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Post by dividavi on Jan 9, 2022 6:27:34 GMT
It would be nifty if we could somehow store the energy released by a neutron star. I suppose that any container or battery would be fried by as much energy as a billion suns — and it happened in a fraction of a second. I suppose also that a starquake event would destroy our Solar System if it occurred within a light year of earth. 'Cosmic monster' star spits energy with the force of a billion suns
By Mindy Weisberger published 7 days ago www.livescience.com/magnetar-giant-flare-oscillations-aiHigh energy outbursts in this type of neutron star — a magnetar — are thought to be caused by "starquakes." A powerful X-ray burst erupts from a magnetar — a supermagnetized version of a stellar remnant known as a neutron star — in this illustration. (Image credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center/Chris Smith (USRA))
A dense, magnetic star violently erupted and spat out as much energy as a billion suns — and it happened in a fraction of a second, scientists recently reported. This type of star, known as a magnetar, is a neutron star with an exceptionally strong magnetic field, and magnetars often flare spectacularly and without warning. But even though magnetars can be thousands of times brighter than our sun, their eruptions are so brief and unpredictable that they're challenging for astrophysicists to find and study. However, researchers recently managed to catch one of these flares and calculate oscillations in the brightness of a magnetar as it erupted. The scientists found that the distant magnetar released as much energy as our sun produces in 100,000 years, and it did so in just 1/10 of a second, according to a statement translated from Spanish.
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Post by TheGoodMan19 on Jan 14, 2022 0:22:12 GMT
I think I read once that if you got close enough to a magnetar w/o being incinerated, it would pull the iron out of your blood. Could be BS.
It's a damned strange universe out there and we haven't scratched the surface
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Post by dividavi on Jan 14, 2022 4:38:05 GMT
I think I read once that if you got close enough to a magnetar w/o being incinerated, it would pull the iron out of your blood. Could be BS. It's a damned strange universe out there and we haven't scratched the surface This report from 2011 addresses the concerns you expressed.Magnets Keep Blood Flowing
Researchers show that magnetic fields can reduce blood viscosity, a leading cause of heart attack and strokes 9 JUN 2011BYJON CARTWRIGHT www.science.org/content/article/magnets-keep-blood-flowingSmooth running. Could very strong magnetic fields, like the ones produced by this magnet in the current study, improve blood flow? RONGJIA TAO Two physicists searching for a novel way to prevent heart attacks and strokes have discovered that strong magnetic fields can dramatically reduce the thickness, or viscosity, of blood flowing through a tube. The pair speculate that if this effect holds for blood in veins and arteries, scientists might someday develop a magnetic alternative to medicines designed to keep blood flowing in humans. Strokes and heart attacks, the leading causes of death in the industrialized world, are often linked to high blood viscosity. Thicker blood damages blood vessels, and in repairing the damage, the vessels build up fatty deposits, which make strokes and heart attacks more likely. Currently, the only way to reduce blood viscosity is with drugs like aspirin, which inhibit the tendency of blood to clot. But aspirin has side effects: in high doses, it can lead to stomach bleeding, ulcers, and even tinnitus, or ringing of the ears. Physicist Rongjia Tao of Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and medical physicist Ke Huang of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, wondered whether magnetic fields offered a potentially safer solution. After all, high-strength magnets of 1 to 3 tesla are already used in hospitals during magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and have been shown to have no harmful effects on the body. Tao and Huang let blood flow inside a tool for measuring blood viscosity, which itself was inside an electromagnet producing a field of about 1.3 tesla. They arranged the components so the blood flowed in the same direction as the magnetic field lines. The researchers discovered that just 1 minute inside the field was enough to reduce the blood viscosity by 20% to 30%. After exposure, the viscosity went back up to its original value after about 2 hours, but they could repeat the process to take it down again. The results are described in a forthcoming paper in Physical Review E. The magnetic effect, the researchers say, all comes down to hemoglobin, the iron-based protein inside red blood cells. In the same way that iron filings align themselves along the field lines around a bar magnet, so the red blood cells align themselves along the straight field lines of Tao and Huang's electromagnet. This reduces viscosity in several ways. For one, the cells become streamlined with the direction of flow. The alignment also encourages the cells to stick together, forming clumps of various sizes. Although one might think clumps would increase viscosity, they actually have a lower total surface area compared with single cells, and this cuts down on friction. What's more, the mixture of clump sizes allows more cells to pack into the same volume, with small cells fitting around the big clumps and allowing more room for movement. One catch with the technique is that the blood flow must be in the same direction as the magnetic field. The effect wouldn't be the same when an entire body is in an MRI machine, for example, because blood vessels travel in all different directions. But Tao doesn't think this would be a problem. "There's no need to apply the magnetic field to the whole body," he explains. "In fact, we just need to apply the magnetic field locally—for example, apply the magnetic field parallel to one artery." By putting one artery in the field for a few minutes, he says, blood circulation would transmit the effect to the whole body. Tao hopes that, with refinement, the technique will allow patients who are not hospital-bound to check into a clinic only twice a day for treatment, to keep their blood viscosity down permanently. Mehmet Toner, a medical engineer at Harvard Medical School in Boston, calls the results "very intriguing," and thinks they could be important if they are repeated inside the body. The researchers need to do "a lot more work to prove that the magnetic field can reduce blood viscosity under physiological conditions, and do so in a manner useful for clinical applications," he says. Tao and Huang are currently designing a magnet into which patients could insert an arm or a leg easily. They are also developing technology to measure blood viscosity at several locations inside an artery. "Afterwards, we will work with some doctors in our medical school to have clinical trials," Tao says. That's the end of the article and as far as I know there have been no applications in a hospital setting of this magnetic effect to limit blood viscosity. The article is a decade old so I guess that the practical effects were insufficient to make this into a medical procedure. In any case, here's an experiment demonstrating how magnetic fields affect animal blood.The results may startle you.
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Post by Sarge on Jan 14, 2022 7:17:44 GMT
Even just the energy from our sun would be enormous, that's the idea behind Dyson Spheres, enclosing a star with solar panels.
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