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Strongest magnet in the cosmos

Jan 8, 2003

In November 1996 a NASA satellite called the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) was monitoring a rare type of pulsar some 40 000 light-years from Earth. The star, called SGR 1806-20, is one of just four known "soft gamma repeaters" -- rotating neutron stars that periodically emit huge bursts of gamma rays. Now an international team of astrophysicists studying the RXTE data has found evidence for what is known as a magnetar -- the most magnetic object in the universe.

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