A visualization of the strong, ordered magnetic field built up by dynamo action in the core of a rapidly rotating, collapsed star. Credit: Moesta et al./Nature
A supercomputer simulation of just 10ms in the collapse of a massive star into a neutron star proves that these catastrophic events, often called hypernovae, can generate the enormous magnetic fields needed to explode the star and fire off bursts of gamma rays visible halfway across the universe.
The simulation demonstrates that as a rotating star collapses, the star and its attached magnetic field spin faster and faster, forming a dynamo that revs the magnetic field to a million billion times the magnetic field of Earth...
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