Mysterious Star Travels 3Million Miles Per Hour

One of the the fastest-moving stars ever discovered in the Milky Way has challenged theories about why it's moving so fast.

Astronomers used five years of NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory images to show that the rogue star, poetically dubbed RX J0822-4300 (shown in image moving from point A in 1999 to point B in 2005), is careening away from what's left of a star that exploded about 3,700 years ago. The neutron star is exiting the Milky Way at about 3 million mph (4.8 million kph). Other hypervelocity stars known to be exiting the Milky Way move at speeds about one-third as great - believed to be hurled toward interstellar space by an aggressive, supermassive black hole at our galaxy's center.

Source

3 million miles per hour!

while that is alot less than the speed of light (299 792 458 m/s) that is a heck of alot faster than anything we can build for travel.

would be cool if we could build a vehicle drive that traveled that fast

Very interesting! Thanks for drawing this to my attention. I may spend a bit of time tonight reading up on it! In the meantime, here's an image of RX J0822-4300 for all those that are curious as to what it looks like.

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/a2973dc7f6cb.jpg[/atsimg]

IRM

So 3M miles per hr instead of 300M miles per second.

And others 1/3 or 1M miles per hr.

The Neutron material would have no charge so there
should be no radiation to slow it down.

ED: You just don't find neutron material flying around
much, never heard of this phenomenon before.



[edit on 5/8/2009 by TeslaandLyne]

reply to post by warrenb




interesting... but after reading your source article,
i now have more questions...

... In the case of RX J0822-4300,
a tremendous lopsided supernova explosion launched the neutron star to its blinding speed.
It has traveled 20 light-years thus far,
and will take millions of years to escape the clutches of the Milky Way ...

If this high spped neutron star has traveled 20 light-years in the last decade,
then in a century it will have rushed some 200 light-years.
then in a millennium it will have raced some 2,000 light-years....

in 'millions of years', to say that racing star should have already crashed into another nearby galaxy...would be an understatement


i, unscholastically recall the MilkyWay has a radius of nearly 35,000 LY,
but a disc thickness of ~1000 LY...

i think the story statements need to be clarified more.

How can it have moved 20 light years in a decade?

If a decade is 10 years and it moved 20 light years, then does that mean it is moving 2 times the speed of light?

I'm not doing any math right now buy 3700 years ago the
star exploded and has traveled 20 light years.

So thats .005 light years per year by division.

Its always in the units.

So find how that is 3 million miles per hour.

The scary thing is its on its way here , and Mr President, its slowing down.......


"Thats not random, its a countdown..."

Originally posted by TeslaandLyne
I'm not doing any math right now buy 3700 years ago the
star exploded and has traveled 20 light years.

So thats .005 light years per year by division.

Its always in the units.

So find how that is 3 million miles per hour.

From Google: 1 light year = 5.87849981 × 1012 miles
Thats 10 to the 12th power, so get my trusty calculator out:
The .005 x 5.898.. = .02935 and looks promising.
And 1006 is a million so 20350 million miles per year.
And 8760 hrs per year gives 2.3 million miles per hour.
Close enough for government work

Originally posted by warrenb
while that is alot less than the speed of light (299 792 458 m/s) that is a heck of alot faster than anything we can build for travel.

would be cool if we could build a vehicle drive that traveled that fast

It can be done quite easily by today's technology. Simply launch a space probe aimed toward's Sagittarius A (the location of our galaxy's supermassive black hole).

It can easily surpass that speed if it has to scratch the Event Horizon. The article itself mentioned the involvement of supermassive black holes, it's quite a common thing in galaxies and not a hard thing to do for humans. Only that it will take eons for a rocket-propelled space probe to reach Sagittarius A.

Cool is right.
Since Lord Kelvin invented absolute zero that freezes over most
of Outer Space.

Outer Space is unprotected from the Earth's 36" of equivalent lead
protection from high speed particles that Tesla discovered (called
Cosmic Rays instead just to goof with us by the Illuminati).

Most of Outer Space should be free the bumpy ride of warped
space due to Einstein.