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