'Cosmic monster' star spits energy with the force of a billion suns

[Admin]

Scientists just collected the first measurements of violent eruptions in extremely dense magnetic stars called magnetars.

'Cosmic monster' star spits energy with the force of a billion suns : Read more

 

[Meteoric Marmot]

I'm so happy that this didn't happen in our neighbourhood as, "Anybody not wearing two-million sunblock is gonna have a really bad day. "

 

[Tychometer]

Hydrogen bombs releases hideous amonts of energy. A 1 megaton TNT scale convert a couple ounces of matter (50 gram or so) to energy. How can a 7 gram Marshmallow slam into a magnetar with so much energy that it totally outscales it's own energy in weight?? Will be careful next time I barbecue one so it dont go off and send me to Mars....

 

[billslugg]

Yes, a moving mass can have more kinetic energy than the amount of energy equivalent to its rest mass.
A good example is the "Oh My God" particle detected 15 Oct 1991 by the Fly's Eye detector at Dugway Proving Ground. It was measured at 3.2x10^20 eV or 51 Joules. The rest mass of a proton is 1.67x10^-27 kg which is equivalent to 1.5x10^-10 Joules.

 

[Tychometer]

That the moving mass energy gets up to > 1000 of the rest mass seem pretty wild for me but that example of the "Oh my God" particle was really mindblowing.
Thanks!
Trying to calculate the relativistic energy based on near light speed it seems like the final speed of the Marsmallow has to be more than 99,9% (but probably not more than 99,99%) of the speed of light to achieve that kinetic energy equiv. to 1000 hydrogen bombs (depending on the Marshmallow weight and bomb size. ....)
Well, the possibility to accelerate an object for something so dense/heavy, its on the edge of becoming a black hole is probably the explanation I didn't grasp. Would have been interesting to see the assumptions behind the impact speed.
Speculation: the cosmic start spits (bursts) may be a candidate for high energetic particles

 

[billslugg]

Yes, the neutron star would have been fairly close to being a black hole. The speed of the OMG particle, according to an article in Wiki (no reference given) was 0.9999999999999999999999951 times the speed of light. Its Lorentz factor was 3.2x10^11.