Compact astrophysical objects exhibit a persistent pattern of long-term quiescence punctuated by brief, extreme, and highly organized episodes of activity. Neutron-star glitches, magnetar flares, black-hole state transitions, and episodic jet launching in active galactic nuclei share common features that are difficult to reconcile with models based on continuous dissipation or marginal stability. This paper proposes that such systems are best understood as over-confined, with energy and stress accumulated elastically behind a global coherence boundary that normally suppresses outward coupling. Observable violence arises when this boundary briefly fails, allowing stored energy to be released rapidly and coherently before confinement is restored. The Schwarzschild radius is treated not as a physical surface, but as a constraint on sustained causal coupling that limits where stable confinement can exist. Focusing exclusively on exterior observables, the framework yields testable predictions involving temporal clustering, hysteresis in state transitions, scale invariance across compact-object classes, and persistent geometric organization during outbursts. If supported, boundary-mediated dynamics provide a unifying phenomenological explanation for why the universe’s most powerful engines are usually quiet—and why, when they erupt, their behavior is sudden, structured, and repeatable.
Stephen Euin Cobb (Tue,) studied this question.