Ordinary white dwarfs are stellar remnants about the size of Earth but with the mass of the Sun. They are supported by electron pressure. A century ago, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar showed their mass limit is about 1.4 solar masses. But what if a white dwarf hides a quark core inside? Then the star is built differently: at its center lies an ultra-dense core of strange matter (the heavy seed), surrounded by many kilometers of crystalline crust made of carbon and oxygen.
When the crust has a strong magnetic field, the pressure is no longer isotropic — anisotropy arises. Electrons in a magnetic field move along special tracks (Landau levels), making the radial pressure (outward) different from the tangential pressure (along the layer). This difference creates an extra force that squeezes the star, like a cocoon being drawn tight from within. Calculations show that with a field of hundreds of billions of Gauss, the radius shrinks by 20–30 percent.
This mechanism lets astronomers hunt for hybrid stars not by mysterious signals from the core, but simply by measuring size and magnetic field. Several candidates in catalogs already fall into the right range.
Strange quark matter gets its name from the flavor of the s-quark (strange). If a droplet of such matter fell to Earth, it would convert ordinary matter into strange matter, releasing energy — a scenario known as a 'strangelet.' Fortunately, there is no experimental evidence for this.