Why do neutron stars create magnetic field?

Question

They use to thought people in school that magnetic fields are created by charges in motion...how can there be charges in motion in something made of, by definition, neutral matter??

Answer 1

The intense gravity of a neutron star would attract surrounding matter that as it accelerated, would be ionised and as moving charge, generate a magnetic field.

Answer 2

from what i read i think it would be from the speed of the spin but i (maybe ignorantly) think there is something wrong with the spacetime curvature but then again i think our entire solar system was created for the earth and i don't have a degree.

Answer 3

Neutrons have magnetic properties.  Even though they are electrically neutral, they behave sort of like protons with electrons zipping around them in very close orbits. (That's not supposed to happen because it would conflict with Heisenberg's principle, according to which we would know too much about the electron's position and its momentum.)

Whatever, I agree that magnetism results from charges in motion. In the case of a neutron the "illegal" combination of  a proton and a closely orbiting electron  would result in a electrically "neutral" system  that has magnetic properties.

However you get the magnetic effects, if you have a whole star made up of neutron sized magnets, they should lign up magnetically and you get one really big magnet.

Answer 4

A neutron star is equivalent to 1,000 ocean liners crammed into a cubic inch of space. That's dense.