There’s a new speed demon in the galaxy.
Astronomers spotted a star that reaches top speeds of 25,000 kilometers per second, about 8 percent the speed of light. But the star’s real superpower is its location, researchers report Aug. 19 in Nature . It’s the closest known star to the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole, Sagittarius A*, and it could help scientists measure the black hole’s most elusive characteristic: spin.
“The star which we have discovered has such a great potential, and we’re really all excited about it,” says astronomer Stefan Gillessen of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, Germany. Measuring…
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