Science and Space

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Star-quake

Astronomers have been stunned by the amount of energy released in a star explosion on the far side of our galaxy, 50,000 light-years away. The blast occurred on the surface of an exotic kind of star - a super-magnetic neutron star called SGR 1806-20. The flash of radiation on 27 December 2004 was so powerful that it bounced off the Moon and lit up the Earth’s atmosphere. If the explosion had been just 10,000 light-years away, Earth could have suffered a mass extinction.

The event overwhelmed detectors on space-borne telescopes, such as the recently launched Swift observatory. This facility was put above the Earth to detect and analyse gamma-ray bursts - very intense but fleeting flashes of radiation.

This remarkable super-dense object is a neutron star - it is composed entirely of neutrons and is the remnant collapsed core of a once giant star. Now, though, this remnant is just 20km across and spins so fast it completes one revolution every 7.5 seconds. It has this super-strong magnetic field and this produces some kind of structure which has undergone a rearrangement - it’s an event that is sometimes characterised as a ‘star-quake’, a neutron star equivalent of an earthquake.

posted by: kyawoo at 09:50 | link | comments |
astronomy

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