Posted on 02/08/2005 10:16:16 PM PST by anymouse
An outcast star is zooming out of the Milky Way, the first ever seen escaping the galaxy, astronomers reported on Tuesday.
The star is heading for the emptiness of intergalactic space after being ejected from the heart of the Milky Way following a close encounter with a black hole, said Warren Brown, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
The outcast is going so fast -- over 1.5 million mph -- that astronomers believe it was lobbed out of the galaxy by the tremendous force of a black hole thought to sit at the Milky Way's center. That speed is about twice the velocity needed to escape the galaxy's grip, Brown said by telephone.
"We have never before seen a star moving fast enough to completely escape the confines of our galaxy," he said. "We're tempted to call it the outcast star because it was forcefully tossed from its home."
The star used to be part of a binary pair, waltzing with its companion star close to the rim of the black hole. In this case, "close" is a relative term; the actual distance was probably about 50 times the 93 million-mile distance between Earth and the sun.
As the two stars twirled around each other, they were pulled faster and faster toward the edge of the black hole, one of those monster drains in space whose gravity is so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape once it is consumed.
While the companion star was captured by the black hole, the outcast continued on its whirling path around its edge.
Objects go faster the closer they get to black holes and this star was probably moving at extraordinary speed, perhaps as high as 20 million mph. That very speed, coupled with the speed of its twirling, sent the outcast zooming toward the edge of the Milky Way and beyond.
At this point, the outcast is about 180,000 light-years from Earth, in an outer region of the galaxy known as the halo. A light-year is about 6 trillion miles, the distance light travels in a year.
More information and images are available at http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/press/pr0505image.html
whoa.
It'd be intolerable for any life. So many forms of radiation would be unleashed as a nuclear furnace was ripped apart by sheer gravitational force.
Obviously a group of dems leaving the galaxy because of Bush's election.
Oops! I thought Andre 3000 was going off into space...
Oops! I thought Andre 3000 was going off into space...<-Thats what I thought.
Now that would be one heck of a comet.
Make that per second.
You sure, cause I get 1,802,617,499,785.25 furlongs per fortnight?
Of course if you use survey feet, instead of statute feet, it's 1,802,613,894,550.25 survey furlongs per fortnight. (1.0 survey foot is exactly 1200/3937 meters, 1.0 statute foot is exactly 0.3048 meters. There is a difference.) One fortnight = 1,209,600 ISO seconds, one furlong = 660 feet.
He's a snazzy dresser. I got too many kids to be able to dress that nice, however my kids are all well dressed, I am a walking poster boy for Goodwill Menswear.
If you dressed like that your kids wouldn't let you drive the car pool for their friends...LOL!
He knew the punishment. You mess around with underage/developing stars, you can expect to be banished.
I have no sympathy.
The Georgia State Patrol still cited me for going 1,499,955 miles above the speed limit.
According to the courts, I only have to pay a $45,450,775 fine (not including $65 surcharge) and forfeit my license for 2,395,455 years.
There's also the survey (or USGS) mile, nautical mile, inch, yard, etc. There's no such thing as "better & simplified," there's only "different & some things use one, some another." It's sort of like tax simplification; the current code is the result of many, many simplifications.
But of course! That goes without saying. Common knowledge. LOL!
LOL
Damn! You got off Light! Huh?
Was the "outcast star" named Robbins???
OutKast is one of the few rap groups I enjoy.
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