Ultrafast Stars Discovered Racing through the Galaxy

Rocketing through space at more than three million kilometers per hour, six speedy stars were likely ejected from the giant black hole in the center of the Milky Way


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  1. 1. BillR 02:46 PM 2/20/13

    I wonder how the rest of the galaxy would appear from a planet orbiting one of these stars. As far as their own sun, it would look pretty much like our sun. However, with the velocity relative to other local stars dramatically different, most stars would be visibly red shifted or blue shifted and the closest stars would probably appear to move appreciably across the sky.

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  2. 2. oldvic in reply to BillR 05:40 AM 2/21/13

    A new sky every year, probably. Another interesting aspect would be the influence such variation would have on their culture. The seeming immutability of most of our sky had a decided influence on our thinking. A visit to such planets would be most interesting.

    Where's superluminal travel when we need it?

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  3. 3. Percival 03:29 PM 2/21/13

    Oh, great. Killer asteroids aren't bad enough- now all we need is one of these bad boys doing a close pass to (or a run through) our Solar system.

    On the other hand I can't help seeing an analogy to Hawking radiation...

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  4. 4. Chris Miller in reply to BillR 05:59 PM 2/21/13

    Sorry Bill, but 2 million mph is only 0.3% of the speed of light. So any red/blue shift would be undetectable by the naked eye (for our eyes, at least).

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  5. 5. Postman1 10:18 PM 2/21/13

    Wouldn't being slung away from the black hole also sling any existing planets off at various tangents, dependent on the position in orbit at the time of expulsion? Might there be a swarm of ultrafast lone wolf planets too?

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  6. 6. bucketofsquid in reply to Postman1 05:39 PM 2/22/13

    Sounds logical. Would we even be able to see these rogue planets unless one entered the solar system?

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  7. 7. American Muse 07:02 PM 2/22/13

    SciAm should quit publishing online articles on consecutively paged tabs. It's annoying and reminds me of third-rate websites spamming to push ad space. What's the problem with publishing on a single page format?

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