'Runaway planets' hurled from galaxies at 30 million mph

[Dennis Olson]

'Runaway planets' hurled from galaxies at 30 million mph

Published March 23, 2012

| FoxNews.com



Now that’s a wild ride!

Astronomers have discovered that the incredible gravitational strength of supermassive black holes can tear planets away from their star systems and hurl them through space at incredible speeds -- as fast as 30 million mph.

They noted that this is "a few percent" of the speed of light, a theoretical constant of 186,000 miles per second or about 670 million mph.

Called hypervelocity planets, the speedy worlds vastly outrace runaway stars that scientists found flying out of our galaxy seven years ago at the tortoise-like pace of just 1.5 million miles per hour.

"These warp-speed planets would be some of the fastest objects in our Galaxy. If you lived on one of them, you'd be in for a wild ride from the center of the galaxy to the Universe at large," said astrophysicist Avi Loeb of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

[pullquote]

For this study, the researchers simulated a double-star system that wanders too close to the supermassive black hole at the galactic center. They had already known that the black hole’s gravitational forces could rip the stars apart -- sending one away at high speed while the other is captured into orbit around the black hole.

But what would happen if each star had a planet or two orbiting nearby?

The researchers found that the star ejected outward could carry its planets along for the ride. The second star, as it's captured by the black hole, could have its planets torn away and flung into the icy blackness of interstellar space at tremendous speeds.

A typical hypervelocity planet would slingshot outward at 7 to 10 million miles per hour. However, a small fraction of them could gain much higher speeds under ideal conditions.

"Other than subatomic particles, I don't know of anything leaving our galaxy as fast as these runaway planets," added lead author Idan Ginsburg of Dartmouth College.

Current instruments can't detect a lone hypervelocity planet since they are dim, distant, and very rare. However, astronomers could spot a planet orbiting a hypervelocity star by watching for the star to dim slightly when the planet crosses its face in a transit.

For a hypervelocity star to carry a planet with it, that planet would have to be in a tight orbit. Therefore, the chances of seeing a transit would be relatively high, around 50 percent.

"With one-in-two odds of seeing a transit, if a hypervelocity star had a planet, it makes a lot of sense to watch for them," said Ginsburg.

Eventually, such worlds will escape the Milky Way and travel through the intergalactic void.

"Travel agencies advertising journeys on hypervelocity planets might appeal to particularly adventurous individuals," added Loeb.
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[bw]

A typical hypervelocity planet would slingshot outward at 7 to 10 million miles per hour. However, a small fraction of them could gain much higher speeds under ideal conditions.

Galactic escape velocity is about half a million mph. Those guys aren't coming back.

[Aardaerimus]

Makes you wonder what would happen to the planets in a common solar system (such as ours) if an object the size of Jupiter or even Venus sailed rapidly through our midst...

[Publius]

They have found a few stars that on their way out of the galaxy and moving at incredible speeds and the idea of getting pull into the black hole and being slung was the only logical answer for how this could happen.

[dstraito]

Makes you wonder what would happen to the planets in a common solar system (such as ours) if an object the size of Jupiter or even Venus sailed rapidly through our midst...

5468616e6b20796f752c20616e6420796f752061732077656c 6c2e

[bw]

5468616e6b20796f752c20616e6420796f752061732077656c 6c2e

Was that intended to be comprehensible?

[changed]

If you were driving your Buick at the speed of light and you turned your headlights on, what would happen?

[Watchman2]

Scientist do NOT understand "light Years," as it is an impossibility. They really need to re-think some of their theories.

If a planet was a single light year away or even less, then the light of the specks in outerspace in the night sky would ALL be lines of blurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. just think about that for awhile. If you do not understand, take a picture of the stars at night, exposing for a couple of minutes and see how much lines of blur you come up with. Now stretch that time out to a "light-year." The concept makes no sense.

So, how do they possibly know how fast a planet jetisons?

Watchman2

[LoupGarou]

Was that intended to be comprehensible?

At least decode-able though:
5468616e6b20796f752c20616e6420796f752061732077656c 6c2e="Thank you, and you as well."

http://home.paulschou.net/tools/xlate/

Loup

[dstraito]

Was that intended to be comprehensible?

It was a response to aardaerimus signature.

[LoupGarou]

It was a response to aardaerimus signature.

Thanks for the explanation.

Loup

[Aardaerimus]

5468616e6b20796f752c20616e6420796f752061732077656c 6c2e

416c77617973206120706c6561737572652c206d7920667269 656e64203b29

[Kook]

OK boys, just stop that. Stop it!

[TerryK]

If you were driving your Buick at the speed of light and you turned your headlights on, what would happen?

