what's a magnetar what is a magnetar well clearly it has something to do with the magnetic field and we said that neutron stars have extremely strong magnetic fields magnet ours are only the fastest rotating neutron stars those ones that are close to a thousand times a second can become magnet ours because here's what happens here we go here's what happens and this will finish us up the magnetic field of a neutron star that's rotating close to a thousand times a second has a hard time keeping up with the rotation of the star and what that does is it causes that that magnetic field to get super tangled and those tangles will actually penetrate the surface of the neutron star now this should all sound familiar because something similar happens on our Sun right when the sun's magnetic field gets all tangled up and touches the surface we get sunspots right but the surface of a neutron star is weird what did I say was weird about the surface of a neutron star what's weird about this surface that's not true on any other kind of star it's solid it's solid so in the magnetar when this magnetic field gets so tangled up that it starts coming down and touching the surface it will actually open a crack in the surface of that star now what do we call it when a crack opens up on the earth when we call it when a crack opens up happens in California all the time what happened what do we call it when a crack opens up an earthquake so when a crack opens on the earth we call it an earthquake so if a crack opens up on this star what are we gonna call this what are we gonna call this because we can't call it an earthquake because this is a star it's not earth what's this gonna be called that's a starquake a star quick which to me sounds like a good name for a band star quick don't take it don't steal it I called star quick that's gonna be my next band star quick boom now so magnet ours have starquakes because of their magnetic field now that star quake is not going to last very long because the gravity of the neutron star will just seal it right back up so if you aren't looking at it it seems like you'd miss it so why do we care well here's why we care when that crack opens up for less than a second we're able to see under the surface of the neutron star and what's the temperature gonna be like under the surface compared to the surface is it going to be hotter or colder inside hotter or colder hot and so what will that do to the brightness during the star quake if you can see where it's hotter during the star quake what will that do to the brightness it'll get really bright so every time there's a starquake on a magnetar if that neutron star will get way brighter than usual how bright am i talking well that crack lets out in less than a second over a hundred thousand times the light that our Sun makes in a year so that crack will let over a hundred thousand years of sunlight out in less than a second so if you were like looking at the neutron star it would be sitting there and it would just be da Dada and then it's go ha ha all good and then it closes up so if you were anywhere near it when the star quake happened what would happen to you what would happen to you it's calm a hug ha ha yeah this would be able to vaporize whole planets uh it would be just gone sorry again about the sound yeah you're not just gonna blind go blind you will vaporize you will be vaporized if you were nearby luckily for us none of these seem to be close to us so we're not gonna get the whole earth vaporized by this anytime soon and the magnetar can just keep doing it over and over again but it doesn't happen in a regular amount of time like a pulsar because it's a you're relying on an entangled magnetic field to do it and that's chaotic so it'll be crazy all right that's all I have to say about white dwarfs and neutron stars so next time we're gonna start talking about black holes and you don't want to miss that stuff because black holes are way way