# The Fastest Star Ever Found Is Racing Around Our Galaxy’s Black Hole

An episode of [Bedtime Astronomy](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1736397134), 4 Sep 2026, 20 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/74446798/fasteststarp.mp3

Astronomers have discovered S301, the fastest star ever observed in the Milky Way, racing around the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A* at an astonishing 25,000 km/s. Its extreme orbit takes it closer to the black hole than any known star, offering scientists a rare opportunity to test Einstein’s relativity and measure the black hole’s spin. Thank you for listening to Bedtime Astronomy — your guide to the cosmos. New episodes on space exploration, NASA missions & the latest astronomy breakthroughs. This episode includes AI-generated content.

## Transcript

[0:03] Speaker 1: Welcome to Bedtime Astronomy. Explore the wonders of the cosmos
[0:07] Speaker 1: with our soothing Bedtime Astronomie podcast. Each episode offers a
[0:12] Speaker 1: gentle journey through the stars, planets, and beyond, perfect for
[0:16] Speaker 1: unwinding after a long day. Let's travel through the mysteries
[0:20] Speaker 1: of the universe as you drift off into a peaceful
[0:22] Speaker 1: slumber under the night sky.
[0:26] Speaker 2: Picture an object right, moving at twenty five thousand kilometers
[0:30] Speaker 2: per second.
[0:30] Speaker 3: Yeah, it's just it's a number that's hard to even process.
[0:34] Speaker 2: It really is. For those thinking in miles, that is
[0:37] Speaker 2: fifteen five hundred miles per second, right, every single second.
[0:42] Speaker 2: So to put that into perspective, because you have to,
[0:44] Speaker 2: that is one hundred thousand times faster than a commercial airplane.
[0:48] Speaker 3: Oh wow.
[0:48] Speaker 2: Yeah, it is more than eight percent of the speed light.
[0:52] Speaker 2: And we aren't talking about, you know, a subatomic particle
[0:55] Speaker 2: being accelerated in some high tech laboratory. We're talking about
[0:58] Speaker 2: an entire star, whole star. Yeah, a massive burning sphere
[1:02] Speaker 2: of plasma just tearing through the absolute heart of the
[1:05] Speaker 2: Milky Way galaxy. It is officially the fastest star ever
[1:09] Speaker 2: detected in our.
[1:09] Speaker 3: Home galaxy, which is saying something.
[1:11] Speaker 2: Right, And today we're going to figure out how a
[1:15] Speaker 2: star gets trapped at these unimagineable speeds, and how watching
[1:19] Speaker 2: its journey might finally let us prove one of Albert
[1:22] Speaker 2: Einstein's wildest predictions.
[1:24] Speaker 3: I mean, it is a number that genuinely forces a
[1:27] Speaker 3: recalibration of how we view motion in the universe. When
[1:31] Speaker 3: you say twenty five thousand kilometers per second, that means
[1:35] Speaker 3: this star could circle the entire Earth at the equator
[1:38] Speaker 3: in less than two seconds.
[1:39] Speaker 2: Two seconds, that's just insane.
[1:40] Speaker 3: It is. But to understand why an object of that
[1:44] Speaker 3: immense mass is moving at eight percent of the speed
[1:46] Speaker 3: of light, well, we have to look really closely at
[1:49] Speaker 3: the environment it's navigating, because this star is not just
[1:52] Speaker 3: coasting through empty quiet space, right, It's not out in
[1:56] Speaker 3: the suburbs exactly. It is caught in the relentless gravitational
[1:59] Speaker 3: grip of Sagittarius.
[2:01] Speaker 2: A ah, the big one.
[2:02] Speaker 3: Yes, the supermassive black hole sitting directly at the center
[2:05] Speaker 3: of the Milky Way, and the gravitational forces at play
[2:08] Speaker 3: in that region. They are so immensely powerful that they
[2:12] Speaker 3: just completely redefine the behavior of matter. The extreme velocity
[2:16] Speaker 3: of this star is purely a product of that black
[2:19] Speaker 3: hole's unfathomable gravitational dominance. I mean, it is literally being
[2:23] Speaker 3: whipped around a cosmic monster.
[2:25] Speaker 2: Okay, let's unpack this because understanding the mechanics of how
[2:29] Speaker 2: we even know this star exists is a puzzle in itself. Oh, absolutely,
[2:33] Speaker 2: because we are talking about an object located right at
[2:36] Speaker 2: the center of the galaxy. Yeah, and the galactic center
[2:39] Speaker 2: is well, it's notoriously.
