Little Bang Posted December 30, 2011 Report Posted December 30, 2011 Anyone aware of any anomalies surrounding light from stars behind a magnetar? Quote
Cyberia Posted January 1, 2012 Report Posted January 1, 2012 Possibly hotter than normal since magnetic fields cause heating in stars? Quote
CraigD Posted January 2, 2012 Report Posted January 2, 2012 Anyone aware of any anomalies surrounding light from stars behind a magnetar? From our discussion over the years, LB, I’m guessing you’re curious about this because of your old, lingering suspicion that light is very slightly deflected by a magnetic field. Best current theory (the Standard Model) predicts no such effect (because light is and magnetic force is carried by the same particles, photons, which follows Bose-Einstein statistics, so can’t interact with one another), and experiments with magnetic fields of the strength that can be generated on Earth (a few, or at best, on the order of 100 T), detect no such effect. Magnetars’ magnetic field strength are on the order of 1011 T, the strongest thought to exist. So, if magnetic force virtual and light actual photons do interact in some way not predicted by the SM and to slightly to be detected by experiments with available magnetic fields, if any known magnetic field is strong enough, it would be a Magnetar’s. I’m unaware of any observation suggesting such an effect. Because it is so contradicted by theory, I doubt any astronomer is looking for such an effect, so likely if you want to, you’ll need to find and analyze, observation data from one or more of the known magnetars (there’re aren’t many), or correspond/discuss with an astronomer enough to convince him to. If any have enough motion against the distant star background, any deflection should be easy to detect. I’ve not done any such research, but encourage you to. Possibly hotter than normal since magnetic fields cause heating in stars?Magnetars are neutron stars, so are among the hottest compact bodies in the sky, second only to gamma ray bursters (some of which are also neutron stars). But, as with all astronomical radiation source, their temperature and spectrum doesn’t affect that of stars behind them, which I believe LB describes. Quote
Little Bang Posted January 4, 2012 Author Report Posted January 4, 2012 Your right Craig. There would be some slight bending of light due to gravitational effects but since the magnetic field is so large I thought there might be some distortion of space/time. I have suggested an experiment to NIST for changes in time due to a magnetic field. Quote
Cyberia Posted January 4, 2012 Report Posted January 4, 2012 That's teach me to watch TV when answering posts. I did not notice the word "behind" in the first post. Quote
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