"N:dlzc D:aol T:com (dlzc)" N: dlzc1 D:cox wrote in
message news:l6YLd.1573$Yu.1267@fed1read01...
Dear George Dishman:

"George Dishman" wrote in message
...

"Mike Dworetsky" wrote in message
...

"George Dishman" wrote in message
...

Could a close pass by a magnetar have an effect on
rotation? Just curious.

How close is close?
....
By "close" I was thinking perhaps of 100AU where
the gravitational effect would cause only a longer
term perturbation of the orbit. What I'm not clear
on is whether the magnetic field could still give
enough torque to the core to precess it appreciably
in the time the star was passing at that range.

For a novel, if necessary, the field could probably
be stretched a few orders of magnitude, but how much?

Well, keep in mind the Sun has a non-trivial magnetic field, and would
likely put its "arms" around something powerful enough to tweak the
Earth's angular momentum significantly... and around anything in between.

Hi David,

At the surface, it is trivial in comparison to a
magnetar:

http://www.astronomycafe.net/qadir/ask/a11654.html

However, the dipole field falls as the cube of
the distance and the diameter only a few miles
(which is why the field is so high in the first
place) so perhaps at a reasonable range, the
field is not that great. Oh well, you can't win
'em all.

George