Star Flung From Milky Way at High Speed

fenimor writes "Using the MMT Observatory in Tucson, astronomers have discovered a star three times bigger than the sun, leaving our galaxy at a speed of over 1.5 million miles per hour (670 kilometers per second). The first-of-its-kind finding not only confirms an earlier theory about the existence of such speeding stars, but also reinforces the notion that the Milky Way spins around a black hole."

Comments

Weapon Testing, Anyone?

[Trifthen]

Who wants to be the first to claim this is simply a huge plasma burst fired by an even larger weapon? Maybe it's just some alien race out there who wants to illustrate that they too, emjoy blowing things up with oversized guns. ^_^

Re:Any astronomers out there?

[Somegeek]

All of the real astronomers are busy right now. Press 1 to be connected to a geek instead or 2 to leave a message.
-1-
Thank you.
The answer is : Black holes can be compilations of many stars. The one at the center of our galaxy that they are talking about is currently believed to be 3.7 million times the mass of our Sun (give or take 1.5 million).
This is just like we slingshot space probes past planets to get a gravitational speed boost, this star got pulled in towards the black hole but barely missed and got a the mother of all gravitational slingshots. I would guess that the fact that it had a companion was unimportant, and could have happened if it had been it had been a single star on the right trajectory.

IANAA.