Stars Flying Through The Universe At Near Light-Speed

avatar

Gravitational slingshots made by supermassive black holes can sometimes fire off stars from the centers of their respective galaxies at relativistic speeds. And when two such stars collide? Well, get ready for one big explosion.


star-67705_1920.jpg

Image by WikiImages from Pixabay

We already got used to the idea of massive particles flying at near light speed. But – as famous astrophysicist and dreamer Loeb from Harvard University says, even some stars are swooshing through the Universe at near light speed.

So, how exactly does something as massive as a freaking star gets going so fast? They are fired off by gravitational slingshots created by the mergers of galaxies and their supermassive black holes. When the titanic forces of gravity face off against each other it can easily shoot out a star that was just standing by at truly relativistic speeds. It most likely doesn’t happen too often but it should not be that rare. And on top of that, there is a chance that stars could speed up even without the need for merging stars. If that would happen, it wouldn’t fly away. Just orbit the black hole at near light speed forever.

Loeb thinks it would be more than fascinating to live on a planet that orbits such a star. Obviously, it would come with some relativistic strangeness such as time-dilatation. The people living on such a planet would actually get to visit a good chunk of the Universe as relativistic stars start their journey near the center of their home galaxy, fly through it and the galactic halo only to enter the void between galaxies before they enter their next galaxy.

But now let’s talk about explosions. Experts think that relativistic stars orbit supermassive black holes in a decent number of galaxies. And sometimes, sometimes they collide. Loeb is convinced that such a collision would fire off an explosion that would be many times more powerful than normal supernovae.

Obviously, this is not something to happen every day. First off, it needs to happen near a supermassive black hole with a mass of at least 100,000,000 Suns. A smaller supermassive black hole would actually destroy the stars by its tidal forces before they would reach relativistic speeds. You might be surprised, but the tidal forces of more massive supermassive black holes are actually weaker. Sadly, that means the supermassive black hole in our galaxy is out of the game as it has a mass of “only” 4,000,000 Suns.

Loeb also thinks that collisions of relativistic supermassive black holes are the most energetic explosions in the whole Universe – at least when it comes to what we know about. They can be up to thousand times stronger than regular supernovae. Maybe, we could discover them with the upcoming Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) that should start working in a few years in Chile.

Sources:


  • If you like the content I’m producing about science maybe you will like the content I produce about gaming as well! Be sure to check out my other posts!


0
0
0.000
0 comments