Scientists Baffled at Fast-Moving Milky Way Object Entering Intergalactic Space

Astronomers and citizen scientists are studying the movement of an object, presumably a low-mass star, that is moving out of the Milky Way so fast that it can soon escape our galaxy to enter intergalactic space.

Reportedly, the object is traveling at a speed of 600 kilometers per second, which is almost triple the speed of the sun orbiting the Milky Way, which is 200 kilometers per second or 450,000 miles per hour.

The study will soon be published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, and more researchers are likely to verify the claims in the upcoming times. If these claims come out true, it would make the departing low-mass star the first of its kind to achieve “hypervelocity.”

According to a postdoctoral researcher, Roman Gerasimov, who also co-authored the study, low-mass stars are present in abundance in space compared to high-mass stars due to the very nature of the star formation process, which favors the formation and sustainability of low-mass stars, as he went on to say that these low-mass stars are, however, hard to detect.

Gerasimov was excited to see a low-mass star making the short list of hypervelocity stars. The Milky Way galaxy has approximately 100 billion to 400 billion stars, out of which only 1,000 known stars are reportedly escaping the galaxy after attaining hypervelocity.

The scientists discovered this low-mass star, known as CWISE J124909.08+362116.0 (J1249+36), as part of NASA’s study Backyard Worlds: Planet 9.

Volunteers had been examining data and images from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, a mission that scanned the sky in infrared light.

During their review of the data, scientists identified a star, J1249+36, which stood out because it was traveling at an incredibly high speed, about 0.1% of the speed of light. 

Another co-author of the study, Martin Kabatnik, stated that their team was so excited after discovering the new star making it into the hypervelocity list that they first thought that it was not a new star but an old one that was already present in the list of stars exiting the Milky Way.

However, the team cross-checked the discovery with multiple telescopes and confirmed the findings.

The groundbreaking study is expected to pave the way for scientists to look at low-mass stars with a different perspective, as they can try to find more such stars or even study those low-mass bodies that may have escaped the Milky Way previously.