Flying object approaches Earth at extreme speed: specialists are unable to identify what it is

By Maribel Velazquez

Aug 16, 2024, 11:17 AM EDT

A few years ago, astronomers let the world know that the Milky Way would collide with Andromeda within several billion years due to a dangerous approach between the two at speeds of 110 km/s, but after several studies, it was concluded that there is up to a 50 percent chance that such a collision will not occur in the end, or at least not within the next 10 billion years.

However, a “new threat” has come to light after the discovery of a body identified by astronomers as CWISE J1249+3621 that is heading towards our galaxy at a speed of 1.9 million kilometres per hour.

To be exact, the object is located 400 light-years from Earth and has a mass that is approximately 8% that of the Sun or 80 times the mass of Jupiter, which places it on a fuzzy dividing line between a star and a group of objects called brown dwarfs or commonly known as failed stars.

CWISE J1249+3621 was discovered by a group of scientists working on the Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 project, which aims to detect faint, moving objects relatively close to the Sun.

The research team leader from the University of California, Adam Burgasser, reported that the extreme velocity of this body is so high that it is probably not gravitationally bound to the Milky Way “it adds to a collection of hypervelocity stars that have been discovered in recent decades, most are thousands of light years from the Sun, while this source is only 400 light years away.”

Although astronomers using the Keck telescope were able to detect its surprising speed and even found an unusual chemical composition in the body, they have not been able to determine exactly what it is.

“This discovery opens a new avenue for studying brown dwarfs found in remote regions of the Milky Way, including its core, its halo and its various globular and satellite clusters,” Burgasser said.

The most important point of this discovery is that, due to the mass of CWISE J1249+3621, it is placed between a brown dwarf and a star. In fact, researchers have gone so far as to say that it is the lowest-mass, high-speed star that has been discovered to date.

The orbit of CWISE J1249+3621, unlike other high-velocity stars that tend to follow inclined trajectories, moves almost perfectly in the plane of the Milky Way entering and leaving the galactic center, which according to the researchers “gives a real clue about its true origin.”