Extreme-velocity stars, which travel through the Milky Way with speeds of hundreds of kilometres per second, may come from dwarf galaxies that our own galaxy gobbled up
Space
8 April 2022
Illustration of the Milky Way Mark Garlick/Science Photo Library/Getty Images
The speediest stars in the galaxy, moving at hundreds or even thousands of kilometres per second, are also some of the least well-studied. A study of 15 of these fast-moving objects has found that most of them probably came from dwarf galaxies devoured by the Milky Way in the distant past.
“Some stars that are travelling fast have been [proposed to have] an extragalactic origin, but this is the first time that a relatively large sample has been analysed and evidence has been shown that they …
Article amended on 8 April 2022
We corrected the speeds of the stars.
