NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray spacecraft has observed a super-bright, supercharged supernova explosion that may have been powered up by a highly magnetic dead star, a type of neutron star called a magnetar. This magnetar would have actually been born in the supernova itself, forced into existence when the core of a star that was much more massive than the sun underwent gravitational collapse at the end of its life. During these core-collapse supernovas , stellar cores with between one and two times the mass of the sun crush down to a radius of around 12 miles (20 kilometers) to create a neutron star , just like scientists say they see here. Not only does this rapid compression mean that neutron stars are made of material so dense that one teaspoon of it brought to Earth would weigh around 10 million tons (think 350 Statues of Liberty sitting on a teaspoon), but it also causes them to spin at rates as rapid as 700 times every second.…