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Mars Base

'Runaway' Star Cluster Breaks Free from Distant Galaxy - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...reaks-free-from-distant-galaxy

scibyte129 StarCluster

shared by Mars Base on 01 May 14 - No Cached
  • discovered dozens of so-called “hypervelocity stars” — single stars that break the stellar speed limit
  • The Virgo Cluster galaxy, M87, has ejected an entire star cluster, throwing it toward us at more than two million miles per hour.
  • Astronomers have found runaway stars before, but this is the first time we’ve found a runaway star cluster
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • About one in a billion stars travel at a speed roughly three times greater than our Sun
  • at 220 km/s with respect to the galactic center
  • At a speed that fast, these stars can easily escape the galaxy entirely, traveling rapidly throughout intergalactic space.
  • this is the first time an entire star cluster has broken free
  • hypervelocity stars have puzzled astronomers for years. But by observing their speed and direction, astronomers can trace these stars backward, finding that some began moving quickly in the Galactic Center
  • Here, an interaction with the supermassive black hole can kick a star away at an alarming speed
  • Another option is that a supernova explosion propelled a nearby star to a huge speed
  • think M87 might have two supermassive black holes at its center
  • The star cluster wandered too close to the pair, which picked off many of the cluster’s outer stars while the inner core remained intact
  • The black holes then acted like a slingshot, flinging the cluster away at a tremendous speed
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