4 wk. ago • 97%

NASA Citizen Scientists Spot Object Moving 1 Million Miles Per Hour

science.nasa.gov NASA Citizen Scientists Spot Object Moving 1 Million Miles Per Hour - NASA Science

Most familiar stars peacefully orbit the center of the Milky Way. But citizen scientists working on NASA’s Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 project have helped discover an object moving so fast that it will escape the Milky Way’s gravity and shoot into intergalactic space. This hypervelocity object is the ...

Most familiar stars peacefully orbit the center of the Milky Way. But citizen scientists working on NASA’s Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 project have helped discover an object moving so fast that it will escape the Milky Way’s gravity and shoot into intergalactic space. This hypervelocity object is the first such object found with the mass similar to or […]

NASA @lemmy.world NASA Citizen Scientists Spot Object Moving 1 Million Miles Per Hour - NASA Science

Space @lemmy.world NASA Citizen Scientists Spot Object Moving 1 Million Miles Per Hour - NASA Science

22 comments

1 million miles an hour is so fast, the speed of light is still 671 times faster.

44
- So you're saying it's relatively slow?
  
  28
  
  Yes. Still relatively fast though too.
  
  6
- It is pretty wild how so much mass could be accelerated to that speed.
  
  The idea that a 3 body system could cause it is really cool. Probably not useful to us, but still very cool
  
  15
  
  I'm getting mass just thinking about it.
  
  13
That’s 0.0015c

27
That's sort of fast I suppose

11
- What is it and where it goin'?
  
  4
Relative to what?

11
- Planet 9 project have helped discover an object moving so fast that it will escape the Milky Way’s gravity and shoot into intergalactic space.
  
  The galaxy presumably.
  
  9
OHLOOKITSTHEREawww it's gone

11
- Whatta ya mean, you blinked??
  
  2
Isn't the sun revolving around the center of the milky way at approximately 450,000 mph? And the Earth revolves around the sun, so we're moving about half as fast as this new object right now. One million is pretty fast, but context makes it a little less shocking.

5
- That's not context, that's using arbitrary reference frames.
  
  4
  
  What's the difference?
  
  3
  
  I don't think that's entirely fair to say. The headline reads sensationally about a celestial object, but our own sun is traveling at almost half that speed, and we're following it. I'm not trying to prove that the Earth is incredibly fast, only that the headline may sound more impressive than it is.
  
  3
clearly an Interstellar traveller

4
- Permanently Deleted
  
  3
Ah, a photoid strike, finally.

3
- The question is, did they miss their first target?
  
  1

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