An artist’s concept depicts a magnetar — an ultradense stellar corpse with a magnetic field a trillion times stronger than Earth’s. The magnetic field is so powerful that it would kill any human within hundreds of thousands of miles. A magnetar forms when a supermassive star explodes as a supernova, compressing its core to the size of a city. [ESO/L. Calçada]
Find out more in our radio program entitled Magnetars.