This Star Erupts, Emits Solar Energy For 100 Thousand Years

The magnetar erupts into a gigantic explosion that generates enormous energy.

REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA — In a nearby galaxy, there is a rare dead star that erupts into a giant explosion. This event may not be so strange. However, for the first time, the change in its brightness during this event has been documented in detail. This event gave scientists a window into understanding the processes that produced these giant flares.

Reported from Science Alert, Monday (10/1/2022), the star is a type of extreme neutron star called a magnetar. The star lies up to 13 million light-years away in the Silver Coin galaxy (NGC 253), and was at the peak of its eruption for 160 milliseconds. This neutron star emits as much energy as the Sun does in 100 millennia.

“Even in an inactive state, a magnetar can be 100,000 times more luminous than our Sun, but in the case of the flash we studied – GRB 2001415 – the energy released is equivalent to the energy emitted by our Sun in 100,000 years,” said astrophysicist Alberto J. Castro-Tirado of the Andalusian Institute of Astrophysics in Spain.

All stars have their peculiarities and peculiarities. However, the magnetar is one of the strangest. They are neutron stars, which have pulled the collapsing dead core of a once enormous star, up to about 2.3 times the mass of the Sun, packed into an ultradense sphere only 20 km (12.4 miles) in diameter.

This magnetic structure is about 1,000 times stronger than a normal neutron star. This structure is one quadrillion times stronger than Earth. Scientists do not know how or why they are formed.

Magnetars produce some pretty interesting behaviors not seen in the average neutron star. The inward gravitational pressure competes with the outward pull of the magnetic field, producing unpredictable and strong magnetic earthquakes. This quake, scientists now believe, was the strongest contender for the mysterious signal known as fast radio bursts (FBR). FBR emits more radio energy than 500 million Suns in just milliseconds.

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