You may notice that my Geek Reading page is not working right. That is due to issues with Open Library. The page runs off a plugin called openbook by John Miedema. Not being a fan of social networking sites I decided to try and find another alternative to librarything which is a social networking site for book lovers sorta like Lastfm is a social networking site for music lovers.

So I’m giving this open source wiki book library my space. The downside is I relay on it for data. If it does not work neither does my book list. It has been suggested that I do this in my database as it not a big thing. This is true, but then I would not be contributing to what I thing is a valuable service. Short story long. Geek Reading is not presently function 100%. Bear with me until Open Library get things back up and running.

Oh and if you have a book suggestion for us geek people please don’t hesitate to leave a comment with your title suggestions.

Categories: Computers, Web Stuff
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While doing the previous post I also came across this.

Interestingly enough there was a conference this past February at Aspen Centre for Physics. Topics included:

Isolated neutron stars/magnetars observations at different wavelenghts

Isolated neutron stars/magnetars progenitors and evolution

Physics in ultra-strong magnetic fields

Physics in neutron stars interior

Models for the quiescent and transient emission from magnetars and isolated neutron stars

New missions and future perspectives

How fully we will see the results of this conference online soon. Do you know cool research being done on magnetars? let me know and I’ll post it.

source: Aspen Centre for Physics

Categories: Astronomy, Science, Space
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At the AAS meeting in 2009 there was presentation by Denis Leahy who offered a possible explanation for the strong magnetic fields produced by an extreme object called a magnetar.  A magnetar is a type of neutron star that has a very fast rotation rate and are extremely magnetic.  These objects are born from the death of a star in a supernova and manage to preserve the magnetic field and angular momentum of the parent star.  So where do these strong magnetic fields come from?  According the Denis Leahy, they are caused by a theoretical star called a quark star.  These are neutron stars that are further compressed by gravity. These stars  “overwhelm the structure of the neutron degenerate matter, quark matter (or strange matter)”.   According to Leahy 1 in 10 supernova should result in a magnetar.

As with a lot of other astrophysics enthusiasts I love those things that are at the extremes of our fields of interest.  I’ve been following the evolution of magnetar research since I first read of them in Sky and Tel many, many moons ago.

For me magnetars rank right up there with black holes in there extreme coolness factor.  A quick search of arxiv.org produces 25 hits when the work magnetar is used and using the Digital Library for Physics and Astronomy produces over 200 hits.  Clearly a keen area of research.

source: Universe Today

Another current piece of research on magnetars is being conducted by astronomers from SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research have used the NTEGRAL and XMM-Newton of ESA and the NASA satellite RXTE to discover that magnetars can produce very strong x-ray pulses.  This according to Peter den Hartog of the SRON in the Netherlands.  Magnetars are interesting because they’re stars about  1  1/2 the size of our sun, squeezed into a sphere 10 kilometres in diameter.  How they form exactly is a mystery.  Magnetars can emit enormous quantities of energy in the form of X-rays, they have a lifespan of only 10,000 years.

‘By converting the observations from INTEGRAL, XMM-Newton and RXTE into a type of short film, we could see how the characteristics of the X-rays changed over the course of time,’ explains Den Hartog. The characteristics of the radiation were found to drastically change during the rotation of the magnetar. Den Hartog: ‘Three different processes were found to be taking place in the magnetar that gave rise to three different pulses.’

source:  Science Centric

Tags: Astronomy,Cool,Science,Space
Categories: Astronomy, Science, Space
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