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

That's Life

[Doc Ruby]

It's a glider!

Outcast Star

[lecithin]

"We're tempted to call it the outcast star because it was forcefully tossed from its home."

Instead they are going to call it a galaxy challenged star.

Fling out of the galaxy

[falser]

Ok, now how do we apply this knowledge to do the same to Microsoft/Paris Hilton/Terrel Owens/Celine Dion.... ?

Wish Upon A Star...

[FIGJAM]

Starlight, star bright, first-of-its-kind star I see tonight, I wish I may, I wish I might, get laid tonight.

To put that in perspective...

[GillBates0]

That's 0.002 times the speed of light or only about 1/500th the speed of light.

Plugging 670*10^3m/s into Lorent'z equation:

t = t'/(sqrt(1-(v^2/c2))
where v=6.7*10^5m/s
and c = 2.99*10^8,

I got a time dilation of factor of 1.00000249. That is, time in the moving system (the star) will be observed by a stationary observer to be running slower by a factor of 1.00000249.

Not as impressive as I hoped it would be when I started the calculations.

Hindmost

[Rorschach1]

Goddamned Puppeteers. Before you know it, they'll be fleeing with all the good stars.

Inertia & Momentum

[mreed911]

While this seems astounding, leaving some to wonder "how's a star stay together at 1.5MM mph?", it's important to remember that, for all intents and purposes, it's travelling through NOTHING, through a vacuum. As long as its velocity is stable (not running into things to slow it down), there's no inertia to change it's shape, etc.

Is there *really* a difference, physically, on an object moving at 1.5MM mph and one standing completely still, if they're not interacting with anything else? No. Their inertias are the same, so their physical properties and interactions are the same.

Momentum, however, could be a bitch. Imagine this star slamming into another star (or, a la the Death Star, a small planet in the Aldeberan system). Ka-pow, with the graphic like on the old Batman series! Would make Levy-Shoemaker look like a BB gun (you're gonna put your eye out!)...

Supermassive black holes

[Spy der Mann]

Recently I saw on Discovery that many galaxies (if not all) were orbiting around supermassive black holes. And that the orbiting speed of the stars is proportional to the black holes' mass. This is known as the "M-sigma" relation.

This meant that the supermassive black holes actually contributed to the process of galaxy formation.

The theory is more or less the following:

In the center of a galaxy-sized gas cloud, a star collapsed, forming a black hole. The black hole began eating the gas around it, forming a quasar (quasars are the matter just about to be swallowed by a black hole, disintegrating and generating enormous amounts of energy).

The quasar, due to its high temperature and rotational speed, heated the surrounding gas cloud, activating a chain reaction that gave birth to all the stars in the new-forming galaxy.

Eventually, the quasar pushed away the stars, so the black hole could only be fed by the quasar itself. After that, the black hole enters a dormant phase (it has nothing else to eat), and the galaxy is already formed (of course, I'm talking about a process that takes billions of years).

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:Man...

[Mindwarp]

Mass of the star: approx 6x10^30 kg Velocity: 670,000 m/s Kinetic energy = 0.5 x m x v^2 Energy is very approximately 1.3x10^42 Joules, which I believe is enough to heat a Googleplex of Libraries of Congress for 3.141 Millenia.

Explanation

[af_robot]

For those, who didnit get it.
Puppeteers are alien race from novel "Ringworld" by Larry Nivel. They were moving their home star system to a new galaxy to escape from the Core explosion.

Re:Little relativistic phenomena

[EulerX07]

The speed of light (c) is 300 000 km/s. 670/300000 = 0.0022. It's going at 0.0022c.

Don't worry, you're the not the first person to post disinformation on this site and get modded up as informative. Also, you should have worked with the metric values instead of messing around with the imperial values. Ye olde english system is great for measuring stuff in your trousers, but not as great for astrophysics.

What about relativity?

[aiken_d]

From the SDSS J090745.0+24507 Daily News:

Universe Takes Off
The entire rest of the Universe suddenly accelerated to over 670km/sec and is fleeing our vicinity at an astonishing rate. In fact, the Universe seems to have decided to move a large region of intergalactic space into our vicinity, which will have a dramatic negative effect on property values.

Scientists are at a loss to explain the sudden move by the entire Universe, but have assured the Theocracy that the subspace ether is still intact and that our sun is still planted firmly in exactly the same spot it always has been. The scientists did say that the sudden movement by the entire Universe may have stressed the subspace ether, and that concerned citizens should at least double their daily offerings to Zugbat lest our sun lose its attachment to the ether and be sucked across space with the rest of the Universe.

There will be an execution of two atheists who suggested that our sun had begun moving at a high rate of speed, and not the rest of the universe. See page 6.

Cheers
-b

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.