Scientists have discovered the most powerful magnetic field in the universe

Astronomers have discovered a space object that turns out to be (so far) the most powerful magnet in the universe. Such an object turned out to be a neutron star located at a distance of 20 thousand light years from the solar system.

Scientists shared their discovery on the pages of the publication Astrophysical journal Letters.

This magnetar was named GRO j1008-57, and measurements of the magnetic field showed that its value was approximately one billion tesla. It is currently the most powerful magnetic field ever observed in the Universe.

Note. For realizing the scale, the most powerful magnetic field that was created by man in the laboratory has a value of 2800 Tesla.

How the magnetic field was measured

Measuring the magnetic field of a celestial body is not a trivial task. After all, it is impossible to deliver a device such as a magnetometer to an object. Only data from near-Earth and ground-based telescopes are available for calculations.

So the X-ray pulsar GRO j1008-57 has a close connection with an ordinary star and pulls the matter of the "neighbor star" due to its strong attraction.

So the matter that falls on the pulsar from a neighboring star becomes very hot and begins to emit in the X-ray range.

Back in 2017, China's orbiting X-ray telescope Insight-HXMT found in the GRO j1008-57 radiation a line of the spectrum, which is known as the line of cyclotron resonance scattering.

If we say without buzzwords, then it is quite possible to calculate the strength of the electromagnetic field using the energy of quanta of this particular line.

As the scientists emphasize, this spectral line was obtained with a particularly high accuracy of 20 sigma. For comparison, data with an accuracy of 5 sigma or more is considered reliable. So, errors in the calculations of scientists on the strength of the magnetic field are completely excluded.

So the measured quantum energy of 90 keV turned out to be equal to an incredibly strong magnetic field of one billion tesla. Despite its enormous strength, this field does not stand out from the theoretical concepts, according to which the fields can reach power up to 100 billion tesla.

But this is all theory, and real data of one billion tesla, will provide vigilant attention from scientists for a long time. Indeed, according to all the same theoretical calculations, such strong magnetic fields are quite capable of changing the properties of matter and even the vacuum itself.

So scientists will study this object for a long time in search of practical confirmation of theoretical data.

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