Mysterious magnetar boasts one of strongest magnetic fields in Universe

14 August 2013 - Scientists using ESA's XMM-Newton space telescope have discovered that a curious dead star has been hiding one of the strongest magnetic fields in the Universe all along, despite earlier suggestions of an unusually low magnetic field. The object, known as SGR 0418+5729 (or SGR 0418 for short), is a magnetar, a particular kind of neutron star. A neutron star is the dead core of a once massive star that collapsed in on itself after burning up all its fuel and exploding in a dramatic supernova event. They are extraordinarily dense objects, packing more than the mass of our Sun into a sphere only some 20 km across - about the size of a city. A small proportion of neutron stars form and live briefly as magnetars, named for their extremely intense magnetic fields, billions to trillions of times greater than those generated in hospital MRI machines, for example. These fields cause magnetars to erupt sporadically with bursts of high-energy radiation. SGR 0418 lies in our galaxy, about 6500 light years from Earth.