What If a Magnetar Entered Our Solar System?

WHAT IF

The strongest magnet in the universe enters our solar system. What would happen?

Transcript

00:00 This is the most powerful object in the Universe.

00:06 The biggest spinning magnet to ever exist.

00:10 It's the cosmic equivalent of a great white shark.

00:14 But it wouldn't eat you.

00:16 It would just turn all your atoms to dust.

00:21 This is WHAT IF,

00:22 and here's what would happen

00:24 if a magnetar entered our Solar System.

00:29 If you thought neutron stars were big and scary,

00:33 well, you haven't heard of their more powerful stellar cousins yet.

00:38 Like neutron stars,

00:39 magnetars are leftovers from supernova explosions.

00:43 They're just packed with a lot more matter.

00:46 Their density is so high that a single teaspoon of a magnetar

00:51 could weigh in at a billion tons.

00:54 They're also the most magnetic stars we know about.

00:58 We use a unit called a gauss

01:00 to measure the strength of a magnetic field.

01:02 Earth's magnetic field is only about 0.6 gauss.

01:07 The magnetic field of a magnetar

01:09 can be as strong as one quadrillion gauss.

01:12 How long would it take a stellar monster like that

01:15 to rip our planet apart?

01:18 It wouldn't be the worst thing in the world

01:20 if a magnetar was sitting quietly in our galactic neighborhood.

01:23 But if it decided to stop minding its own business,

01:26 there are two ways a magnetar could end all life on Earth,

01:30 together with the planet itself.

01:34 It could get too close to the planet.

01:36 You'd start to feel its presence

01:38 when it was about halfway between the Moon and the Earth.

01:41 At that distance, a magnetar would erase the information

01:44 off all your credit card's magnetic strips.

01:48 Whatever you do,

01:49 try not to get closer than 1,000 km (3,000 mi)

01:51 from a cosmic invader.

01:53 Because if you did,

01:54 your atoms would get stretched out of shape,

01:57 your bioelectric field would get scrambled,

01:59 disintegrating your molecular structure,

02:02 and your body would just disappear.

02:07 Alternatively, a magnetar could destroy us

02:10 from much, much further away.

02:12 As if being the biggest spinning magnets in the Universe isn't enough,

02:16 magnetars can also be affected by something called starquakes.

02:21 Starquakes happen when a star's crust cracks,

02:24 letting massive amounts of radiation out into space.

02:28 This blast of radiation could compress the Earth's magnetic field

02:32 and partially ionize the Earth's atmosphere,

02:35 even from 50,000 light-years away.

02:39 We know this because we've already come a little too close

02:42 on at least one occasion.

02:45 In 2004, gamma radiation from a magnetar

02:49 reached our planet from outside our Milky Way galaxy.

02:53 In just one-fifth of a second,

02:55 it released more energy than our Sun has released

02:58 over the last 250,000 years.

03:02 Move that magnetar and its starquake up to 10,000 light-years away,

03:06 and things would get much worse.

03:10 First, it would destroy our ozone layer.

03:13 Then, it would wipe clean most of the planet's surface,

03:16 along with all life as we know it.

03:20 The truly scary part of this is that

03:22 we wouldn't even know the magnetar was heading towards us.

03:25 It would be a blink-and-you're-gone scenario.

03:30 I won't lie to you, there are magnetars close enough

03:32 that if one had a violent starquake right now,

03:35 we'd all get wiped out very fast.

03:40 When scientists began their search for these interstellar monsters 40 years ago,

03:44 they didn't realize how many of them exist out there.

03:48 You might find some comfort in the fact that

03:50 most magnetars don't make it much past their 10,000th birthday.

03:54 Their short lifespan ends with them becoming neutron stars,

03:58 still dense and still magnetic,

04:00 but not nearly as dangerous as a magnetar.

04:04 But if one of them came near our Solar System,

04:07 well, that would be a story for another WHAT IF.

04:11 [ music ]

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