The irrestible pull: When stars collide

Magnetars, are the strongest magnets in the Universe. The reason for their exceptionally large magnetic field is most probably that they formed in supernovae of already highly magnetized stars. But how do these massive stars acquire their large magnetic field? Astrophysicists from Germany and the UK may now have solved this more than 70-year-old conundrum of the origin of strong magnetic fields in massive stars.

Read the research paper in Nature: https://www.nature.com/articles/s4158...

Read the news story on the HITS website: https://www.h-its.org/2019/10/09/magn...

Simulation images credit: Ohlmann/Schneider/Röpke
Video: University of Oxford