Elias R. Most

A magnetar's crust cracks in milliseconds. A deep shift generates seismic waves that run across the surface and shake the magnetic field. This starquake is like an earthquake, but on a neutron star with a field a quadrillion times stronger than Earth's.

When two black holes merge, space shudders with gravitational waves, and the newborn hole receives a powerful kick, like a cannon recoiling. In the centers of galaxies, it often slams into a gas disk — a swirling cloud of matter, like a cosmic bullseye.

Two neutron stars (the remnants of dead stars, compressed to the size of a city but weighing as much as the Sun) spiral around each other and eventually collide. At that moment, something between a black hole and a super-powered magnet is born: a field billions of times stronger than that of the most powerful MRI machine.

A neutron star is the remnant of an exploded star, compressed so tightly that a teaspoon of its material would weigh as much as a mountain. Inside such an object, protons and neutrons are packed tightly together, and under enormous pressure, hyperons, particles containing a strange quark, can appear.