It was so bright some satellites actually saw it reflected off the surface of the Moon! The current theory suggests that, similarly to earthquakes, the crust Even though it originated 50,000 light years away, the giant pulse of energy from the 2004 starquake was enough to knock all research and commercial satellites offline, says Some U.S. Navy’s stealthy communication equipment was briefly knocked out too, because the starquake temporarily altered the shape of the ionosphere, the outer edge of Earth’s atmosphere. It's one of only 23 magnetars and one of just four radio magnetars ever discovered, and it first turned up in 2004. On Dec. 27, 2004, for a tenth of second, a blast of energy knocked satellites offline, disrupted submarine and radio transmissions, and shifted the magnetic field of the Earth. They have the strongest magnetic fields of any object in the universe by several orders of magnitude, says Deep inside the magnetar “everything just becomes a soup of neutrons and protons,” the basic building blocks of atoms, explains “We have no idea what the trigger process is for these things,” says Watts.
Upon graduating with her biology degree in 2014, she stalled going into research and became the evening supervisor at a library instead. There are also more powerful magnets out there that can lift immensely heavy loads, and there are manually controlled magnets used in delicate surgical treatments. But that’s because SGR 1806-20 is so very far away; had it been one-tenth that distance, the effects would have been 100 times stronger. A magnetar is a type of neutron star believed to have an extremely powerful magnetic field (∼10 9 to 10 11 T, ∼10 13 to 10 15 G). Researchers believe that what they see as pulses are actually hotspots of radiation on the magnetar’s surface. Several satellites were actually blinded by the event.
Eleven seconds later, On February 21, 2008, it was announced that NASA and researchers at Unusually bright supernovae are thought to result from the death of very large stars as Kouveliotou, C.; Duncan, R. C.; Thompson, C. (February 2003). It was said that the 04 starquake was only a glancing blow and that the one presently incoming will be a more … In just 200 milliseconds—a fifth of a second, literally the blink of an eye—the eruption gave off as much energy as the Sun does A fireball of matter erupted out of the star at nearly a third the speed of light, and the energy from the explosion moved—of course—at the speed of light itself. Fortunately for us, magnetars are very, very rare. In a magnetar's field, you just kind of … dissolve. This same pulsing was seen by other satellites as well.So here’s a recap, in case your brain still remains uncrushed: this was an explosion by an object with the mass of the Sun, squeezed into a ball a few kilometers across, with gravity billions of times stronger than Earth’s, a magnetic field quadrillions of times stronger, all of of which is spinning every 7.5 seconds.Still, even given all that, the damage from the explosion was actually rather minimal here on Earth. However, what would it do to you?If you were to get any closer than a thousand kilometres to this each individual atom of your body, all of which contain charge-carrying electrons and protons, would be stretched, thus scrambling your bioelectric field and shattering your molecular structures. In just one-fifth of a second, it released more energy than our Sun has effused over the last 250,000 years.Now, imagine if that magnetar and its starquake had been only 10,000 light-years away, things would have been much worse.
Magnetars are nothing more than these same rapidly rotating neutron stars that somehow, to the great mystification of physicists, produce intensely powerful magnetic fields and release high energy X-Rays and gamma rays.An artist’s illustration of a magnetar with its non-visible powerful magnetic field (Photo Credit: orin/Shutterstock)A Magnetar has a magnetic field as intense as 10¹⁵ Gauss, making them the most magnetic objects in the Universe. NASA and European satellites and many radio telescopes detected the flash and its aftermath on December 27, 2004. On December 27, 2004, astronomers were stunned when more than a dozen spacecraft picked up a powerful burst of gamma rays from the other side of our galaxy. There are two ways in which a Magnetar could end all life on Earth, not to mention destroy the entire planet.If a magnetar were to somehow get too close to our planet, you would start feeling its presence instantaneously. However, this rapid series of events had shifted Earth’s magnetic field. To make it easier to comprehend this figure, take a look at the magnetic field strengths of other objects in our universe.Plastic money would no longer work, due to the disruption of magnetic information on the strips of these cards (Photo Credit: YAKOBCHUK VIACHESLAV/Shutterstock)Subscribe to our mailing list and get interesting stuff and updates to your email inbox.we respect your privacy and take protecting it seriouslyWhat Is The Largest and Most Powerful Magnet In The Universe?Magnetars come into existence the same way a neutron star does—through the core collapse of a massive star during a supernova explosion.