Magnetars

Having investigated the wormholes of Sanctified Vidette, I spent some time now studying its star, a so-called magnetar.

If you ever played with iron filings and magnets as a child, you will have an intuitive picture of magnetic field lines, and magnetic flux. When the field lines are densely packed and close together, the magnetic flux density is high, and the magnetic field is strong. 

Changing the flux density over time is what generates an electromotive force and a current in a dynamo. However, this also implies that when a material is unable to sustain voltage differences, it is not able to change the flux density. So, in a good conductor, the magnetic flux is "frozen". An example of an excellent conductor is a stellar plasma: magnetic flux lines are frozen in the plasma and dragged along with it; sometimes leading to outbursts known as stellar flares.

Now, when a large star with a relatively strong magnetic field collapses, this collapse also drags the magnetic field lines along, squeezing them and leading to very high flux densities. This is the principle of an EMP smartbomb: and imploding plasma concentrates the electromagnetic energy which is then violently released. Except in some stars, that release does not take place, and the magnetic flux remains trapped. The resulting celestial object has a gigantic magnetic field at its surface, far surpassing what we can routinely make and experience. That is basically what a magnetar is.

Magnetars affect our ship's systems, in particular weapons. Some energy gets leeched off the field, making weapons deal far more damage. But at the same time, the field fluctuations make tracking and targeting harder. Sanctified Vidette has these effects up to a level that is compatible with class-2 magnetar systems (just as for the static wormholes it is also compatible with class-2 wormhole physics).

Unshielded life close to a magnetar is impossible - chemistry is altered since the electronic energy levels of the atoms are out of whack. Exposed to the field strengths near a magnetar, the magnetic shift of the atomic orbitals is comparable to the splitting between the energies of the orbitals at zero magnetic field. Atoms would make completely different types of molecular bonds, dealing a death blow to living organisms at the molecular level. 

That is however not the cause of the shattering of the planets in Sanctified Vidette. Solids still form and aggregate into orbital bodies, also around magnetars. The shattering that these planets underwent happened much more recently, as can be concluded from the debris field. Our scientists assume that it was caused by the Seyllin incident. In turn this means Sanctified Vidette must have been close to one or more control hubs in the Talocan wormhole network. 

Perhaps it will lead us one day to the fabled control hub system in Anoikis, the mirror system to W477-P in our own cluster!