Mysterious Celestial Object Shoots Through Galaxy at 1 Million MPH, Baffling NASA Scientists

A recently discovered colossal celestial object, dubbed CWISE J1249, has left NASA scientists scratching their heads.

The bizarre discovery was made by citizen scientists analyzing data from NASA’s WISE (Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer) telescope, Knewz.com has learned.

The object, hurtling through space at a breakneck speed of one million miles per hour, is so fast it may even leave the Milky Way Galaxy.

CWISE J1249 was noted to be roughly 27,306 times the size of Earth , a fact that only adds to its enigma. What further perplexes experts is its low mass despite its colossal size, making it incredibly hard to identify clearly.

According to NASA, while CWISE J1249 is approximately the same size as a typical star, most stars orbit the center of the Milky Way in a relatively stable manner.

This object, however, appears to defy such a norm. The object’s low mass raises questions about whether it could be a low-mass star or perhaps a brown dwarf —a type of celestial object that doesn’t steadily fuse hydrogen in its core.

“Of the 4,000 other brown dwarfs discovered in the WISE imagery, none of them are close to traveling outside of the Milky Way and into intergalactic space,” NASA commented in their report.

Adding to the mystery, CWISE J1249 may be something between a star and a gas-giant planet . Its composition shows much less iron and other metals compared to known stars and brown dwarfs.

“This unusual composition suggests that CWISE J1249 is quite old, likely from one of the first generations of stars in our galaxy ,” NASA explained.

Martin Kabatnik, a citizen scientist from Nuremberg, Germany, expressed his thrill upon the discovery. “I can’t describe the level of excitement. When I first saw how fast it was moving, I was convinced it must have been reported already.”

“When passionate amateurs collaborate with professionals, great strides in science can be made,” he added .

Kabatnik, along with colleagues Thomas P. Bickle and Dan Caselden, discovered the object years ago, but their findings were only published recently.

The study was led by the Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 science team, a group formed in 2017 with the goal of identifying celestial objects from NASA’s WISE telescope.

One prevailing theory among experts is that CWISE J1249 may have originated from a binary system with a white dwarf—a star that exploded as a supernova when it accumulated too much material from its companion.

Another possibility is that it came from a globular cluster – a tightly bound cluster of stars – and a chance encounter with black holes sent it soaring away.

Kyle Kremer, the incoming assistant professor in UC San Diego ’s Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, added valuable insight. “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,” he remarked.

Scientists are now keen to examine the elemental composition of CWISE J1249 for more clues about its unusual speed and mysterious origin.

The objective is to gain deeper insights into why an object of such low mass and ancient composition could be traveling so fast.