Fastest object?

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spayss

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We often read about the speed of light, various individual particles, etc.<br /><br />What, however, is the fastest that an object of 'concrete size' is currently moving through space. <br /><br />What is the fastest speed we can speculate a solid object is moving? Is it an isolated pebble-sized rock? A planet? a star? A galaxy? Is it ejecta from a supernova explosion or does that not send out material other than particles?
 
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yevaud

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Well, if you consider what we see from Quasars as "Real and Concrete" objects, and consider the ejecta as likely expelled matter, over 90% C. Or so it appears. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><em>Differential Diagnosis:  </em>"<strong><em>I am both amused and annoyed that you think I should be less stubborn than you are</em></strong>."<br /> </p> </div>
 
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qso1

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If there are particles associated with the jets of material (For lack of a better term) seen emanating from galaxies such as M-87, they are probably the fastest we know of. The M-87 jets speeds were estimated to be in the several tens of millions of miles per hour range IIRC. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><strong>My borrowed quote for the time being:</strong></p><p><em>There are three kinds of people in life. Those who make it happen, those who watch it happen...and those who do not know what happened.</em></p> </div>
 
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derekmcd

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If you consider spinning objects, the surface motion of a Pulsar is extremely fast. Though the answers from the guys above probably the best. Gamma ray bursts eject material very close to the speed of light. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <div> </div><br /><div><span style="color:#0000ff" class="Apple-style-span">"If something's hard to do, then it's not worth doing." - Homer Simpson</span></div> </div>
 
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spayss

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Would a gamma burst eject material in a plasma state that would cool to a solid 'rocky' state?
 
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silylene old

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You may remember this puzzling discovery from a few years ago....<br /><br />The fastest moving object (as opposed to gaseous atoms) is a star that moves at 0.005c.<br /><br /> fast star<br /><blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>THE MYSTERY OF THE FASTEST MOVING STAR STILL PUZZLING <br />STANFORD - Scientists who announced several weeks ago the discovery of the fastest moving star ever seen are now pondering the inevitable question: how can you explain something that large moving that fast? <br /><br />How do you accelerate 2.7 octillion tons (27 followed by 26 zeros) from a standstill to over 1,800 kilometers per second, about one- half of one percent of the speed of light? That could be as fast as 4 million miles per hour. <br /><br />"For a star to be moving this fast, the energies released are really enormous," said Roger W. Romani, a Stanford astrophysicist. "There is something as heavy as our sun, suddenly kicked up to such an enormous speed. That costs a lot of energy, a stupendous amount of energy." <br /><br />Romani, a member of the team that initially discovered the speeding star, believes an asymmetric explosion may have created a "neutrino rocket" to start the star on its journey.<br /><p><hr /></p></p></blockquote> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature" align="center"><em><font color="#0000ff">- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -</font></em> </div><div class="Discussion_UserSignature" align="center"><font color="#0000ff"><em>I really, really, really miss the "first unread post" function.</em></font> </div> </div>
 
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MeteorWayne

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I didn't remember. <br />Glad your neurons have longer retention!<br />Thanx<br />MW <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#000080"><em><font color="#000000">But the Krell forgot one thing John. Monsters. Monsters from the Id.</font></em> </font></p><p><font color="#000080">I really, really, really, really miss the "first unread post" function</font><font color="#000080"> </font></p> </div>
 
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spayss

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Thanks for the link. It will take as much energy to slow down this star. One wonders, therefore, why this wouldn't be a common phenomenon...or perhaps it is and just hasn't been previously observed.
 
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qso1

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silylene:<br />You may remember this puzzling discovery from a few years ago.... <br /><br />Me:<br />I wish I did remember but thanks for that info. A star moving that fast. It must have come in just close enough to some other star in a manner similar to a gravity assist. An assist that propelled it at this speed out of the galaxy. Although the article mentioned a neutrino rocket. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><strong>My borrowed quote for the time being:</strong></p><p><em>There are three kinds of people in life. Those who make it happen, those who watch it happen...and those who do not know what happened.</em></p> </div>
 
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robnissen

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"It will take as much energy to slow down this star." Good point. If a star going that fast was to hit another star, could that possbily be the cause of some of the GRBs that we periodically see from other galaxies?
 
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vandivx

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I believe the thread poster had something like this in mind, motion of macroscopic bodies, not some gas jets etc that are made up of particles of matter<br /><br />as to this amazingly fast moving star but what is more amazing still is that apparently 99.99999% of macroscopic objects in universe seem to be moving as a rule at only relatively pedestrian speeds, why is that, I find that almost equally amazing<br /><br />the logic is that the odds for this fast star to colide with another star (and thus get slowed down) must be overwhelmingly small (basically it won't happen except in some extremely rare case), and given the stupendous number of stars out there in universe and eons of time in which most of what can happen does happen, the likelihood is that this fast star should most certainly no be alone in going that fast, there should be many such fast stars out there and the question then is what slowed them down because over eons such fast stars should accumulate and they should be numerous enough today to comprise a fairly sizable class of fast objects on their own out there (that is if you wanted to make a separate class out of them in the first place, this is just for the sake of the argument), similar to other classes of objects out there (like if neutron stars are out there, it would be unlikely that we would know only about one such object of that kind)<br /><br />vanDivX <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>
 
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