Magnetar SGR 1900+14

[blobrana]

"NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has found a bizarre ring of material around the magnetic remains of a star that blasted to smithereens.
The stellar corpse, called SGR 1900+14, belongs to a class of objects known as magnetars. These are the cores of massive stars that blew up in supernova explosions, but unlike other dead stars, they slowly pulsate with X-rays and have tremendously strong magnetic fields."

Read more (http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/Media/releases/ssc2008-08/release.shtml)

Position(2000): RA 19:07:14.32, Dec +09:19:20.0 1.0

[blobrana]

"Like a team of forensic detectives in a television show that could be called "CSI: Milky Way," a University of Chicago astrophysicist and his associates are piecing together how a mysterious infrared ring got left around a dead star that displays a magnetic field trillions of times more intense than Earth's."

Read more (http://news.uchicago.edu/news.php?asset_id=1386)

[kaneda]

Two possibilities: A supernova occurs when heavy elements smother a star and the pressure builds up. What if the pressure instead blew a lump off of the thick crust of heavy elements so acting like a pressure valve and allowing the inner material under pressure to escape in a jet as the star rotated?

Why does a neutron star become a magnetar. Because it is very massive and so some neutrons start collapsing. You then have free protons and electrons moving about in a powerful magnetic field, so an electric current.

[draqon]

ummm the first thing I thought was an alien civilization created the ring for some purpose unknown (gravity perhaps)