{"id":865699,"date":"2026-08-21T02:44:18","date_gmt":"2026-08-21T02:44:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/865699\/"},"modified":"2026-08-21T02:44:18","modified_gmt":"2026-08-21T02:44:18","slug":"scientists-detect-fastest-known-star-in-the-milky-way-zooming-around-a-supermassive-black-hole","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/865699\/","title":{"rendered":"Scientists detect fastest known star in the Milky Way zooming around a supermassive black hole"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

A wide-field visible-light view shows rich star clouds in the constellation Sagittarius in the direction of the centre of the Milky Way galaxy, in this image released Wednesday.ESO and Digitized Sky Survey 2\/Reuters<\/p>\n

Scientists have detected the fastest-known star, a stellar speedster that is zooming around the supermassive black hole residing at the centre of our galaxy and might hold the key to measuring the spin of this celestial beast for the first time.<\/p>\n

The star, around 50 per cent more massive and five times brighter than our sun, travels at speeds up to about 90 million kilometres an hour as it orbits the Milky Way\u2019s central black hole \u2013 named Sagittarius A*, or Sgr A*. That is more than 8 per cent the speed of light. No other star in our galaxy or elsewhere has ever been clocked at that speed.<\/p>\n

The star, named S301, is travelling in a highly elliptical path around Sgr A*, taking about 8.7 years to complete an orbit. Its closest approach to the black hole is about 11.5 times Earth\u2019s orbital distance from the sun, a metric called an astronomical unit. That means the star\u2019s nearest pass is somewhat more than the planet Saturn\u2019s orbital distance from the sun. But at its farthest, S301 is about 1,360 astronomical units from Sgr A*.<\/p>\n

Black holes are extraordinarily dense objects with gravity so strong that not even light can escape. Sgr A* possesses about four million times the sun\u2019s mass and is located about 26,000 light-years from Earth. A light-year is the distance light travels in a year, 9.5 trillion km.<\/p>\n

While Sgr A* presently is in a quiescent state, its gravitational pull is considerable \u2013 meaning it could gulp down stars or other material straying too close. But the researchers said S301 should remain safe from the black hole\u2019s wrath.<\/p>\n

\u201cIts orbit will not decay anytime soon. So the orientation of the orbit will change, but it is not in danger of being swallowed,\u201d said astrophysicist Stefan Gillessen of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Germany, one of the leaders of the research published on Wednesday in the journal Nature.<\/p>\n

No other star is known to orbit as close to Sgr A* as this one. So how did S301 end up with this crazy orbit?<\/p>\n

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

A sequence of images show several stars orbiting Sagittarius A*. Arrows indicate the observed motion of the stars around the black hole. One of the stars, S301, passes closer to Sagittarius A* than the others and its orbit is marked by an elliptical curve. In each frame, the solid curve shows the portion of the orbit already completed by the star, while the dashed curve shows the path it will follow.ESO\/GRAVITY\/Reuters<\/p>\n

Dr. Gillessen said it appears that S301 originally was part of a two-star system called a binary, gravitationally bound to a stellar partner. But the two stars at some point ventured too close to the black hole while travelling through space, and the subsequent three-way gravitational interaction wreaked havoc.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne star shoots out from the centre of the Milky Way travelling at high speed and even leaving the galaxy. The other star is stuck forever on an orbit close to the black hole. That is S301,\u201d Dr. Gillessen said.<\/p>\n

The researchers observed S301 using the European Southern Observatory\u2019s Chile-based Very Large Telescope Interferometer. The continuing influence that Sgr A* exerts on S301 during its orbit may enable scientists to better understand the black hole, including possibly measuring its spin.<\/p>\n

\u201cCurrently, there is very little that we know about the rotation of Sgr A*,\u201d said study co-author Felix Mang, a doctoral student at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics.<\/p>\n

Black holes are believed to rotate, so much so that they twist the very fabric of space and time around them. But confirming this spin is difficult because black holes do not emit or reflect light, rendering them invisible.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe only can see their rotation by seeing the effect on the space around them,\u201d Dr. Gillessen said.<\/p>\n

The researchers said that the motion of S301 remains sensitive to Sgr A*.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe star during its orbit comes so close to Sgr A* that it actually will feel the spin of Sgr A*,\u201d Dr. Gillessen said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is not a wobble \u2013 like in back and forth \u2013 but rather the star gets pushed onto a slightly different orbit each time it passes the black hole. That means that by observing that change in orbit for another good decade, we should be able to directly determine the spin of the black hole. Such a measurement is unheard of, so far,\u201d Dr. Gillessen added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: A wide-field visible-light view shows rich star clouds in the constellation Sagittarius in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":865700,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[901,888,902,879,877,903,49,48,876,895,896,891,878,875,46,549,295,894,887,914,880,881,893,889,890,884,904,885,909,910,912,907,911,905,908,882,314,898,899,714,897,906,66,865,61,900,892,886,883,913],"class_list":["post-865699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-physics","tag-alberta","tag-arts-news","tag-bc","tag-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news-video","tag-british-columbia","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-canada-news","tag-canada-sports","tag-canada-sports-news","tag-canada-trafficcanada-weather","tag-canadian-breaking-news","tag-canadian-news","tag-economy","tag-education","tag-environment","tag-federal-government","tag-foreign-news","tag-globe-and-mail","tag-globe-and-mail-breaking-news","tag-globe-and-mail-canada-news","tag-government","tag-life-news","tag-lifestyle","tag-local-news","tag-manitoba","tag-national-news","tag-new-brunswick","tag-newfoundland-and-labrador","tag-northwest-territories","tag-nova-scotia","tag-nunavut","tag-ontario","tag-pei","tag-photos","tag-physics","tag-political-news","tag-political-opinion","tag-politics","tag-politics-news","tag-quebec","tag-science","tag-sports-news","tag-technology","tag-travel","tag-trudeau","tag-us-news","tag-world-news","tag-yukon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/865699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=865699"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/865699\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/865700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=865699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=865699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=865699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}