Magnetars are some of the most fascinating celestial objects. A teaspoon of the material weighs about a billion tons, and their magnetic field is hundreds of millions of times stronger than any magnetic field on Earth today. But we know very little about how they form. A new pape

Magnetars are some of the most fascinating celestial objects. A teaspoon of the material weighs about a billion tons, and their magnetic field strength is hundreds of millions of times greater than any magnetic field on Earth today. But we know very little about how they form. A new paper points to a possible source merger of the neutron star .

The neutron stars themselves are equally fascinating. In fact, magnetars are often considered a specialized form of neutron stars, with the main difference being the strength of their magnetic field. There are approximately 1 billion neutron stars in the Milky Way , some of which happen to be binary pairs.

When they are gravitationally bound together, stars enter a final dance of death, usually resulting in a black hole, or possibly one or both of them transforming into magnetars. This process can take hundreds of millions of years to build up to a point when the actual explosion (or collapse) occurs. But when it emerges, it's spectacular, and a team of researchers believe this happened just weeks before they discovered it.

To be more precise, it happened 228 million years ago, which is how far away from the Milky Way it happened. However, the light from this spectacular event reached Pan STARRs' sensors only weeks before it began observing that patch of sky. What makes this magnetar stand out from all other magnetars discovered by scientists is how fast it spins.

Typically, a neutron star rotates thousands of times per minute, with a period of milliseconds. But scientists have found that magnetars are different in that they spin much more slowly, typically only once every 2 to 10 seconds. However, the new magnetar GRB130310A has a rotation period of 80 milliseconds, which is closer to the magnitude of a neutron star than a typical magnetar.

This difference may be due to the very young age of the magnetar that Zhang and his colleagues found. It has not yet completed its rotational deceleration like many other observed magnetars. But the fact that its spin period is close to the rate of a neutron star suggests it as a potential starting point for a neutron star itself.

The rotational slowdown GRB130310A is currently experiencing will take thousands of years, but eventually, the magnetar fades away and becomes almost undetectable. There are an estimated 30 million dead magnetars floating around the Milky Way, at least some of which may have the same orbital period as GRB130310A.

Another suggestion is that the new magnetars are produced by neutron star mergers, because there are no precursor events that observatories might capture. There are no supernovae , nor gamma ray bursts, both of which usually precede the birth of magnetars. So it seems the researchers happened upon a neutron star merger that they detected almost as soon as it happened.

There are other ways to detect neutron star mergers, such as through the gravitational waves they sometimes emit. It's unclear whether any other instruments were able to capture the merger, confirming that the event occurred as the researchers hypothesized. But if that's the case, it's another data point that confirms the long-held view that magnetars are at least sometimes created by neutron star mergers. More observations of similar events across the universe will help confirm or disprove this theory.