[2:41] Speaker 3: Chaotic, very messy.
[2:42] Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it is crowded with billions of other stars,
[2:46] Speaker 2: and it is completely shrouded by these massive, dense clouds
[2:49] Speaker 2: of interstellar dust and gas. So it's not exactly an
[2:52] Speaker 2: environment that lends itself to clear photography, not at all.
[2:55] Speaker 2: So how in the world do astronomers spot something moving
[2:59] Speaker 2: fifteen five hundred miles per second through all of that interference?
[3:04] Speaker 3: Well, it requires an extraordinary leap in observational technology. Frankly,
[3:09] Speaker 3: because the star we are talking about, which astronomers have
[3:12] Speaker 3: designated as S three oh one, it's incredibly faint.
[3:16] Speaker 2: Okay, how fake?
[3:17] Speaker 3: Just to quantify that S three oh one is two
[3:19] Speaker 3: billion times fainter than the star Beetlejuice in our night sky.
[3:23] Speaker 2: Wait two billion times good, two billion. Yeah, So if
[3:26] Speaker 2: you are looking at it invisible light, it practically doesn't exist.
[3:29] Speaker 3: It's essentially invisible.
[3:30] Speaker 2: Wow. And the dust in the galct eccenter absorbs almost
[3:33] Speaker 2: all visible light anyway, right right, exactly, So trying to
[3:35] Speaker 2: see S three oho one with a standard optical telescope
[3:38] Speaker 2: would be like, I don't know, trying to spot a
[3:41] Speaker 2: firefly from fifty miles away through a thick wall of fog.
[3:45] Speaker 3: Precisely. Yeah, visible light simply cannot penetrate that dust. So
[3:50] Speaker 3: to pierce through the murk and capture the incredibly dim
[3:53] Speaker 3: light of S three oh one, astronomers have to rely
[3:56] Speaker 3: on infrared imaging. Okay, infrared, because infrared light has longer wavelengths,
[4:01] Speaker 3: which you know allows it to pass through those dense
[4:03] Speaker 3: dust clouds without being scattered nearly as much as visible light.
[4:07] Speaker 2: That makes sense.
[4:07] Speaker 3: Yeah, So they utilize the European Southern Observatori's Very Large
[4:11] Speaker 3: Telescope or vlt okay, which is located in the high
[4:15] Speaker 3: altitude Bone dry at a Comma desert in Chile.
[4:18] Speaker 2: Right, because you need it to be dry exactly.
[4:20] Speaker 3: The dry air is crucial because water vapor in the
[4:23] Speaker 3: atmosphere also absorbs infrared light.
[4:26] Speaker 2: Oh interesting.
[4:26] Speaker 3: But even with the right location and you know, the
[4:29] Speaker 3: right wavelengths, they still had to deal with the Earth's
[4:32] Speaker 3: atmosphere blurring the image.
[4:34] Speaker 2: Right, the same atmospheric distortion that makes stars twinkle to
[4:37] Speaker 2: the naked eye, which is romantic if you were looking
[4:39] Speaker 2: out from your backyard, but a total nightmare if you
[4:42] Speaker 2: were trying to take a precise measurement of something two
[4:45] Speaker 2: billion times fainter than beetle juice.
[4:47] Speaker 3: A complete nightmare. It ruins the data, which is why
[4:50] Speaker 3: the VLT employs this really wild technology called adaptive optics.
[4:54] Speaker 2: Or the lasers.
[4:55] Speaker 3: Yes, they literally shoot powerful lasers up into the sky
[4:59] Speaker 3: to cre the artificial guide stars in the upper atmosphere.
[5:02] Speaker 2: That is so sci fi, it really is.
[5:04] Speaker 3: And by measuring how the atmosphere distorts those lasers in
[5:07] Speaker 3: real time, a computer can physically deform the telescope's secondary
[5:11] Speaker 3: mirror thousands of times a second.
[5:14] Speaker 2: Thousands of times a second, it's physically changing shape.
[5:16] Speaker 3: Yes, to perfectly counteract the atmospheric blur. It is just
[5:20] Speaker 3: a stunning mechanical achievement. And through this combination of infrared
[5:25] Speaker 3: imaging and adaptive optics. They first managed to isolate the
[5:28] Speaker 3: faint flicker of S three oh one and twenty twenty three. Okay,
[5:32] Speaker 3: and once they started tracking its position over time, that's
[5:34] Speaker 3: when the real shock.
