Scientists just found the fastest known star in the Milky Way. It zooms around our black hole at 15,500 miles per second
Astronomers have found the fastest known star in the Milky Way, a faint object racing around Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the heart of our galaxy.
Astronomers have discovered the fastest known star in the Milky Way, named S301. This faint object is orbiting Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy, at a remarkable speed of 15,500 miles per second — more than 8% the speed of light. S301's orbit is incredibly tight, taking just 8.7 years to complete, and it approaches the black hole at a distance of only 12 times the Earth's distance from the sun.
This unprecedented discovery provides astronomers with a novel method to study the 4.3-million-solar-mass black hole. General relativity predicts that a rotating black hole induces frame dragging, causing alterations in the orbit of nearby stars. With S301 venturing so close to Sagittarius A*, these changes may be measurable within a decade.
This discovery marks the first direct measurement of a massive black hole's spin, providing a crucial test of Einstein's theory. The team, led by Felix Mang and Stefan Gillessen, will continue tracking S301 with GRAVITY+ and eventually ESO's Extremely Large Telescope. The upcoming observations, spanning two full orbits, could reveal Sagittarius A*'s spin for the first time.
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