making connections

Astronomy is not only an environment to study the very large, but it is also one of the only places for other fields to realistically study and test their theories. For example, gravitational relativity is nearly impossible to study on Earth, but some minor effects can be viewed on the massive scale from the cosmos. Nothing leaves at such great velocities from our galaxy as sub atomic particles, but it can be very difficult to study the motion of these particles, but some new results have shown something much BIGGER leaving our galaxy at some fairly incredible speeds.

Several years ago, astronomers were intrigued when they noticed runaway stars fleeing the milky way at millions of miles an hour. While this is only a few tenths of a percent of the speed of light, if a star could be hurled out of the galaxy at these speeds, could the same or even more extreme velocity happen to a planets. Not only do these runaway planets exist, but some have been clocked at a zooming 30 million mph. This is even more significant as it is a few percent of the speed of light.

Such speedy worlds, called hyper-velocity planets, are produced in the same way as hyper-velocity stars. When a binary star system wanders close to a super-massive black hole, the tremendous gravitation forces rip the pair apart throwing one at .03c Astrophysicists have shown that if a star orbiting a black hole were ejected out of the galaxy, the planets orbiting the star could go along with it.

Hyper-velocity planets would be nearly invisible at such high speed with current telescopes, but some of the basic understanding about orbiting planets could lend a helping hand in discovering them. If the planet were orbiting a star, there is a chance that it could transverse across the star resulting in the apparent dimming of the star. In order for these hyper-velocity planets to remain in orbit around their hyper-velocity stars, they must have incredibly fast orbital periods and incredibly small orbits. This means that the chance of witnessing one of these high speed transits, given that there is a planet orbiting a hyper-velocity star, is about 50%.

With a one-in-two chance of finding a transit due to a planet orbiting a hyper-velocity star, it would be foolish to ignore them. By monitoring these planets, new studies and experiments could test already known theories about the universe.