Star Seen Speeding Out of Milky Way’s Grip
From Times Staff and Wire Reports
An outcast star is zooming out of the Milky Way, the first object ever seen escaping the galaxy, astronomers said Tuesday.
The star is heading for the emptiness of intergalactic space after being ejected from the heart of the Milky Way in a close encounter with a black hole, said astronomer Warren Brown of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. The star is traveling at more than 1.5 million mph, more than twice the velocity needed to escape the galaxy.
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