4 ms·
I looked it up! "Given a recent estimate of 4.3 million solar masses for the mass of Sagittarius A* and S2's close approach, this makes S2 the fast
by throwaway_yy2Di 12y ago
I looked it up!
"Given a recent estimate of 4.3 million solar masses for the
mass of Sagittarius A* and S2's close approach, this makes
S2 the fastest known ballistic orbit, reaching speeds
exceeding 5000 km/s (11,000,000 mph) or 1.67~% of the speed
of light and acceleration of about 1.5 m/s2 or almost
one-sixth of Earth's surface gravity.[7]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S2_%28star%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S2_%28star%29
Edit: wait that's not it, that's S0-2, but you're talking about S14/S0-16:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagittarius_A*#Central_black_hole https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagittarius_A*#Central_black_h...
From those parameters, its perihelion speed would be about 8,200 km/s (2.7% c), using the classical approximation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perihelion#Mathematical_formulae https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perihelion#Mathematical_formul...
- throwaway_yy2Di 12y agoInteresting tangent: when there's a binary star system that gets very close to this black hole, the three can interact in a way that one of the two stars falls in, while the other steals its gravitational potential and is ejected at extreme speed. There's a few "hypervelocity" rogue stars in the Milky Way, which were probably accelerated by the black hole. They're on escape trajectories leaving the galaxy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_kinematics#Hypervelocity_stars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_kinematics#Hyperveloci... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HE_0437-5439 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HE_0437-5439
- valarauca1 12y agoWow thank you for the second link. That was really interesting read.