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There are monsters out there.
Few are as monstrous as the magnetar. A magnetar is an extremely dense star with an extremely powerful magnetic field. They’re so strong, if a magnetar were 100,000 kilometers from the Earth, every card in your wallet with a mag stripe would be demagnetized. If you were within 1000 kilometers of a magnetar, you would be ripped apart down to your atoms and have your mass applied to the star, prompting a massive explosion.
Now and then these stars have “star quakes”, which result in massive explosions of radiation (often gamma) similar to a gamma ray burst but not identical. In 2004 one such explosion reached the Earth and was so powerful it briefly expanded the ionosphere and blinded a few satellites. This explosion came from a magnetar 50,000 light years away. In one tenth of a second this magnetar released more energy than the sun does in 150,000 years.
Just imagine what would happen if it was 10 times closer.