Answer:
Your buick can't travel as fast as the speed of light. As you get closer and closer to light speed your car's mass increases. Theoretically it would be infinity at the speed of light and you would need infinite force to force it to gain last bit of speed.
If you were very close to the speed of light, time would slow down, so that the light photons leaving your cars headlamps at the speed of light would look to be going just as fast as the normal speed of light to you. However, someone standing still in space watching would see the light photons slowly leave your car if they could watch
As an object approaches the speed of light it's length decreases. At the speed of light you would essentially have no length. You would be a plane wave.
With infinite mass. Where time is standing still. But you wouldn't notice it from your perspective.

Have fun in your alternate reality
My fun thought is suppose you are in your Buick going 99.99999% the speed of light and shot your .45 at a passing planet. What would a .45 slug traveling at almost 186,000 miles per second and having almost infinite mass due to a planet.
I wonder what the exit hole would look like
I wonder what the megaton equivalent would be.

[Caplock50]

"You would be a plane wave."

Still me or being a wave...I won't be plane(plain) anything...thank you.


Laugh...that's a joke...

[lower_ark]

Of course you have lines if you over expose the night sky.
The Earth is rotating. Duh

[Publius]

The earth rotates on its axis at 1,000. MPH.

The earth orbits around the sun at 67,000. MPH

The solar system revolves around the milky-way at 550,000. MPH, and it takes 225 million years to go around once.

The milky-way galaxy is moving threw the universe at 2,237,000. MPH.

The speed of light is 186,000. miles per-second and that works out to 670,616,629. MPH.

[LoupGarou]

...
My fun thought is suppose you are in your Buick going 99.99999% the speed of light and shot your .45 at a passing planet. What would a .45 slug traveling at almost 186,000 miles per second and having almost infinite mass due to a planet.
I wonder what the exit hole would look like
I wonder what the megaton equivalent would be.

IE=(M*V^2)
V=299,792.4583 (give or take a smidge)
M=10.7 g (165g hollow point, you really want to let that planet know you care).
Impact Energy=961,668,041.24839 Joules

Considering that Fat Man and Little Boy were in the 60TJ to 90TJ range (60,000,000,000,000J to 90,000,000,000,000J) you might want to try something bigger. Like a bowling ball or a trailer full of bricks that you let slip off the trailer hitch at the right moment (since you are "driving" in space).

But then again, my calc did not take consideration of gravity (since I don't know the planet), or the vector math actually involved in shooting the planet while it is moving and you are trucking along at the speed of light (must be some wicked leading the target).

(Sorry, had to have fun...)

Loup

[LoupGarou]

The bowling ball would come a bit closer, and rank in at 652,269,586,516.81 Joules. The only problem is that any microscopic matter in space that your arm hits at the speed of light as you toss the ball out, might do more than sting.

And before you say that the windshield would not take that punishment either, those old GM windshields back in the day were pretty thick. Just sayin'...

Loup

[LouKy]

The nickname NASA gave ejected stars is " Roaster's ". That name says it all , if one decided to come flying through our system.

The earth rotates on its axis at 1,000. MPH

.

Thats why i tell people that preparing for a pole shift (sudden earth stoppage is vanity). If the earth suddenly stops...you won't.


Since we are shooting things....what would really happen if you fired a pistol in the weightlessness of space? Say the bullet flies at 900 ft. per second.

Would your arm spin around till it snapped off your shoulder and float away?

Would the bullet fly at 450 in one direction and you at 450 the other?

[West]

I like threads like these. There are some really smart people here.

My lame attempt to add, a oldie...

Life would really suck, if there was no gravity on earth.

[MrO]

Would the bullet fly at 450 in one direction and you at 450 the other?

There's this guy called Newton, and he posited the law of conservation of energy The bullet has a mass, and an arm has a mass that's orders of magnitude greater than that of the bullet's. That arm's mostly staying put

[bw]

The earth rotates on its axis at 1,000. MPH.

Well, it rotates once in 24 hours. Land at the equator is moving about 1000 mph. Land in northern Canada is moving about half that fast.

[LouKy]

There's this guy called Newton, and he posited the law of conservation of energy The bullet has a mass, and an arm has a mass that's orders of magnitude greater than that of the bullet's. That arm's mostly staying put

The reason i asked that, is i saw an experiment on Sci Channel. They took an old fashioned railcar (the kind they had to pump the crank up and down to move the car) and put a man ,the railcar on the most level track they could find and gave him a 22 long rifle. Whichever direction he shot , him and the railcar moved in the opposite direction.

So, am i thinking wrong? The 22 didnt overcome the mass of the man and the railcar?

[batterbiscuts]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhAobPugvsk

batterbiscuts

[bw]

It was a response to aardaerimus signature.

Ok, whatever flips your bits.

