Rare Class of Exotic Stars Revealed as Super-Magnets

Scientists have found that a rare and enigmatic class of neutron stars, of which only five are known, are actually magnetars -- exotic stars with magnetic fields trillions of times stronger than the Sun's or Earth's, so powerful that they could strip a credit card clean 100,000 miles (about 160,000 kilometers) away.

These neutron stars, called Anomalous X-ray Pulsars (AXP), had defied physical explanation since the first such object was discovered in 1982. The newly exposed AXP-magnetar relationship is featured in the September 12 issue of Nature, based on data obtained with NASA's Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer spacecraft.

The finding, by a team led by Prof. Victoria Kaspi of the McGill University Department of Physics in Montreal, Canada, essentially doubles the number of known magnetars.

Joining Kaspi on this observation is Fotis Gavriil, lead author on the Nature article and a graduate student in the Physics Department of McGill University, and Peter Woods of the National Space Science and Technology Center in Huntsville, Ala.

For the complete release on discover of the neutron stars, go to: http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/topstory/20020911magnetar.html