WASHINGTON: A speeding star is the fastest such object in the Milky Way and researchers believe that a supernova sent it on its way.
Hurtling through space at a speed of 1,200 kilometres per second (about 2.7 million mph), star US 708 is the fastest star in the Milky Way. Its speed is so fast that it is classified as an “unbound” or hypervelocity star — so fast that its speed exceeds the escape velocity of gravity, and fast enough to one day leave the galaxy.
“At that speed, you could travel from Earth to the moon in 5 minutes,” said University of Hawaii at Manoa astronomer Eugene Magnier, who participated in the research, which was led by Stephan Geier of the European Southern Observatory.
US 708 isn’t just the fastest hypervelocity star to date — it also has a few other features that mark it as unusual. Unlike the half-dozen or so other HVSs identified to date, it is a rapidly rotating, compact helium star — a star that is the remnant of a formerly massive star that has lost its hydrogen envelope.This is characteristic of a star that has interacted with a close companion — a binary star.
Usually, the extreme speeds of HVSs is thought to be the result of a close encounter with the black hole at the centre of the Milky Way — yet US 708’s trajectory makes this very unlikely. Instead, the team believes that the star’s origin in a binary system holds the answer.
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