2
zugeordnet werden kann, liegt im Bereich einiger Dutzend Kilogramm pro
Kubikmillimeter (kg/mm3)"_, from german Wikipedia,
[https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetar#Entstehung](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetar#Entstehung)

says that the mass density (via energy-mass equivalence) of such strong
magnetic fields might be dozens of kilograms per cubic millimeter (kg/mm^3).

 _Mind. Blown._

~~~
SirLuxuryYacht
How do those rod-shaped atoms, like hydrogen, interact with other hydrogens or
other atoms? Can chemical reactions still even happen in the traditional
sense?

~~~
robocat
The temperature is expected to remain above plasma temperatures even if a
neutron star could cool for a billion years, so presumably normal chemistry
couldn’t occur.

[https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/questions/14387/what-
hap...](https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/questions/14387/what-happens-over-
time-as-a-neutron-star-cools)

The coldest neutron star detected “T < 42,000 Kelvin” :
[https://arxiv.org/abs/1901.07998](https://arxiv.org/abs/1901.07998)

Disclaimer: I am not an astrophysicist.

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robocat
“a significance level of > 20σ”

Insane! Clearly that doesn’t include the uncertainty in our understanding of
physics or neutron stars.

Edit: I tried to work out the % that 20σ is, but it is so mind bogglingly
small that there should be a law against using such an insane number in any
serious context.

~~~
btilly
Each tail is bounded above by e^(x^2/2) / (x sqrt(2 pi)). Take logs and you
get (x^2 / 2) - log(x) - log(2 pi)/2\. Calculate that out and you get to about
1.44 * 10^85. You can double that for 2 tails. But it is still an impressively
small number.

------
anm89
This is almost certainly not the strongest in the uninverse based on the
sample size of our observations right?

This is the strongest we have observed. Still really fascinating.

~~~
kstrauser
In cosmology, "in the _known_ universe" is always implicit. If the universe
turns out to be flat and infinite, then whatever unlikely thing you can think
of happens an infinite number of times in any infinitely small time period you
care to mention.

Somewhere, in the field of infinity, a whale materialized above a Three
Stooges convention and landed on a newly sentient petunia, an infinite number
of times since you started reading this sentence.

Perhaps not in the _known_ universe, sure, but somewhere. So "known" is
_always_ the implicit qualifier, but it'd be a pain in the neck to diligently
write "known universe" every single time when the people familiar enough with
the material to note the distinction also understand that's what you meant
anyway.

~~~
anm89
For one, I appreciate this perspective, I was not aware of that.

On the other hand this feels unconvincing to me. The language of science and
physics is already obtuse and overly wordy, that's what seperates it from the
noise of everyone else talking, because it trades precision for brevity and so
it feels reliable . So there are infinite places to draw that line in the
sand. Why do we stop right there? Why don't we just say what we mean instead
of piling up a bunch of words into a statement which is objectively false
without all the context.

~~~
kstrauser
Well, it’s because the more precise words don’t really provide more
information. And honestly, we do this exact thing constantly in everyday life
without thinking of it as confusing.

For example, “Usain Bolt is the fastest man alive”. Sure, _that we know of_.
There might be some kid in Chile that’s .05s faster, but we’ll never know
because his life circumstances don’t bring him to our attention. “The Bugatti
Chiron is the fastest car anywhere”... except for that speed demon tearing up
the tracks in orbit around Alpha Centauri. “Stephen Hawking is the smartest
guy”, if it weren’t for that absolute genius herding goats in Siberia who
didn’t get to go to school and has the local reputation as the weird kid
arranging the livestock in novel patterns. “Tuna is the most delicious fish”
because no one’s thought to make sashimi of that weird looking thing we
dragged up from the Mariana Trench.

In all of those cases, there’s an unspoken “...that we know of”. Even if you
believe that each of those cases is the fastest, smartest, or otherwise best,
you have to concede that there may be another faster, smarter, or better
elsewhere that we haven’t discovered yet.

So why pick on cosmologists? It’s literally impossible to declare _anything_
to be “the most $X in the universe”, first because the universe has an
infinite amount of stuff we’ll never be able to see, and second because we
haven’t even remotely finished cataloging a zillionth of the stuff we can
actually look at. Picking on them for not inserting a redundant “known” in
every sentence, when it doesn’t add information to their statement and would
just be adding filler, isn’t fair.

~~~
anm89
If you define man as human and we have open events to let people determine
who's fastest, it's totaly reasonable to assume he is actuality the fastest
man alive. On the other hand this isn't packaged as some sort of scientific
claim and has a lower burden of proof.

I don't think anyone beyond an anecdotal context is explicitly claiming
hawking was the smartest and either way, it's not measurable and so is
inherently subjective.

Delicious, subjective opinion.

All of these are reasonable statements, it's clear up front that they are
subjective statements of opinion or their scopes keep them within validity.

Saying a magnetic field is the strongest in the universe based on a
measurement in defined units is drastically different type of claim than the
ones you mentioned. In this case it's an invalid claim so we should probably
stop saying it.

------
the8472
> ~1 billion Tesla

Magnetars supposedly have up to 10¹¹ tesla. But I guess the evidence for that
is more indirect.

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aaron695
I assumed it'd be on earth like the hottest temperature in the Universe.

> which is tens of millions of times stronger than what can be generated in
> Earth laboratories.

How hard is this to achieve? Billion $ or impossible?

Not sure, but Wiki says labs get higher?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(magnetic_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_\(magnetic_field\))

~~~
curryst
Probably impossible without damaging the earth. The article talks about the
magnetic force crushing particles electron fields to be flat or spindle; I
would imagine generating a field like that anywhere on Earth would have a
chance of flattening the magnetic core of our planet into a disk.

On the funny side, the flat earthers would finally be right.

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AnimalMuppet
OK, ELI5: Why should a neutron star have a strong magnetic field?

~~~
the8472
The same reason earth or the sun have a magnetic field. But the collapse of
the star's core compresses the dynamo into a much smaller volume and speeds up
the rotation due to conservation of angular momentum, thus making it more
powerful.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_dynamo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_dynamo)

~~~
AnimalMuppet
But that requires an electrically conducting fluid. Neutrons aren't
electrically conducting, are they?

~~~
treeman79
At pressures neutron stars deal with, the laws of know physics are more like
vague suggestions.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Meaning that, for example, the neutrons could dissolve into just a sea of
quarks, and then it's a charged fluid? OK, I could see that.

------
baron816
Sort of related—Tom Scott did a survey to determine “The Best Thing”:
[https://youtu.be/ALy6e7GbDRQ](https://youtu.be/ALy6e7GbDRQ)

The second runner up is the Earth’s magnetic field.

He makes fun of his audience for ranking it that high, but planetary magnetic
fields are no joke.

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SubiculumCode
hell of a MRI they got over there. The jealously is real.

------
7OVO7
interesting

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stevespang
Let's not forget that this neutron star is measured at 5.8 kiloparsec distance
from earth which is 18,917.1 light years.

Even if observable electromagnetic radiation was traveling at the speed of
light, which most is not, we are looking at ancient history, because once this
EM reaches earth we are studying phenomena that occurred >189 centuries ago.

We don't have a way to know if this star is even still there.

Everything studied in astronomy at significant light years distance is ancient
phenomena, we are just seeing it/sensing it/evaluating it now.

~~~
occamschainsaw
The concept of “still there” in time is not very meaningful for cosmology. All
of our observations are in ~space-time~ not just space or time.

