Surprising New Class of 'Hypervelocity Stars' Discovered Escaping the Galaxy

[Eugene]

Source: Science Daily

Surprising New Class of 'Hypervelocity Stars' Discovered Escaping the Galaxy

Jan. 9, 2014 — An international team of astronomers has discovered a surprising new class of "hypervelocity stars" -- solitary stars moving fast enough to escape the gravitational grasp of the Milky Way galaxy.

The discovery of this new set of "hypervelocity" stars was described at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society this week in Washington, D.C., and is published in the Jan. 1 issue of the Astrophysical Journal.

"These new hypervelocity stars are very different from the ones that have been discovered previously," said Vanderbilt University graduate student Lauren Palladino, lead author on the study. "The original hypervelocity stars are large blue stars and appear to have originated from the galactic center. Our new stars are relatively small -- about the size of the sun -- and the surprising part is that none of them appear to come from the galactic core."

The discovery came as Palladino, working under the supervision of Kelly Holley-Bockelmann, assistant professor of astronomy at Vanderbilt was mapping the Milky Way by calculating the orbits of Sun-like stars in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, a massive census of the stars and galaxies in a region covering nearly one quarter of the sky.

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Read more: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/01/140109124945.htm

[intaglio]

1. Science fiction opportunity

They are civilisations migrating between galaxies ...

[exboyfil]

3. What a long lonely trip

2.5 M light years to Andromeda. They are traveling 1.5x10^-3 l.y/yr. so 1.7 B years (assumes 1,000,000 mi/hr the number given in the article).

[Victor_c3]

4. That's what I was thinking - how lonely it would feel to be in that star system n/t

[Thor_MN]

5. You find companionship from other stars?

With light pollution, most people in the US can't see a whole lot more than our sun.

The question I have is if these hypervelocity stars have planets. Did what ever process that accelerated them allow them to retain planets or did it scatter their planets?

[Victor_c3]

6. In an odd way, yes

It would make the possibility of of finding other life outside of your own planet even more remote.

We are in a neighborhood of several stars 4-6 lights years away. Although it is a seemingly unsurmountable distance given our current technology, I fully expect that we could reach velocities approaching those of light in the not too far off future. The chances of us discovering that we aren't the only panet to have life is far better for us.

[Thor_MN]

7. Intergalactic is greater than interstellar, but both are multigenerational at this point.

Barring some huge breakthrough, none of us will see anything other than remote sensing of other worlds. If FTL travel is even possible, there's no reason to suspect that intergalactic travel is any harder than interstellar travel.

Regardless of where you are, "home" is normal. Intelligent life around a hypervelocity star would likely ponder how life around a galactic star could stand to be in that slow, crowded space with all that junk blocking the views.

[muriel_volestrangler]

8. Like the planet Krikkit lacked, in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (spoiler):

Hactar was originally created by the Silastic Armorfiends of Striterax to design the Ultimate Weapon. Hactar produced a very, very small bomb that, when activated, would connect every star to every other star, cause them to all go supernova simultaneously and, thus, destroy the universe. The bomb proved dysfunctional because Hactar had designed it with a tiny flaw, reasoning that no consequence could be worse than that of setting the bomb off. The Silastic Armorfiends disagreed and disintegrated Hactar into a dust cloud.

Due to the dust cloud, the sky above Krikkit was completely black, and thus the people of Krikkit led insular lives and never realised the existence of the Universe. With the population thus prepared, Hactar, disintegrated but still functional, built and crashed a model spaceship onto Krikkit in order to introduce its inhabitants to the concept of the Universe. Secretly guided by Hactar, the Krikkiters built their first spaceship, Krikkit One, penetrated the dust cloud, and surveyed the Universe before them. Unbeknownst to the Krikkiters, Hactar had been subliminally conditioning their minds to the point where they could not accept a Universe into their world view with the intention of putting them into a similar mindset to that of the Silastic Armorfiends. Sooner or later, they would require an Ultimate Weapon, and this would allow Hactar to finally complete his purpose, something he had felt considerably guilty about not doing before. Upon first witnessing the glory and splendor of the Universe, they casually, whimsically, decided to destroy it, remarking, "It'll have to go."

http://hitchhikers.wikia.com/wiki/Krikkit

[Fumesucker]

9. Old hat in SF

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fleet_of_Worlds

[phantom power]

2. evaporative cooling