The fastest star known #shorts

By Dr. Becky

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You are currently travelling at 514,000 miles per hour, at least the solar system is as it orbits the centre of the Milky Way. That's 230 kilometres per second. But if Earth was orbiting the newly discovered star S301 you'd be travelling at over 100 times faster, at 25,000 kilometres per second - that's 8% the speed of light.. And this star is the newest closest known star to the black hole at the centre of the Milky Way. But it’s not getting torn apart, or sucked in. It’s on a stable orbit. And that is really, really good news for us astrophysicists. Because with this star we should be able to directly measure how fast the Milky Way’s black hole is spinning for the first time. Because: mass, spin, and charge, those are the only three properties that black holes have. And we’ve only ever directly measured one of them for the black hole at the centre of the Milky Way. But all that is about to change. But why do we even care about a black hole’s spin? To find out why, check out

Tags: dr beccy, physiks, astronomie