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Reporting at LiveScience.
As humankind's ancestors were learning to walk upright, a star was launched out of the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy at a staggering 3.7 million mph (6 million km/h).
Five million years after this dramatic ejection, a group of researchers, led by Sergey Koposov of Carnegie Mellon University's McWilliams Center for Cosmology, has spotted the star, known as S5-HVS1, in the Crane-shaped constellation Grus. The star was spotted traveling relatively close to Earth (29,000 light-years away) at unprecedented, searing speeds — about 10 times faster than most stars in our galaxy.
"The velocity of the discovered star is so high that it will inevitably leave the galaxy and never return," Douglas Boubert, a researcher at the University of Oxford and a co-author on the study, said in a statement.
[...] The star was discovered with observations from the Anglo-Australian Telescope (AAT), a 12.8-foot (3.9-meter) telescope, and the European Space Agency's Gaia satellite. The discovery was made as part of the Southern Stellar Stream Spectroscopic Survey (S5), a collaboration of astronomers from Chile, the U.S., the U.K. and Australia.
Now that the star has been spotted, researchers could track the star back to Sagittarius A*, the black hole at the center of the Milky Way. It also serves as an incredible example of the Hills Mechanism, proposed by astronomer Jack Hills 30 years ago, in which stars are ejected from the centers of galaxies at high speeds after an interaction between a binary-star system and the black hole at the center of the galaxy.
[...] This discovery was published in a study on Nov. 4[$] in the journal the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 15 2019, @06:14PM
watch out for galactic speed traps.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 15 2019, @06:18PM (3 children)
Not really "launched out" of a black hole, since that's impossible. I assume they mean gravitationally sling-shotted *by* a black hole.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by WizardFusion on Friday November 15 2019, @06:41PM
Never let facts get in the way of a good click-bait title
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 16 2019, @03:20PM
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Monday November 18 2019, @12:46AM
Impossible - how can you say that? My astrologer/naturopath/psychic told me that black holes are interdimensional gateways where higher-order beings come through to visit us. Perhaps the star is sentient, which is how it got through?
Teach the controversy!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 15 2019, @06:51PM
鳴門ラン
(Score: 3, Funny) by zwmm on Friday November 15 2019, @08:22PM
Probably being driven by a Grey Lensman.
(Score: 3, Informative) by corey on Friday November 15 2019, @10:40PM (3 children)
But everything's relative. I assume that velocity is relative to Sag A*. What is our velocity rotating about Sag A*? Our or Milky Way moving through space.
Quick calc, it's going at 0.0055c. Doesn't sound that fast now, but would be interesting to be in an orbit around that star.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday November 15 2019, @10:49PM (2 children)
0.0055C relative to what? ;-)
The article I read said it was moving about 10x faster than normal stars, and was on an escape trajectory from the Milky Way... fast, but hardly mind blowing, particularly if you've ever run a black hole orbital sim... Maybe impressive that it held together while achieving that speed. I bet there's more than one physics lab that has run simulations of just how fast a star can get going in a black hole slingshot without permanently ripping apart - I'm pretty sure that the bigger holes like Sag-A make that easier...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Saturday November 16 2019, @12:04AM
See the original submission, per usual.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday November 16 2019, @05:16PM
Permanently ripped apart doesn't mean much for balls of gas. One likely outcome is multiple stars ejected from the galactic core.
(Score: 2) by Hartree on Friday November 15 2019, @11:12PM
It says "As humankind's ancestors were learning to walk upright".
The star was ejected about 4.8 million years ago. There's another SN submission today that talks about an ape walking upright in Germany 11.9 million years ago.
Humanity. Always monkeying around with history.
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Friday November 15 2019, @11:47PM
She booted me out of her sphere ASAP soon as I fucked up (yeah, not gonna sugar coat it. I fucked up. But still, after20 years, one would think...)
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 2) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Saturday November 16 2019, @10:48AM (2 children)
So there are entire suns flying through the galaxy with essentially random vectors?
Do we know how many planets this thing will eat on its way to intergalactic space?
Because those planets are about to have some very, very bad luck.
And do we know, for sure, there are no random suns headed right for us as we speak? Actually, given size of the universe, chance eventually becomes 100% that there IS a sun headed straight for us from somewhere.
The sun that is certainly heading towards us is probably already being worshipped by some cult somewhere, but forward this to r/natureislit anyway.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 16 2019, @02:48PM
That depends on what “is” is.
Given the number of objects in the universe, the probability of “is” _right now_ is vanishingly close to ZERO.
Given the number of objects in the universe — and given infinite time — the probability of “is” _ever_ is vanishingly close to 1.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 16 2019, @05:32PM
Expansion of the universe could mean this probability goes to zero, not one.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday November 18 2019, @04:25PM
When compared with the speed of light, it's like saying, wow, that star made it to 3 mph! As opposed to the Speed of light being a race car that can go over 600 mph.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"