Scientists working on NASA's “Backyard Worlds: Planet 9” project, scientists have discovered an object moving fast enough to escape the gravitational pull of the Milky Way galaxy and travel between galaxies.
The object, named “CWISE J1249”, is moving away from the Milky Way at about 1.6 million kilometers per hour.
Although experts have not been able to determine what the newly discovered celestial object is, CWISE J1249 is thought to be quite old and probably belongs to one of the first generations of stars in our galaxy.
Scientists will take a closer look at the elemental composition of CWISE J1249 to understand why the object is moving so fast, noting that most of the known stars move calmly around the center of the Milky Way.
Editor: John Wickey
