9 years ago
Fastest star leaving our galaxy was blasted out by a supernova
Most of the stars in our galaxy perform an orderly orbit around the galactic core. But, in recent years, researchers have discovered a class of stars that are moving remarkably quickly, in many cases fast enough to have achieved escape velocity—they'll eventually leave the Milky Way for intergalactic space. What can account for a star moving at nearly 1,000 kilometers a second? One model involves our galaxy's supermassive black hole. When a binary star system gets drawn close to it...
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