[5:36] Speaker 2: Set in, right, And that brings in the work of
[5:38] Speaker 2: Felix mang, a PhD student and co author of the
[5:41] Speaker 2: study detailing S threeho one, because he pointed out that
[5:44] Speaker 2: this star is on an unprecedented tight orbit.
[5:48] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[5:48] Speaker 2: It takes just eight point seven years for S three
[5:52] Speaker 2: oh one to complete a full lap around the supermassive black.
[5:55] Speaker 3: Hole, which is incredibly fast.
[5:57] Speaker 2: It is scaling this up to a planetary level. S
[6:01] Speaker 2: three oh one is orbiting the black hole at roughly
[6:03] Speaker 2: the same distance that Saturn orbits are Sun. Right now,
[6:06] Speaker 2: you know, Saturn seems far from the Sun to us
[6:08] Speaker 2: sitting here on Earth. Sure, but on a galactic scale,
[6:12] Speaker 2: for a supermassive black hole that anchors an entire galaxy,
[6:15] Speaker 2: placing a star at the distance of Saturn is perilously close.
[6:19] Speaker 2: Oh absolutely, It's like balancing on the edge of a
[6:21] Speaker 2: cosmic drain. It is skimming the absolute edge of the
[6:24] Speaker 2: event horizon. It is right on the precipice.
[6:27] Speaker 3: But that tight eight point seven year orbit. It raises
[6:30] Speaker 3: an immediate and highly complex question, which is how did
[6:33] Speaker 3: it get there? Right, because we know for a fact
[6:36] Speaker 3: that stars do not form in that region. You can't no,
[6:39] Speaker 3: the environment immediately surrounding Sagittary essay is just far too violent.
[6:43] Speaker 3: The tidal forces, you know, the difference in gravitational pull
[6:47] Speaker 3: across any given space. They are so extreme that they
[6:50] Speaker 3: would rip any collapsing cloud of star forming gas apart
[6:54] Speaker 3: long before it could ever ignite into a star.
[6:57] Speaker 2: So it couldn't have been born there.
[6:58] Speaker 3: Impossible.
[6:59] Speaker 2: It had have migrated, or well more likely been thrown into.
[7:03] Speaker 3: That position exactly. S three or one was not born
[7:05] Speaker 3: on this dangerous, tightly wound orbit. It arrives there from
[7:08] Speaker 3: further out in the galaxy. And what's fascinating here is
[7:11] Speaker 3: the violent, dramatic physical process that forced S three on
[7:15] Speaker 3: one into this trap. Yeah, the current consensus is that
[7:18] Speaker 3: S three one did not arrive at the center of
[7:20] Speaker 3: the galaxy alone. It was originally part of a binary
[7:23] Speaker 3: star system. Okay, so two separate stars gravitationally bound to
[7:27] Speaker 3: each other locked in a delicate orbit around a shared
[7:30] Speaker 3: center of.
[7:31] Speaker 2: Mass, a binary system. So it had a partner it did. Okay,
[7:34] Speaker 2: I am trying to visualize the mechanics of how a
[7:37] Speaker 2: pair of stars get separated by a black hole, because
[7:40] Speaker 2: it's kind of like imagine two ice skaters spinning around
[7:42] Speaker 2: on the ice, holding hands tightly. Okay, I like this, right.
[7:45] Speaker 2: They are a single unit spinning and gliding across the
[7:49] Speaker 2: rink together, but they drift too close to an incredibly massive,
[7:54] Speaker 2: heavy pole, and the gravity of that pole reaches out,
[7:58] Speaker 2: grabs one of the skaters and just violently rips their
[8:01] Speaker 2: hands apart. Yes, so it's like a high speed cosmic
[8:05] Speaker 2: sling shot of really violent breakup. The energy of their
[8:08] Speaker 2: combined spin has to be transferred somewhere.
[8:11] Speaker 3: That is a very helpful way to visualize it, though,
[8:13] Speaker 3: you know, the physical mechanism is a bit more intricate
[8:15] Speaker 3: than just a sudden grab. Sure, it comes down to
[8:18] Speaker 3: the extreme gradient of gravity near the black hole. When
[8:22] Speaker 3: this binary pair ventured too close to Sagittarius A, they
[8:26] Speaker 3: experienced what we call the Hills mechanism.
[8:28] Speaker 2: The Hills mechanism right right.
[8:30] Speaker 3: As the two stars approached, the star that happened to
[8:33] Speaker 3: be slightly closer to the black hole experienced a significantly
[8:36] Speaker 3: stronger gravitational pull than the star that was slightly farther away.