[TerryK]

IE=(M*V^2)
V=299,792.4583 (give or take a smidge)
M=10.7 g (165g hollow point, you really want to let that planet know you care).
Impact Energy=961,668,041.24839 Joules

Considering that Fat Man and Little Boy were in the 60TJ to 90TJ range (60,000,000,000,000J to 90,000,000,000,000J) you might want to try something bigger. Like a bowling ball or a trailer full of bricks that you let slip off the trailer hitch at the right moment (since you are "driving" in space).

But then again, my calc did not take consideration of gravity (since I don't know the planet), or the vector math actually involved in shooting the planet while it is moving and you are trucking along at the speed of light (must be some wicked leading the target).

(Sorry, had to have fun...)

Loup

ahh, but Loup you forgot the mass increase towards infinity as the velocity of light is approached.
Lets be charitable and say that at .9999999% c the mass of a .45 slug is only 1,000,000 kg. Now what would the equation come out to???

More like 8.9 ^19 joules.
By the way the gravity of the planet is inconsequential and you have to be just under the speed of light.

Like in the matrix, the real thing that bakes your noodle, is that since you are just under the speed of light and are almost a plane wave, your mass is appraching infinity and infinite mass had infinite gravitational pull, but does gravity have a speed of interaction? will you pull the solar system apart because of your almost infinite gravity?
If you have near infinite mass and near infinite gravity, will you collapse yourself and Buick into your own black hole.
If you have near infinite mass and near infinite gravity, will you keep collapsing, overcoming the nuclear forces holding nuclear particles apart, and fuze them into a new almost infinitely massive, superparticle that keeps collapsing until it has no dimensions?
If you have no dimensions, can you exist as matter in the universe? or have you become energy?

Questions to ponder when you are tired.

[bw]

The reason i asked that, is i saw an experiment on Sci Channel. They took an old fashioned railcar (the kind they had to pump the crank up and down to move the car) and put a man ,the railcar on the most level track they could find and gave him a 22 long rifle. Whichever direction he shot , him and the railcar moved in the opposite direction.

So, am i thinking wrong? The 22 didnt overcome the mass of the man and the railcar?

If the railcar was frictionless and they were looking at extremely slow speeds then they might see such movement. Otherwise, I call BS.

A railcar+person weighs about 200,000 times as much as a 22 slug. The slug at 1000fps might move a frictionless railcar backward maybe 20 feet per hour, if I haven't missed a digit.

[tech]

Scientist do NOT understand "light Years," as it is an impossibility. They really need to re-think some of their theories.

If a planet was a single light year away or even less, then the light of the specks in outerspace in the night sky would ALL be lines of blurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. just think about that for awhile. If you do not understand, take a picture of the stars at night, exposing for a couple of minutes and see how much lines of blur you come up with. Now stretch that time out to a "light-year." The concept makes no sense.

So, how do they possibly know how fast a planet jetisons?

Watchman2

The concept of "light year" is really simple. It is a measure of distance, nothing more. Light travels at 186,000 mi/s, so it comes out to be a bit shy of 6 trillion miles. Nothing impossible about it.

How do they know how fast a planet jettisons? Again, simple. Measure how far it travels in a given amount of time...if they watched it for an hour and it traveled 30 million miles, then it would be traveling at 30 million miles per hour.

Seriously, has second grade math been eliminated from schools entirely?

BTW, if you move for the camera you will be blurred, too. Completely different scenario...

[LouKy]

If the railcar was frictionless and they were looking at extremely slow speeds then they might see such movement. Otherwise, I call BS.

The only friction was between the wheels and the track. Yes it was slow. Not a very good way to travel. Nor is it a good substitute for gasoline engines.

Im looking around now to see if they happened to post a video of that show.

[MrO]

The reason i asked that, is i saw an experiment on Sci Channel. They took an old fashioned railcar (the kind they had to pump the crank up and down to move the car) and put a man ,the railcar on the most level track they could find and gave him a 22 long rifle. Whichever direction he shot , him and the railcar moved in the opposite direction.

So, am i thinking wrong? The 22 didnt overcome the mass of the man and the railcar?

What was being demonstrated was the principle: "for every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction." The key point however is that action and reaction are measured relative to mass and proportional to velocity. If we didn't take into account mass, or weight, of things relatively then shooting a gun for example would cause you to fly off at the same speed as the bullet but backwards

So, given a bullet and a rail car - the bullet has got a tiny mass, but it's travelling at an incredible velocity. The rail car on the other hand has a great big mass, but it's stationary. Shooting a bullet off a rail car will cause the car to move, slowly, in the opposite direction of the bullet. The lighter the rail car, and the heavier the bullet (let's say we shot a gun the size of something on a battleship for example) the faster the railcar would travel in the other way.

