Discovery puts new spin on universe's strongest magnets

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Strange fast-spinning stars called magnetars get their names from the fact that they are the universe's most powerful magnets and unleash massive amounts of radiation. But now scientists have found that some magnetars can release mighty explosions without needing giant magnetic fields as previously thought.
Magnetars are a kind of pulsing neutron star (or pulsar) a remnant of a star left over after a supernova, when a star's explosion crushed protons together with electrons into neutrons. They are a thousand times more magnetic than an ordinary neutron star and 10 trillion times more so than a refrigerator magnet.
Neutron stars are some of the densest objects known. Although they are usually only about 12 miles across, they are often 1.5 to 3 times the mass of the sun. A piece of a neutron star the size of a sugar cube can weigh about 100 million tons, or roughly as much as a mountain.
Now researchers have discovered a magnetic neutron star that may rewrite the book on magnetars SGR 0418+5729, roughly 7,000 light-years from Earth.
Measuring a magnetic star
Astrophysicist Nanda Rea at the Institute of Space Sciences in Barcelona, Spain, and her colleagues measured how fast SGR 0418+5729 was spinning using data from four different X-ray space observatories.
The more powerful the magnetic field of a neutron star is, the more it tends to slow down the speed of the star's spin. As such, measuring this slowdown allows researchers to estimate the intensity of the neutron stars' surface magnetic fields.
Typical magnetars have magnetic fields measuring up to a million billion gauss in strength strong enough to rip atoms apart. Only 16 or so magnetars are known to date.

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