this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2024
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Most familiar stars peacefully orbit the center of the Milky Way. But citizen scientists working on NASA’s Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 project have helped discover an object moving so fast that it will escape the Milky Way’s gravity and shoot into intergalactic space. This hypervelocity object is the first such object found with the mass similar to or […]

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[–] abysmalpoptart 5 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (5 children)

Isn't the sun revolving around the center of the milky way at approximately 450,000 mph? And the Earth revolves around the sun, so we're moving about half as fast as this new object right now. One million is pretty fast, but context makes it a little less shocking.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (4 children)

That's not context, that's using arbitrary reference frames.

[–] abysmalpoptart 3 points 4 months ago

I don't think that's entirely fair to say. The headline reads sensationally about a celestial object, but our own sun is traveling at almost half that speed, and we're following it. I'm not trying to prove that the Earth is incredibly fast, only that the headline may sound more impressive than it is.

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