[LoupGarou]

...
Thats why i tell people that preparing for a pole shift (sudden earth stoppage is vanity). If the earth suddenly stops...you won't.

Exactly the reason that a sudden crust shift WON'T ever happen unless we are struck with a large enough foreign body from space, and then it won't matter anyway. Magnetic pole shift, no problem. Crust or other mass pole shift, won't happen.

Now, slowing the spin down, that could easily happen, just reverse the polarity of the E-field from the sun. The H-field reverses polarity every solar max (at least once each max). The E-field bounces around, reverses, and then flips back almost every day, but only for short periods. Let that Bz go negative (southern polarity) for a decade or more and we might see a significant slowdown. A day might become a week's worth of time or more. The sunny side might get REAL hot, and the dark side REAL cold. It would suck.

Since we are shooting things....what would really happen if you fired a pistol in the weightlessness of space? Say the bullet flies at 900 ft. per second.

And it continues to do so, with a LOT less friction so it flies further, and if you fired it away from the planets, no bullet drop (at least till it got near another celestial body).

Would your arm spin around till it snapped off your shoulder and float away?

No, the bullet still has the same mass, and so do you. Inertial balances and ratios still have the same effect out there. That bullet still weighs 10.7 grams (for the above example of a 165gr bullet), your arm still weighs say around 11kg, so you are looking at the same "kick" of that ratio (1:1,028)

Would the bullet fly at 450 in one direction and you at 450 the other?

You will be moved back the same ratio as you are here on Earth. If you want propulsion, get a fire extinguisher.

Loup

[blueridge]

Sheee-yit, one of those could ruin our whole day if it came our way.

[Watchman2]

Rats,

And I thought I was going to win the noble peace prize or something.

Watchman2

The concept of "light year" is really simple. It is a measure of distance, nothing more. Light travels at 186,000 mi/s, so it comes out to be a bit shy of 6 trillion miles. Nothing impossible about it.

How do they know how fast a planet jettisons? Again, simple. Measure how far it travels in a given amount of time...if they watched it for an hour and it traveled 30 million miles, then it would be traveling at 30 million miles per hour.

Seriously, has second grade math been eliminated from schools entirely?

BTW, if you move for the camera you will be blurred, too. Completely different scenario...

[bw]

The only friction was between the wheels and the track.

Most of the friction would have been in the wheel bearings, not against the track.

[LoupGarou]

ahh, but Loup you forgot the mass increase towards infinity as the velocity of light is approached.
...

Actually, that has been proven to be a flawed theory in a lot of applications. The mass of an object does not change with velocity, it's inertia does. IE=(M*V^2). They have tested this on shuttle missions to see if the mass changed any while they are zipping along at 7,700m/s. It did not change at all.

If mass actually changed, then we would have some serious trouble with electricity. Electrons have mass, and travel about 82-99% of the speed of light, depending on the medium that they are traveling though (velocity factor). While their mass is small, their speed can get really close to the speed of light, and you can get a LOT of them to move relatively easily.

ETA: And yes, another proof of this is the effect of a black hole, or insanely strong magnet on light. Light, DOES have mass, just not much mass. Scientists say that it does not have "rest mass", but it does have real mass. If it did not, then black holes would not be able to bend it, and if close enough, suck it in.

Loup

[LoupGarou]

Or, if you want a simpler reason... Notice the similarity between Einstein's E=M*C^2 and IE=M*V^2. C is just the velocity of the speed of light, Mass is the constant of the mass of the object.

Loup

[LouKy]

OK...i was thinking that weightlessness and frictionless would in a way cancel out the mass of a human in space. I wasn't thinking of propulsion...i was thinking that the force of the recoil would be way worse than it would on earth.

[Ender]

Makes you wonder what would happen to the planets in a common solar system (such as ours) if an object the size of Jupiter or even Venus sailed rapidly through our midst...

I think the fantastic thing for me to understand is that "we don' know nuttin'".

Way cool.

[LoupGarou]

OK...i was thinking that weightlessness and frictionless would in a way cancel out the mass of a human in space. I wasn't thinking of propulsion...i was thinking that the force of the recoil would be way worse than it would on earth.

A lot of college students still have problems with "visualizing" all of the aspects of "mass". Mass and weight are different, but still related. Mass is always mass, weight is always based on mass, through the effects of gravity. You can measure weight using a spring scale, due to gravity, but that weight amount will change if you change gravity. Mass on the other hand, will always be the same amount no matter what the gravity. It can be measured on a mechanical balance, an electronic one (strain gauge), a centrifugal/centripetal balance (rotational balance (think tire balancer)), or a number of other methods that reference it against a known mass (either mechanically or electronically).

In space, you are weightless, not massless. If you are not buckled in, and the rocket hits the thrusters hard, you will still hit the side or rear of the rocket rather hard.

Loup