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martyb writes:

NASA's Fermi Satellite Clocks 'Cannonball' Pulsar Speeding Through Space:

Astronomers found a pulsar hurtling through space at nearly 2.5 million miles an hour -- so fast it could travel the distance between Earth and the Moon in just 6 minutes. The discovery was made using NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope and the National Science Foundation's Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA).

Pulsars are superdense, rapidly spinning neutron stars left behind when a massive star explodes. This one, dubbed PSR J0002+6216 (J0002 for short), sports a radio-emitting tail pointing directly toward the expanding debris of a recent supernova explosion.

"Thanks to its narrow dart-like tail and a fortuitous viewing angle, we can trace this pulsar straight back to its birthplace," said Frank Schinzel, a scientist at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) in Socorro, New Mexico. "Further study of this object will help us better understand how these explosions are able to 'kick' neutron stars to such high speed."

[...]Schinzel, together with his colleagues Matthew Kerr at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, and NRAO[*] scientists Dale Frail, Urvashi Rau and Sanjay Bhatnagar presented the discovery at the High Energy Astrophysics Division meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Monterey, California. A paper describing the team's results has been submitted for publication in a future edition of The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

[*] NRAO: The National Radio Astronomy Observatory.

For comparison purposes, according to Wikipedia:

Since October 11, 2018, the longest non-stop scheduled airline flight by great circle distance is Singapore Airlines Flights 21/22 between Singapore and Newark, New Jersey at 15,344 kilometres (8,285 nmi; 9,534 mi).

If that 18+ hour journey could be flown at the speed this pulsar is traveling, that distance would be covered in about 15 seconds.

Original Submission