Hypervelocity Planets Being Ejected from the Milky Way at Relativistic Speeds

04/01/2012 01:23AM

Hypervelocity Planets Being Ejected from the Milky Way at Relativistic Speeds

Seven years ago, astronomers found the first runaway star flying out of our Galaxy at a speed of 1.5 million miles per hour. The discovery intrigued theorists, who wondered if a star can get tossed outward at such an extreme velocity, could the same thing happen to planets? New research shows that the answer is yes. Not only do runaway planets exist, but some of them zoom through space at a few percent of the speed of light - up to 30 million miles per hour.


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