Astronomers said it was akin to hitting the neutron star with a gigantic hammer, causing it to ring like a bell.

In 2004, astronomers saw the largest quake ever recorded – not on Earth – but on a distant star.

This star quake happened on a neutron star – SGR 1806-20 – halfway across our Milky Way galaxy. Neutron stars are formed when massive stars end their lives in supernova explosions.

Richard Rothschild is a research scientist at U.C. San Diego. And he’s an expert on neutron stars. He was part of an international science team studying data from a satellite when, in December of 2004, the instruments aboard the satellite were blinded by x-rays.

The team later determined that this neutron star must have undergone a titanic explosion to produce this flood of x-rays. Rothschild thinks the neutron star’s intense magnetic field might be twisted so tightly that it breaks and reconnects – in the process releasing enormous amounts of energy.

Richard Rothschild: It’s sort of like twisting up a rubber band on the old little balsa wood airplanes I used to fly, you keep twisting up the propeller to put energy in the rubber band, and you let it go and it would fly. But every once in a while, boys being boys, you would twist it too much, and the rubber bands would break. And one of the pieces would come over and smack you in the arm or in the head and you would realize that there was some stored energy there. That’s sort of what we think that may be going on on these neutron stars.

Thanks today to Research Corporation – a foundation for the advancement of science.

Our thanks to:
Richard Rothschild
Center for Astrophysics and Space Sciences
University of California, San Diego