Many stars orbit near Sagittarius A * , the supermassive fateful hole at the center of the Milky Way . In some galaxy , some of these genius areripped apartwhen they get too tight to the supermassive ignominious cakehole . Other starschange colordue to incredible gravitational effects . And in a few pillow slip , the lead are just slingshot into intergalactic quad . S5 - HVS1 is one of these stars .
As reported in a paper usable on the pre - print serverarXiv , yet to be peer - brush up , an international group of scientists serendipitously espy a hyper - velocity star as they were studying interesting object for the Southern Stellar Stream Spectroscopic Survey ( S5 ) . And they are not joking when they call it hyper - velocity . The star is moving at a astonishing 1,017 klick per second ( 2.275 million miles per hour ) . It cover the distance between New York and Sydney in just 15.7 secondment .
To move at that hurrying , much faster than your average principal , something must have accelerated it . The squad of investigator prove to estimate where the star could have maybe do from , and base on their psychoanalysis the most likely explanation is the kernel of the Milky Way . And , well , it is very easygoing to point the finger at Sagittarius A * .
If our favorable neighborhood supermassive black mess is indeed the perpetrator , the star was probably sound off off with a velocity of roughly 1,800 kilometers per second ( over 4 million mile per hour ) and has been easy slacken down on its travel for about 4.8 million twelvemonth . The star , which is a standard hydrogen - fusing or " chief sequence " object , is located or so 30,000 light - age from Earth .
While this is the fastest main - sequence star ever discovered , it is not a unique object . Astronomers have discovered dozens of these stars , although most of them appear to have beenaccelerated out of the galaxyby events other than interaction with Sagittarius A * . Researchers suggest that if one of the two stars in a binary system goes supernova , it could give enough of a kick to push its familiar away , beyond the disk of the Milky Way .
But stars are n’t just being kick out . Researchers have also find out starscoming into the galaxyfrom small companions of the Milky Way . They too could have been speed up by a supernova or perhaps even a supermassive black maw that we are yet to observe .
[ H / T : Metro ]
