Astronomers discover a nearby star moving so fast it could even escape the Milky Way
Astronomers, both professional and amateur, have discovered a nearby star only 400 light years away that is moving so fast, 1.3 million miles per hour (almost three times faster than the Sun), it might very well escape the Milky Way and fly into intergalactic space in the far future.
The star, named CWISE J124909+362116.0 (or “J1249+36” for short), was first spotted by some of the over 80,000 citizen science volunteers participating in the Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 project, who comb through enormous reams of data collected over the past 14 years by NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission. This project capitalizes on the keen ability of humans, who are evolutionarily programmed to look for patterns and spot anomalies in a way that is unmatched by computer technology. Volunteers tag moving objects in data files and when enough volunteers tag the same object, astronomers investigate.
J1249+36 immediately stood out because it was moving at about .1 percent the speed of light.
The star itself is either a very low mass red dwarf, or possibly a brown dwarf that never quite had enough mass to ignite as a star.
You can read the research paper here [pdf]. The researchers posit two possible explanations for the star’s speed. Either it was once part of a binary and thrown out when its white dwarf companion exploded as a supernova, or was once located in a densely packed globular cluster, where the interaction with other stars or even black holes could have flung it away.
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Astronomers, both professional and amateur, have discovered a nearby star only 400 light years away that is moving so fast, 1.3 million miles per hour (almost three times faster than the Sun), it might very well escape the Milky Way and fly into intergalactic space in the far future.
The star, named CWISE J124909+362116.0 (or “J1249+36” for short), was first spotted by some of the over 80,000 citizen science volunteers participating in the Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 project, who comb through enormous reams of data collected over the past 14 years by NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission. This project capitalizes on the keen ability of humans, who are evolutionarily programmed to look for patterns and spot anomalies in a way that is unmatched by computer technology. Volunteers tag moving objects in data files and when enough volunteers tag the same object, astronomers investigate.
J1249+36 immediately stood out because it was moving at about .1 percent the speed of light.
The star itself is either a very low mass red dwarf, or possibly a brown dwarf that never quite had enough mass to ignite as a star.
You can read the research paper here [pdf]. The researchers posit two possible explanations for the star’s speed. Either it was once part of a binary and thrown out when its white dwarf companion exploded as a supernova, or was once located in a densely packed globular cluster, where the interaction with other stars or even black holes could have flung it away.
The support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in the past two weeks has the mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Even today NASA and Congress refuses to recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation:
5. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.
haven’t read the paper yet.
-What frame-of-reference are we talking about?
Earths Motion Through the Galaxy
https://youtu.be/1lPJ5SX5p08
20:27
This makes me remember a passage from “Against A Dark Background” by Iain M Banks, describing an intergalactic star and the civ that grew up around it.
“For a distance that was never less than a million light years in any direction around it, Thrial-for all its flamboyant dispersion of vivifying power and its richly fertile crop of children planets-was an orphan.”
Iain Banks, one of the greatest SF authors, in my opinion, and sorely missed.
The L subdwarf is making a run for it. Incredible speed for an old timer star. I like the black-hole binary theory, but the other theories are interesting as well.
“For a distance that was never less than a million light years in any direction around it…”
Placing that (fictional) system in between (e.g.) the Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxy [M31]? Nope, I’m afraid that doesn’t work. While there may be voids in the cosmos where it’s true—i.e., there’s “nothing” (galactic) closer than a million light years in any direction—however, here in our so-called “Local Group” of galaxies (to which both the Milky Way and Andromeda-M31 belong), it’s certainly non-functional.
For instance, far from being the closest galaxy to the Milky Way in the Local Group, Andromeda-M31 actually appears as the 86th [!] closest known galaxy to us—with the Milky Way at the top as #1.
Among the many galaxies closer than Andromeda (which lies 2.538 million light years away from us), the two “Magellanic Clouds”—the Large M.C. being #19, and Small M.C. #23, in the foregoing galaxy list (at 0.163 and 0.205 million light years distant respectively)—are no doubt the best known.
To bad Banks (at least apparently) wasn’t aware of that.
Sorry; forgot the link to the list of nearest galaxies.
Imagine an inhabitable planet in orbit there. Your night sky would FOREVER change, NEVER being static nor cyclical.
Nothing relativisticly weird happens at 0.1c, does it?
Would there be visible red/blue shift of nearby stars? That would do odd things to astronomy until they realized that they were the ones moving.
A lifetime (say 100 years) at 0.1c would be 10 light years. I would think that would be sufficient to see some stars switch from blue-shift to red-shift during one’s own lifetime. Maybe like seeing Haley’s comet twice. Not every one does, but it’s not exactly uncommon, either.
Not exactly a new discovery: https://www.upi.com/Science_News/2005/02/10/In-the-Stars-Odd-stars-odder-planets/89101108072217/?upi_ss=%22phil+berardelli%22
“Take SDSS J090745.0+24507, a star so unremarkable that astronomers had not even it given a formal name. Yet, of all the stars populating the Milky Way’s spiral arms and orbiting around its center — by latest estimates more than 400 billion — SDSS J090745.0+24507 is doing something unique: it is leaving.”
Phil Berardelli: These I think are different stars. Moreover, the paper didn’t claim to have discovered the first such fast moving star, only that this one is unique in that it is only 400 light year away.
This Is How Big The Local Group of Galaxies Is
Anton Petrov
https://youtu.be/GW2a9xwpd50
12:26
Bob, I wasn’t implying they were the same star, only that the discovery of a rogue on a gallactic escape trajectory isn’t exactly new. Apparently these binary encounters sometimes can produce dramatic results.