A magnetized neutron star suffers a starquake . The starquake creates a fault on the crust surface that begins at the equator and spreads towards the magnetic poles.
Matter moves along the faults from the equator to higher latitudes, forming mountains .
These mountains break the symmetry of the star, causing it to wobble. When the wobbling stops, the star's magnetic field will be tilted even farther away from its rotation axis causing an increase in the rate at which the star slows down. In the case of the pulsar in the Crab nebula, this effect was known soon after its discovery in 1968 but it remained unexplained until now. A neutron star expends enormous amounts of energy for what is the burned out shell of a dead sun. The fastest neutron stars turn many times each second for thousands of years in their interstellar graves.