In a remarkable breakthrough, citizen scientists involved in NASA’s Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 project have uncovered an enigmatic object, dubbed CWISE J1249, racing through space at a staggering speed of 1 million miles per hour. This discovery, made by volunteers meticulously analyzing NASA data, has captured the attention of the astronomical community due to the object’s unique properties and the mystery surrounding its classification.
CWISE J1249’s extraordinary velocity and low mass have left scientists puzzled. The object, which is rapidly moving out of the Milky Way, challenges traditional celestial classifications. It could be a low-mass star or, if it lacks the steady hydrogen fusion typical of stars, it might be a brown dwarf a type of object that sits somewhere between a gas giant planet and a star.
Brown dwarfs are not uncommon; in fact, the Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 project has identified over 4,000 of them. However, what sets CWISE J1249 apart is its incredible speed and its journey out of the galaxy, a characteristic not observed in any other brown dwarfs discovered to date.
Glimpse into the Past
Further investigation of CWISE J1249 using the W. M. Keck Observatory in Maunakea, Hawaii, has revealed another intriguing detail: its composition. The object has significantly less iron and other metals compared to typical stars and brown dwarfs, indicating that it may be extremely old, possibly originating from one of the first generations of stars in the Milky Way.
Theories Behind Its High Speed
The question of why CWISE J1249 is moving at such a high speed has led to several hypotheses. One theory suggests that the object might have originated from a binary system that included a white dwarf. As the white dwarf accumulated too much material from its companion star, it could have exploded as a supernova, propelling CWISE J1249 out of its system at tremendous speed.
Another possibility is that CWISE J1249 was once part of a tightly bound globular cluster a dense collection of stars. In this scenario, a close encounter with a pair of black holes could have resulted in a complex three-body interaction, flinging CWISE J1249 out of the cluster and sending it hurtling through space.
Kyle Kremer, an incoming assistant professor in UC San Diego’s Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, explains, “When a star encounters a black hole binary, the complex dynamics of this three-body interaction can toss that star right out of the globular cluster.”
Thrilling Discovery by Citizen Scientists
The discovery of CWISE J1249 has sparked excitement among the volunteers who contributed to its identification. Kabatnik, a participant from Nuremberg, Germany, expressed their enthusiasm in a NASA press release: “I can’t describe the level of excitement. When I first saw how fast it was moving, I was convinced it must have been reported already.”
As researchers continue to study CWISE J1249, this discovery underscores the invaluable contributions of citizen scientists to the field of astronomy and the ongoing exploration of our universe’s most mysterious and fascinating phenomena.
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