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Stars Traveling Close To Light Speed Could Spread Life Through the Universe

Posted by samzenpus on from the starry-life-seed dept.

KentuckyFC writes Stars in the Milky Way typically travel at a few hundred kilometers per second relative to their peers. But in recent years, astronomers have found a dozen or so "hypervelocity stars" traveling at up to 1000 kilometers per second, fast enough to escape our galaxy entirely. And they have observed stars orbiting the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy traveling at least an order of magnitude faster than this, albeit while gravitationally bound. Now a pair of astrophysicists have discovered a mechanism that would free these stars, sending them rocketing into intergalactic space at speeds in excess of 100,000 kilometers per second. That's more than a third of the speed of light. They calculate that there should be about 100,000 of these stars in every cubic gigaparsec of space and that the next generation of space telescopes will be sensitive to spot them. That's interesting because these stars will be cosmological messengers that can tell us about the conditions in other parts of the universe when they formed. And because these stars can travel across much of the observable universe throughout their lifetimes, they could also be responsible for spreading life throughout the cosmos.

3 of 184 comments (clear)

  1. I don't understand this ... by ColdWetDog · · Score: 4, Insightful

    OK, if we find a hypervelocity star and we do spectrographic analysis, etc - that can help us determine if our galaxy is similar or different from others. That's obviously neat and important.

    The bit of 'spreading life' doesn't make sense. Are these stars dragging a solar system (which might have living organisms) around with them? Is there some postulate that life comes from giant nuclear fusion balls?

    Aliens?

    --
    Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
    1. Re:I don't understand this ... by Zocalo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It's not just the radiation levels in a galactic core or the overall velocity of the star system that bothers me, we're also quite a way into the territory or relativistic speeds here so there could also be some very odd effects at different points in a planet's orbit depending on the inclination of the orbital plane to the overall direction of motion. It seems like an awfully big strech to expect even the most primitive forms of life to be able to start under those conditions, let alone survive the trip. That badly needs a justification that the paper fails to provide, unless you count a throwaway line and a couple of references, neither of which look like the would explain how life might exist under those conditions.

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      UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
  2. Sexism tags by MildlyTangy · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Why the "notsexist" and "!sexist" tags for this article?

    I read the summary a couple of times ( yes, I really did! I dont care if you dont believe me ), and I am struggling to find any sexism or innuendo.

    Whats the deal?

    Is it because of the word "these", or the word "entirely" ?
    Or is it because of the sentence "That's more than a third of the speed of light." ?

    Its getting really hard to tell these days whats sexist and what isnt, so if somebody could shed some light on this, it would be greatly appreciated.