by Mitch Battros - Earth Changes Media                                                     August 16 2013

Astronomers have discovered a 'magnetar' at the center of our Milky Way. A 'magnetar' is a type of neutron star with an extremely powerful magnetic field. They produce high-energy electromagnetic radiation - particularly cosmic rays and gamma rays. This pulsating magnetar has an extremely strong magnetic field enabling researchers to investigate the direct vicinity of the black hole at the heart of the Milky Way galaxy.

An international team of scientists headed by the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn have, for the first time, measured the strength of the magnetic field around this central source. It has an extremely high flow of charged particles in the order of 100 million (108) Tesla, about 1000 times stronger than the magnetic fields of ordinary neutron stars, or 100,000 billion times the Earth's magnetic field.

The magnetic field strength in the vicinity of the black hole at the center of the Milky Way is an important property. The black hole is gradually swallowing its surroundings (mainly hot ionized gas) in a process of accretion. Magnetic fields caused by this in-falling gas can influence the structure and dynamics of the accretion flow, helping or even hindering the process.

Ralph Eatough, from Max Planck's Fundamental Physics Research department and lead author of the study said: "The second time we looked in the center of the galaxy, it had become very active in the radio band and was very bright. I could hardly believe that we had finally detected a pulsar in the Galactic center". Because this pulsar is so special, the research team spent a lot of effort to prove that it was a real object in deep space and not due to man-made radio interference created on Earth.

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