A “UNIQUE” celestial object has been caught hurtling through space at one million miles per hour – so fast it may leave the galaxy, according to Nasa.
The colossal object – roughly 27,306 times the size of Earth – was spotted by citizen scientists who were analysing data from Nasa’s WISE telescope.
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The “new object”, dubbed CWISE J1249, has not yet been identified by experts, Nasa has revealed.
It’s about the same size as a star, but most known stars orbit the centre of the Milky Way peacefully.
It has a surprisingly low mass, which Nasa said makes CWISE J1249 particularly hard to identify.
The object could be a low mass star, but it may also be a brown dwarf if it doesn’t steadily fuse hydrogen in its core.
However, of the 4,000 other brown dwarfs discovered in the WISE imagery – none of them are close to travelling outside of the Milky Way and into intergalactic space.
CWISE J1249 might even be something in between a gas giant planet and a star.
But it has much less iron and other metals in it than other stars and brown dwarfs – so scientists have no concrete answers yet.
What is a dwarf planet?
Here’s what you need to know…
- According to scientists, a space object must tick three boxes before it can be classified as a planet.
- The first is that it must orbit the Sun.
- The second is that it’s big enough — and generates enough gravity — to pull itself into a spherical shape.
- The third is that it must have “cleared the neighborhood” of its orbit, meaning its gravity has swept away any other similar objects.
- Dwarf planets meet the first two, but not the third.
- There are six known dwarf planets in our Solar System. The most famous is Pluto.
- It was considered a full planet for decades before scientists reclassified it in 2006.
- The other five are: Ceres, Eris, Makemake, Haumea and Hygiea.
- Of these, only Ceres and Hygiea are closer to the Sun than Neptune. They sit in the asteroid belt.
- Brown dwarfs form like stars do, but can be up to 70 times more massive than gas giants like Jupiter.
- Brown dwarfs are excluded from planet status because they exceed the maximum weight for a planet.
This unusual composition suggests that CWISE J1249 is quite old, likely from one of the first generations of stars in our galaxy, according to Nasa.
“I can’t describe the level of excitement,” said Martin Kabatnik, a citizen scientist from Nuremberg, Germany.
“When I first saw how fast it was moving, I was convinced it must have been reported already.”
Kabatnik discovered the object several years ago alongside colleagues Thomas P. Bickle, and Dan Caselden, but only published their findings in a study this month.
The study is led by the Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 science team, which formed in 2017 to identify celestial objects from Nasa’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) telescope.
One theory is that CWISE J1249 originally came from a binary system with a white dwarf, which exploded as a supernova when it pulled off too much material from its companion
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Breakneck speeds
The breakneck speed CWISE J1249 is travelling at has also baffled scientists.
“One theory is that CWISE J1249 originally came from a binary system with a white dwarf, which exploded as a supernova when it pulled off too much material from its companion,” Nasa wrote.
“Another possibility is that it came from a tightly bound cluster of stars called a globular cluster, and a chance meeting with a pair of black holes sent it soaring away.”
Kyle Kremer, incoming assistant professor in UC San Diego’s Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, added: “When a star encounters a black hole binary, the complex dynamics of this three-body interaction can toss that star right out of the globular cluster.”
Scientists are now set to examine the elemental composition – what the object is made of – for more clues about why it might be moving so fast.
What is an exoplanet?
Here’s what you need to know…
- An exoplanet is a planet that is located outside of our solar system and is orbiting its own star, like how Earth orbits the Sun
- They are very hard to see with telescopes because they are often hidden by the brightness of their star
- Nasa sent the Kepler space telescope into orbit to find Earth-sized exoplanets that might support life
- Over 5,500 exoplanets have been discovered so far, and more missions to find even more exoplanets are planned
- A good way to spot an exoplanet is to look for wobbly stars, because a disruption to starlight can indicate that a planet is orbiting it and therefore blocking out light on occasion
- Exoplanets are very common in the universe, and the more we find that look like Earth, the closer we get to knowing whether we’re alone out there
Dr. Thomas Hughes is a UK-based scientist and science communicator who makes complex topics accessible to readers. His articles explore breakthroughs in various scientific disciplines, from space exploration to cutting-edge research.
