HYPERVELOCITY Havoc!
A speedy little star is racing through the Milky Way at a million miles per hour, fast enough to potentially escape our galaxy. This hypervelocity object, discovered by an amateur astronomer, could be a low-mass star or a brown dwarf. We explore the consequences of such a stellar speedster entering our solar system, from gravitational disruptions to the possibility of Earth being captured and taken along for the ride. Join us as we calculate travel times across the galaxy, ponder life on a planet orbiting a rogue star, and imagine astronomy in a nearly starless sky!
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Keep On IFFin',
Philip, Matt & Gaby
Check out our Patreon listener Dan Floyd's awesome illustration for last week’s episode! It’s a cross section of a hollow earth with a small black hole in the middle and a large rock orbiting between the black hole and the Earth's crust... which would make for some pretty wacky gravity!
