Last Updated on 30/08/2024 by Ankita
A very fast and furious object has been found in our galaxy. This fuzzy looking object is covering a distance of more than 447 kilometers every second. That means it will take less than one and a half seconds to reach Lucknow from Noida. This is a hypervelocity object. It has been discovered by a citizen scientist of NASA.
It is rapidly leaving our galaxy and going to another world of space. NASA has a program called Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 Project. Under this project, people who want to join the world of science join NASA. They discover things in space.
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Backyard Worlds studies images from NASA’s WISE mission. It created infrared maps of the entire space from 2009 to 2011. This mission was restarted as NEOWISE in 2013. It was declared retired on August 8 this year.
Know the name of the object that is rapidly leaving the Milky Way
A few years ago, Backyard Worlds citizen scientists Martin Kabatnik, Thomas P. Bickel and Dan Keselden discovered this fast-moving object. It was named CWISE J124909.08+362116.0. After this, its investigation was started. Through telescopes present on the earth.
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Kabatnik said that when it was discovered, our excitement was at a different level. It is leaving our galaxy. Its mass is very low, so it was not understood as to which space object it should be classified as. Its mass is equal to the mass of a small star after its extinction. There is no hydrogen in its core. Therefore, it cannot be called a brown dwarf. It is something between a gas giant planet and a star.
How is this strange object moving so fast?
The 9 volunteers of the Backyard Project together discovered more than 4000 brown dwarfs. But none of them is running away from the galaxy. It has less iron than other dwarfs and stars. It also has less other metals. It seems that it is from the time of the first generation of stars of our galaxy. When our galaxy was just formed.
As far as the speed is concerned, one theory is that it is a white dwarf that has emerged after a supernova explosion. Which has taken away a lot of material from the supernova. Or the other theory is that it has emerged from a globular cluster. It is now being pulled towards a black hole, due to which it is getting more speed.
Source (PTI) (NDTV) (HINDUSTANTIMES)