Monday, August 17, 2020

Fast Star

"This Star Is Moving So Fast it Visibly Warps Spacetime":
The star S62 whips around Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, at an extremely tight orbit. At its closest approach, it can travel faster than eight percent the speed of light, according to research published in The Astrophysical Journal. That's fast enough to make visible the relativistic phenomena of time dilation and length contraction, turning the star into an interesting sandbox for curious physicists.