Magnetars are a rare type of neutron stars, the remnants of massive stellar deaths. Their magnetic fields are billions of times stronger than Earth's magnets. The thin crust of such a star occasionally cracks, triggering a cascade: the field, like a taut string, vibrates, accelerating trapped particles to light speed. In hundredths of a second, as much energy is released as the Sun emits in hundreds of thousands of years. We detect this as a fast radio burst — a mysterious signal from deep space.
The new model for the first time linked crustal quakes to the magnetic field's response. It turned out that repeated shudders create a rhythmic pattern of bursts, reminiscent of signals from pulsars — stellar lighthouses discovered by Jocelyn Bell Burnell in 1967. Magnetars themselves are a legacy of predictions by Fritz Zwicky in the 1930s.
The dance of starquakes unveils the nature of the most powerful radio bursts in the universe.
A magnetar's magnetic field is billions of times stronger than Earth's. If it were at the Moon's distance, not just cards but any magnetic recording would fly.
In Carl Sagan's 'Contact,' the alien signal turned out to be a message; fast radio bursts were also initially mistaken for greetings from extraterrestrial civilizations.