A mysterious, hyper-speed object—more than 27,000 times the size of Earth—is hurtling through our galaxy at such an astonishing speed that it may one day break free from the Milky Way, according to NASA. This rogue celestial body, cruising at a mind-boggling one million miles per hour, was first spotted more than 400 light-years away from Earth. To put that distance in perspective, one light-year equals approximately six trillion miles.
While scientists have yet to confirm the true nature of this object, they speculate it may be a “brown dwarf.” A brown dwarf is a type of star that is larger than a planet but lacks the necessary mass to sustain nuclear fusion in its core, like our Sun. If confirmed, this would be the first-ever brown dwarf documented in such a chaotic, high-speed orbit capable of escaping the gravitational pull of our galaxy.
The object was discovered by a dedicated group of citizen-scientists involved in NASA’s “Backyard Worlds: Planet 9” project. The U.S. space agency confirmed that these volunteers were the first to identify the object, which has been cataloged as CWISE J124909.08+362116.0, or simply CWISE J1249. Martin Kabatnik, a German citizen-scientist and long-time participant in the Backyard Worlds program, described the thrill of the discovery. “When I first saw how fast it was moving, I was convinced it must have been reported already,” he said, reflecting the excitement shared by the team.
Theories abound as to how CWISE J1249 achieved such extraordinary speed. One possibility is that it was ejected from a binary star system after its companion, a white dwarf, exploded in a supernova. Another theory suggests that the object may have been flung out of a globular cluster—a dense group of stars—by the gravitational pull of a black hole. According to Dr. Kyle Kremer, an astronomer who has worked closely with the discovery team, “When a star encounters a black hole binary, the complex dynamics of this three-body interaction can toss that star right out of the globular cluster.”
These citizen-scientists’ observations have sparked considerable interest within the scientific community. A report detailing their findings has been drafted by a coalition of university and government scientists, including members from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. The paper, which is currently awaiting peer review, suggests that the object could be a “hypervelocity L subdwarf”—making it one of the smallest objects to ever qualify as a brown dwarf.
The Backyard Worlds project, which utilizes data from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), has been instrumental in uncovering thousands of minor planets, star clusters, and other celestial phenomena. The WISE telescope, with its expansive “all sky” survey, has provided a treasure trove of data, enabling both professional and amateur astronomers to make groundbreaking discoveries.
NASA plans to continue studying CWISE J1249 to better understand its chemical composition and determine whether it is indeed a brown dwarf or possibly something even more exotic. Using advanced software to model the object’s potential galactic orbit, researchers found that there is a significant chance—about 17%—that CWISE J1249 could eventually eject itself from the Milky Way, drifting into the unknown reaches of space over the next 10 billion years.
