Citizen scientists spotted an object zipping through the Milky Way at more than 1 million miles an hour, and a new study shows it could be a rare hypervelocity star.
An object spotted with help of citizen scientists was moving so fast through the Milky Way that it could escape the gravity of the galaxy and reach intergalactic space, new research has found. Likely a faint red star, the object zoomed along at a speed of about 1.3 million miles per hour . In comparison, the sun orbits around the Milky Way at a rate of 450,000 miles per hour .
“This places this object right on the lower boundary of allowed stellar masses, and it is in fact possible that the mass of the object is slightly below that boundary, which would imply that the object is not a star but a brown dwarf instead.” Uncovering more details about the object could help astronomers determine whether it represents a broader population of high velocity, low-mass objects that have undergone extreme accelerations, according to the study authors.
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Ultra-rare black hole found hiding in the center of the Milky WayBen Turner is a U.K. based staff writer at Live Science. He covers physics and astronomy, among other topics like tech and climate change. He graduated from University College London with a degree in particle physics before training as a journalist.
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