Meet The Weird ‘Hypervelocity’ Star Racing At A Million Miles Per Hour
Astronomers have recently identified a star hurtling through our Milky Way galaxy at a staggering speed of approximately 1.3 million miles per hour. This star, catalogued as CWISE J090552.38+01 365806.8 or J1249+36, is not only the fastest known star but also the closest “hypervelocity” star to Earth, located just 400 light-years away.
The star’s remarkable velocity and peculiar trajectory suggest it might escape the Milky Way altogether. Discovered by citizen scientists and subsequently observed using ground-based telescopes, the findings have been published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Origins Shrouded in Mystery
The exact cause of J1249+36’s extreme speed is still uncertain. One theory proposes that it might have originated from a globular cluster—a dense collection of ancient stars. A close encounter with a pair of black holes could have propelled the star out of the cluster.
Kyle Kremer, an assistant professor at the University of California San Diego, explains, “When a star encounters a black hole binary, the dynamics can expel it from its original system.”
Another possibility is that J1249+36 was once part of a binary star system with a white dwarf. When the white dwarf exploded in a supernova, it could have sent J1249+36 flying away. Adam Burgasser, the lead author of the study, notes, “Our calculations support this scenario, but since the white dwarf and explosion remnants are no longer observable, we lack definitive proof.”
A Race Against the Cosmos
In the grand scheme of cosmic movement, nothing is static. While our sun orbits the Milky Way at about 560,000 miles per hour, J1249+36’s velocity is over twice that speed. Discovered by the 80,000 members of the Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 project, the star’s velocity was confirmed through follow-up observations by the Keck Observatory, Pan-STARRS, and other telescopes.
As our understanding of such hypervelocity stars deepens, they offer a fascinating glimpse into the dynamic processes shaping our galaxy.
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