Μake us preferred on Google Astronomers have discovered the fastest known star in our galaxy, one that races around the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way at astonishing speed.
The star hurtles around the black hole at roughly 15,534 miles per second (25,000 kilometers per second), about 100,000 times faster than a commercial airplane.
“That star is really, extremely fast,” said astronomer Stefan Gillessen of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics.
The star also orbits closer to the black hole than any previously observed, completing a full loop in just 8.7 years. It uses the black hole’s powerful gravity to move at extreme speed without being pulled in.
Gillessen and his team found the star using data from the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile’s Atacama Desert. Their findings were published Wednesday in the journal Nature.
Several hundred stars are known to closely orbit this massive black hole, sensitive to its gravitational pull, and scientists have already mapped the paths of about 50 of them. This newly found star sits 10 times closer than the previous closest known star, meaning it’s also affected by the black hole’s rotation.
Nearly every large galaxy is thought to harbor a supermassive black hole at its core. But because nothing, not even light, can escape them, scientists have long struggled to understand what happens inside.
Studying stars like this one could help researchers measure mysterious black hole properties, including how fast they spin. As telescopes grow more advanced, they’re picking up fainter stars that were previously undetectable, suggesting even faster ones may still be waiting to be found.
“This is just the tip of the iceberg,” said astronomer Tuan Do of the University of California, Los Angeles, who wasn’t involved in the study. “As we get fainter, there should be many more stars like this.”
