magnetic storm

These findings suggest that even a medium-sized sunspot group triggered one of the most extreme magnetic storms in history.

Sometimes the sunspot magnetic fields are disrupted in violent events which result in the birth of solar magnetic storms such as flares or coronal mass ejections.

Non-repeaters, on the other hand, could be the result of cataclysmic events, such as the collisions of neutron stars, or magnetic storms in young neutron stars called magnetars.

That energy makes its way outward, through boiling gas pocked with magnetic storms that crackle, whirl and lash space with showers of electrical particles and radiation.

"There have been several previous reports linking magnetic storms to whale strandings, but this is a particularly well-done and convincing analysis," said Lohmann, who was not involved in the study.