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from the catch-a-baby-star-and-put-it-in-your-pocket-♫♫ dept.
Astronomers just discovered the youngest ever 'baby' dead star:
A suite of space-based telescopes operated by NASA and the European Space Agency have discovered the youngest known magnetar to date. At just 240 years old, this extreme, cosmic infant could help astronomers understand how these dead, dense stars come to be and how they evolve.
In a study, published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters on Wednesday, researcher describe Swift J1818.0-1607, a very young magnetar first spotted by NASA's Neil Gehrel's Swift Observatory on March 12 after it let out a mighty, explosive burst of X-rays. Magnetars are a rare kind of neutron star (the collapsed cores of huge stars) with extreme magnetic fields. They pack a huge amount of mass into a tiny space, which generates a huge amount of weird physical phenomena. Their magnetic fields can be up to 1,000 times stronger than your regular, run-of-the-mill neutron star.
[...] This particularly[sic] magnetar is only around 16,000 light-years from the Earth -- practically our backyard -- and located in the constellation Sagittarius. Astronomers have only detected a few dozen magnetars and none have ever been detected so shortly after they have formed.
Journal Reference:
Zhongyang Wang. Reactant-Transport Engineering Approach to High-Power Direct Borohydride Fuel Cells, Cell Reports Physical Science (DOI: 10.1016/j.xcrp.2020.100084)
This magnetar is 16,000 light years away from Earth.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 19 2020, @12:51PM (4 children)
So it is 16240 years old “now” give or take a bit of relativity.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday June 19 2020, @01:19PM (3 children)
What is "now" other than a reference point in the web of causality (aka time)? In which case the magnetar is "now" 240 years old from our perspective. Without FTL (which breaks either relativity or causality), nothing we might do will let us see an age inconsistent with that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 19 2020, @05:20PM (1 child)
All the arguments I have seen that demonstrate FTL breaks causality use FTL at 2X lightspeed. I worked out that this is because that is the point at which the time-travel effect is maximised. As you go faster it reduces, to the point where instant "interstellar jumps" would not break causality. They would re-establish simultaneity, but that is a minor break of GR compared to time-travel.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 20 2020, @12:57PM
Regarding some founded FTL arguing, see e.g. Is faster-than-light travel possible? [blogspot.com].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 20 2020, @12:53PM
Both of that has a part of it: Imagine that a movie is done with a 24 y/o star, and you see it after, say, 16 years. When you see the movie, the star has already 24+16 years, yet what you see in the movie is a 24 y/o star.