Astronomers have discovered a mysterious object flashing signals from deep space
livescience.com
livescience.com
https://www.britannica.com/science/pulsar
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetar#Description
They are both forms of neutron stars, which average around 20km but are the densest objects known to man. Fun fact, one sugar cube of their material would weigh about as much as a mountain (https://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/science/objects/neutron_stars1...).
Only in the sense that black holes don't have finite densities.
Well, not quite, because that analogy misses ten orders of magnitude of density difference. That just hurts my brain.
Magnetars are a whole other level of eldritch madness. The energy density of their magnetic fields is ten thousand times the density of lead.
Let that sink in for a minute.
The vacuum around a magnetar contains so much energy in the magnetic field alone that thanks to the E=mc² conversion ratio between energy and mass it has a "mass density" that is the direct equivalent to every single atomic bomb on the planet blowing up all at once and the released energy of all of that getting packed into a cubic centimeter.
Perhaps ironically, what instills in me this sense of existential dread are supervoids, more than any massively destructive structure.
I can't really explain why, but something about the idea of a incomprehensibly vast nothingness really rubs me in the wrong way.
I mean, the radius of Boötes Void is 330M light years across. I can't fathom that amount of nothing. A photon enters the Boötes void, and if it travels through its center it will take more than half a billion years to reach the other side.
In a sense it's the same thing when I think of the end of the universe. There's a comfort in thinking of a great collapse. A sense of finality, like a board game being put back in the box. In the other hand, the possibility of a heat death is absolutely dreadful. Just a never ending lingering darkness with white dwarfs slowly fading into black. No ending, no great boom, no blaze of glory.
Pulsar's pulse comes from their spin contorting the magnetic field lines. When they slow down, they lose energy, and at some point they don't have enough to create XRays.
My guess, nothing is perfect, the rotation pole does not align exactly with the magnetic pole.
A second followup question, do stars tend to be coaxially aligned with their galaxy? it it possible to tell which way a star or pulsar is rotating?
Yes but this is a dynamic process that produces more correlated stars as the galaxy ages.
Astronomers routinely measure such parameters using models to provide confidence bounds for their estimates.
Or, it could be something that flares up every 44 minutes, and is emitted in all directions at once. We really don't know.
Pulses could follow such a slope, too, but might not, and that would provide differentiation.
At this level of entropy I wonder if they’re not better off using uuids instead.
In this case, J1832-0911 means a right ascension of 18h(hours) 32m(minutes) and a declination of -9°(degrees)11'(arcminutes). Using this, you could quickly work out whether it's visible from your location.
the concept of self respect itself may be alien to "aliens".
it's a human construct / concept.
also, stop calling them aliens. it is disrespectful.
(otherwise they might zap us with their thought cannon, compared to which light sabers are like toothpicks.)
they have as much right to be in this universe as we have. the term "alien" is a human and sci-fi construct. and sci-fi is, well, fi(ction).
call them extra terrestrial beings, or just other beings.
we need to realise that other beings can have other sets of values than we do, or even none. heck, they may not even have the concept of values. and there is nothing wrong with that.
i can go on, but I'll stop here. my other being friends are calling me for a get together.
A being is also a human construct / concept.
True. I didn't see anyone saying that here.
>A being is also a human construct / concept.
Yep. It can be an alien one too, though.