Hypervelocity stars
A Star Was Kicked Out of a Globular Cluster by an Intermediate-Mass Black Hole
Astronomers have solid evidence for the existence of stellar-mass black holes and supermassive black holes. However, evidence for Intermediate Black…
Are Andromeda and the Milky Way Already Exchanging Stars?
I often drag out the amazing fact that the Andromeda Galaxy, that faint fuzzy blob just off the corner of…
What Would Happen to Earth if a Rogue Star Came Too Close?
Stars are gravitationally fastened to their galaxies and move in concert with their surroundings. But sometimes, something breaks the bond.…
Hypervelocity Stars Teach us About Black Holes and Supernovae
A new study shows how hypervelocity stars could teach us more about the most powerful and mysterious phenomena in the…
Globular Star Clusters are Constantly Kicking Stars out of the Galaxy
All the stars we can see with the naked eye are part of the Milky Way. The gravitational power of…
How Do Stars Get Kicked Out of Globular Clusters?
Globular clusters are densely-packed collections of stars bound together gravitationally in roughly-shaped spheres. They contain hundreds of thousands of stars.…
Stars Getting Kicked out of the Milky Way can Help us map its Dark Matter Halo
Hypervelocity stars may allow us to map dark matter as they leave the Milky Way.
Astronomers Discover Hundreds of High-Velocity Stars, Many on Their Way Out of the Milky Way
Combining data from two of the largest databases in the world, an international team of astronomers was able to doubledthe…
This Star has been Kicked Out of the Milky Way. It Knows What It Did.
Every once in a while, the Milky Way ejects a star. The evicted star is typically ejected from the chaotic…
The Milky Way Could Be Spreading Life From Star to Star
A new study from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics addresses the possibility of panspermia on a galactic (and intergalactic) scale