NASA scientists are searching for an unknown mass that is drifting through the Milky Way galaxy at high speeds of more than 1.6 million kilometers per hour. The structure is moving so fast that it could escape the galaxy’s gravity and enter intergalactic space.
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The mysterious object, named CWISE, has a mass 27,000 times that of Earth but is similar in size to a small star. Researchers believe it emerged from a binary system with a white dwarf star that exploded in a supernova.
Binary star systems consist of two stars that are gravitationally bound and orbit a common center of mass. In this hypothesis, CWISE was torn apart from the system when the white dwarf star it was paired with exploded.
Another hypothesis about the origin of CWISE, which experts have considered, is that a group of stars came into contact with a pair of black holes, which activated the phenomenon and caused the structure to move rapidly. “When a star encounters a binary black hole, the complex dynamics of this interaction between the three objects can eject that star from the globular cluster,” explained Kyle Cramer, an assistant professor in the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of California, San Francisco. Diego.
The structure was discovered through a collaboration of volunteers, professionals and students. According to the WM Keck Observatory on Maunakea, Hawaii, CWISE contains less iron and other metals than other stars, and may have formed millions of years before the first generations of stars in the Milky Way.
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