Stars that race through space at nearly the speed of light
We wrote about this in Orbital Index recently (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;orbitalindex.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;orbitalindex.com</a>) and so I did some background research: Loeb&#x27;s paper [1], mentioned in the article, found that hypervelocity stars accelerated by massive black hole binaries could hypothetically reach as much as *half the speed of light*. This is not something you want to be anywhere near.<p>Relatedly, Chinese astronomers recently published research on 591 high-velocity stars in our galaxy [2, 3], and 43 of these were hypervelocity stars, moving at relativistic speeds and destined to eventually escape the Milky Way entirely. They used China&#x27;s LAMOST optical telescope and ESA&#x27;s Gaia and doubled the number of known high-velocity stars. Apparently this is useful for measuring the mass of the Milky Way.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;arxiv.org&#x2F;abs&#x2F;1411.5030" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;arxiv.org&#x2F;abs&#x2F;1411.5030</a><p>[2] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;english.cas.cn&#x2F;newsroom&#x2F;research_news&#x2F;phys&#x2F;202012&#x2F;t20201228_260875.shtml" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;english.cas.cn&#x2F;newsroom&#x2F;research_news&#x2F;phys&#x2F;202012&#x2F;t20...</a><p>[3] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;iopscience.iop.org&#x2F;article&#x2F;10.3847&#x2F;1538-4365&#x2F;abc16e" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;iopscience.iop.org&#x2F;article&#x2F;10.3847&#x2F;1538-4365&#x2F;abc16e</a><p>P.S. HN needs a better way to make links.