Citizen scientists involved in NASA’s Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 project have identified a mysterious object hurtling through space at a staggering speed of 1 million miles per hour. This enigmatic object, now named CWISE J1249, has captured the attention of both amateur astronomers and experts alike due to its unprecedented velocity and intriguing characteristics.
Volunteers combing through NASA’s data made this remarkable discovery, marking yet another success for the Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 project. One such volunteer, Martin Kabatnik from Nuremberg, Germany, shared his excitement in a NASA press release, saying, “When I first saw how fast it was moving, I was convinced it must have been reported already.” However, it turned out that this swift-moving object was indeed a novel find, moving out of the Milky Way at a speed of approximately 1 million miles per hour.
CWISE J1249 stands out not just for its speed but also for its low mass, which makes it difficult to categorise. While it could be a low-mass star, if it doesn’t continuously fuse hydrogen in its core, it might instead be classified as a brown dwarf, a celestial body that lies somewhere between a gas giant planet and a star. This object is even more fascinating because it has been observed to possess much less iron and other metals compared to typical stars and brown dwarfs. Such a composition suggests that CWISE J1249 could be extremely old, possibly originating from one of the first generations of stars in our galaxy.
The Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 project, which engages citizen scientists in the search for new celestial phenomena, has previously led to the discovery of over 4,000 brown dwarfs. However, CWISE J1249 is unique in that it’s the first known object of its kind on a trajectory that could eventually see it exit the Milky Way entirely.
One theory about the origins of CWISE J1249 is that it might have once been part of a binary system with a white dwarf. If this white dwarf exploded as a supernova, it could have propelled CWISE J1249 at its current high velocity. Alternatively, the object may have been ejected from a densely packed globular cluster of stars following an encounter with a pair of black holes.
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Astronomers continue to study CWISE J1249 to unravel more details about its nature and origins. Understanding how it came to be travelling at such a remarkable speed could shed light on other high-velocity, low-mass objects in space. As research progresses, scientists hope to trace its path back to its point of origin, potentially leading to new discoveries about the early stages of our galaxy’s formation.
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The discovery of CWISE J1249 opens up new avenues for exploring the universe, demonstrating once again the invaluable contributions of citizen scientists in advancing our understanding of the cosmos.
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