NASA detects mysterious object hurtling through space at 1 million miles per hour
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A mysterious object, racing through space at an astonishing speed of 1 million miles per hour, has been discovered by citizen scientists participating in NASA's Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 project.
This intriguing find, named "CWISE J1249," has sparked significant interest due to its extraordinary velocity and enigmatic nature.
Volunteers involved in the project, who sift through NASA's data to identify new planetary bodies or celestial phenomena, were thrilled by the discovery.
One of the participants, Kabatnik from Nuremberg, Germany, shared their excitement in a NASA press release, saying, "I can't describe the level of excitement. When I first saw how fast it was moving, I was convinced it must have been reported already."
NASA reports that CWISE J1249 is not only speeding out of the Milky Way at about 1 million miles per hour but is also distinguished by its low mass. This characteristic makes it difficult to classify. The object could be a low-mass star, but if it does not continuously fuse hydrogen in its core, it may be classified as a brown dwarf - a celestial body that lies somewhere between a gas giant planet and a star.
While brown dwarfs are not uncommon, with Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 volunteers having discovered over 4,000 of them, CWISE J1249 is unique in its rapid departure from the galaxy. Additionally, data from the W. M. Keck Observatory in Maunakea, Hawaii, reveals that this object has significantly less iron and other metals than typical stars and brown dwarfs.
This unusual composition suggests that CWISE J1249 is quite ancient, potentially originating from one of the first generations of stars in our galaxy.
The reason behind CWISE J1249's extraordinary speed is still under investigation.
One hypothesis proposes that it originated from a binary system with a white dwarf, which may have exploded as a supernova after accumulating too much material from its companion. Another theory suggests that the object could have been ejected from a globular cluster - a tightly bound group of stars - after a close encounter with a pair of black holes.
Kyle Kremer, an incoming assistant professor in UC San Diego's Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, explains, "When a star encounters a black hole binary, the complex dynamics of this three-body interaction can toss that star right out of the globular cluster." This scenario could account for the high speed and unusual trajectory of CWISE J1249 as it hurtles through space.
