Do Stars Have Starquakes?
Maybe. NASA thinks that it may have a star on its hands that could possibly be flaring due to quakes on the surface of the star. The quakes occur, not because of vulcanism like here on Earth, but because this particular star has super-powered magnetic fields that are so intense they rip apart the surface of the star when they move.
Neat.
Let’s start at the very beginning. BANG. Ha, ha, get it?
There is this star, see, and it’s 30,000 light years away from Earth. The star is named SGR J1550-5418, which isn’t very romantic, and it’s located in the constellation, Norma, which is even less romantic. This SGR J1550-5418 is a neutron star.
A neutron star is what’s left over after a supernova event. After a star collapses onto itself, the stuff left over are neutrons, the same sub-atomic particles that comprise an atom’s neucleus. You can think of a neutron star as a really big atomic neucleus that is super dense. This neutron star is about one and half times the mass of our Sun, but all that is compacted into a sphere with a diameter of only about 12 miles.
Well, this SGR J1550-5418 is a special kind of neutron star. It’s a “soft-gamma-ray repeater.” There have only been six of these soft-gamma repeaters found so far. What happens is that the star occasionally flares out, that’s right, gamma rays. Luckily for NASA scientists, just this last summer a new telescope, the Fermi Gamma-Ray Space telescope, was launched to study these very same gamma rays.
Theory has it that soft-gamma-ray repeaters that are known as “magnetars” flare due to “quakes” in the surface crust of the star. The magnetar have such powerful magnetic fields that they effectively rip open the surface and allow gamma-rays to erupt forth into space. Hopefully, with the Fermi on the case, scientists will be able to test the theory about starquakes. The Fermi will be able to see through the bursts and find the structures within.
neutron star, astronomy, NASA, space, telescope, Fermi, gamma-ray, magnetar, soft-gamma-ray repeater, sun, earth, starquakes, magnetic fields
