Astronomers Find One of the Fastest Cosmic Objects, Hurtling at Over 1 Million Mph

Astronomers Find One of the Fastest Cosmic Objects, Hurtling at Over 1 Million Mph
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You may have found out by now that there are a lot of cosmic objects out there that travel faster in space than we can imagine. But still, some of them make us remain speechless. We’re not even going to talk about anything that travels at the speed of light or close to that velocity, which is the fastest speed possible that’s allowed by the laws of nature. If something somehow exceeds the speed of light, it could theoretically be capable of traveling backward in time, according to Albert Einstein’s claim.

Supernovae are some of the most spectacular phenomena in the Universe – not only that they represent the moment a star kicks the bucket, but they can be as bright and powerful as an entire galaxy. One supernova will be at the core of this article as well, but in an indirect manner.

A pulsar travels at a speed of 1.4 million mph

According to ScienceAlert.com, it’s all gone pear-shaped for a pulsar after it was ejected by the force of a supernova, as the collapsed core now hurtles through space at 1.4 million mph. Thus, it became one of the fastest cosmic objects out there. A pulsar is a neutron star resulting from the collapsed core of a supernova. Astronomers made the discovery thanks to data gathered from the Chandra X-ray observatory. They’ve looked at the G292.0+1.8 glowing supernova remnant that’s located 20,000 light-years away.

Daniel Patnaude, an astrophysicist of the CfA, explained:

We only have a handful of supernova explosions that also have a reliable historical record tied to them, so we wanted to check if G292.0+1.8 could be added to this group.

The new study was accepted for The Astrophysical Journal, and it can already be seen on arXiv.

 


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Even since he was a child, Cristian was staring curiously at the stars, wondering about the Universe and our place in it. Today he's seeing his dream come true by writing about the latest news in astronomy. Cristian is also glad to be covering health and other science topics, having significant experience in writing about such fields.

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