New Class of "Hypervelocity Stars" Discovered Escaping the Galaxy

Science_afficionado writes "Astronomers have discovered a surprising new class of 'hypervelocity stars' that are moving at more than a million miles per hour, fast enough to escape the gravitational grasp of the Milky Way galaxy. The 20 hyper stars are about the same size as the sun and, other than their extreme speed, have the same composition as the stars in the galactic disk. The big surprise is that they don't seem to come from the galaxy's center. The generally accepted mechanism for producing hypervelocity stars relies on the extreme gravitational field of the supermassive black hole that resides in the galaxy's core."

Comments

What's pulling/pushing the stars ?

[Taco Cowboy]

Maybe those starts just didn't like the neighbourhood they were in and decided to move house

TFA only says that the stars are travelling at a speed high enough that they can escape the pull of the galaxy, but doesn't give any explanation of WHAT is pushing or pulling the stars.

From TFA:

"The generally accepted mechanism for producing hypervelocity stars relies on the extreme gravitational field of the supermassive black hole that resides in the galaxy's core"

If it's the "supermassive black hole in the Galaxy core" that's doing the pulling, the stars should have travelling towards the core.

But they are travelling instead away from the core !

Instead of a "pull", it is as if there's something that's "PUSHING" them instead, and I do not think it's the supermassive blackhole (whose expertise is on the pulling part).