Hold on to your Credit Cards....Rare Class of Exotic Stars Revealed as Super-Magnets
Montreal -- Scientists have found that a rare and enigmatic class of neutron stars, of which only five are known, are actually magnetars -- exotic stars with magnetic fields trillions of times stronger than the Sun's or Earth's, so powerful that they could strip a credit card clean 100,000 miles (about 160,000 kilometers) away.
These neutron stars, called Anomalous X-ray Pulsars (AXP), had defied physical explanation since the first such object was discovered in 1982. The newly exposed AXP-magnetar relationship is featured in the September 12 issue of Nature, based on data obtained with NASA's Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer spacecraft.
The finding, by a team led by Prof. Victoria Kaspi of the McGill University Department of Physics in Montreal, Canada, essentially doubles the number of known magnetars.....................RAED ON.....http://universe.nasa.gov/press/2002/020911a.html
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