Magnetar

Magnetar

Part of: Prelims 

In News: Scientists have found the first clues to understand violent short duration flares from a compact star of rare category called magnetar located thirteen million light years away. 

• These compact stars with the most intense magnetic field known, of which only thirty have been spotted so far in our galaxy, suffer violent eruptions that are still little known due to their unexpected nature and their short duration. 
• Scientists have long been intrigued by such short and intence bursts — transient X-ray pulses of energies several times that of the Sun and length ranging from a fraction of a few millisecond to a few microseconds.
• When massive stars like supergiant stars with a total mass of between 10 and 25 solar masses collapse they might form neutron stars. 
• Among neutron stars, stands out a small group with the most intense magnetic field known: magnetars.
• It is believed that eruptions in magnetars may be due to instabilities in their magnetosphere or to a kind of “earthquakes” (”starquakes”) produced in their crust, a rigid and elastic layer about a kilometer thick. 
• “Regardless of the trigger, in the magnetosphere of the star a type of waves will be created. These  waves which are well known in the Sun, are called Alfvén waves and  while bouncing back and forth between the points at the base of its lines of magnetic field, they interact with each other dissipating energy

News Source: PIB