[8:40] Speaker 2: Ah okay, so it's not just a blanket field of
[8:42] Speaker 2: gravity pulling them both equally. Now, the difference in gravity
[8:45] Speaker 2: across the distance between the two stars becomes so extreme
[8:48] Speaker 2: that it overcomes their own bond exactly.
[8:51] Speaker 3: The immense difference in gravitational pull, that tidal force we
[8:54] Speaker 3: talked about, it became greater than the mutual gravity holding
[8:58] Speaker 3: the binary stars together. So the system was literally torn apart.
[9:03] Speaker 3: And this is where the laws of orbital mechanics take over.
[9:06] Speaker 3: S three to Zho one. The star we are observing
[9:08] Speaker 3: today lost kinetic energy in the exchange. Its momentum was sapped,
[9:13] Speaker 3: causing it to fall deeper into the gravity while eventually
[9:16] Speaker 3: settling into this tight, highly accelerated eight point seven year orbit.
[9:22] Speaker 3: So it became permanently bound to the black hole.
[9:24] Speaker 2: Which means the other star, the second ice skater in
[9:27] Speaker 2: our analogy, had to absorb all of that kinetic energy. Yes,
[9:31] Speaker 2: because conservation of energy demands it. If one scar loses
[9:34] Speaker 2: orbital energy and falls in, the other has to gain
[9:36] Speaker 2: it and fly.
[9:37] Speaker 3: Out and again an astonishing amount of orbital energy. The
[9:40] Speaker 3: partner star was blasted outward with such immense explosive force
[9:44] Speaker 3: that it became what astronomers call a hypervelocity star. Hypervelocity right,
[9:48] Speaker 3: It was ejected with so much speed that it almost
[9:50] Speaker 3: certainly achieved galactic escape velocity.
[9:52] Speaker 2: That's wild.
[9:53] Speaker 3: It was shot out so fast that it overcame the
[9:56] Speaker 3: gravitational pull of the entire Milky Way and is like
[10:00] Speaker 3: hurtling out into intergalactic space as we speak, just gone gone.
[10:04] Speaker 3: S three one survived, but it was permanently enslaved to
[10:07] Speaker 3: the black hole while its partner was exiled into the void.
[10:11] Speaker 2: You know, the scale of the physics required to just
[10:14] Speaker 2: casually fling an entire star out of a galaxy is
[10:17] Speaker 2: difficult to wrap your head around.
[10:18] Speaker 3: It really is.
[10:19] Speaker 2: It makes the center of the Milky Way feel less
[10:22] Speaker 2: like a majestic anchor and more like a high speed
[10:25] Speaker 2: demolition derby.
[10:26] Speaker 3: That's a good way to put it.
[10:27] Speaker 2: But you know, as incredible as the Hills mechanism and
[10:30] Speaker 2: that breakup story are, S three oh one isn't just
[10:33] Speaker 2: an interesting piece of galactic history. It's current survival and
[10:38] Speaker 2: that razor thin orbit actually makes it one of the
[10:40] Speaker 2: most vital scientific instruments we've ever discovered.
[10:43] Speaker 3: Absolutely.
[10:43] Speaker 2: Here's where it gets really interesting, because the specific path
[10:46] Speaker 2: S three O one takes is allowing us to test
[10:49] Speaker 2: Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity in an environment that
[10:53] Speaker 2: we could never simulate on Earth.
[10:55] Speaker 3: Right, it is the ultimate testing ground for our understanding
[10:58] Speaker 3: of fundamental physics. To really appreciate why S three to
[11:02] Speaker 3: one is so important, we have to revisit how Einstein
[11:05] Speaker 3: revolutionized our concept of gravity.
[11:08] Speaker 2: Okay, let's do it.
[11:09] Speaker 3: Because before general relativity, you know, the Newtonian view of
[11:12] Speaker 3: gravity was simply that massive objects pull on each other
[11:15] Speaker 3: across a static, unmoving backdrop of space, like.
[11:18] Speaker 2: Magnets on a table.
[11:19] Speaker 3: Exactly. Space was just the empty stage where things happened.
[11:23] Speaker 3: But Einstein threw that out entirely. He showed us that
[11:26] Speaker 3: space and time are fundamentally woven together into a single
[11:30] Speaker 3: flexible fabric.
[11:31] Speaker 2: Space, time, space time.
[11:32] Speaker 3: Yeah, gravity is not a pole. It is the curvature
[11:35] Speaker 3: of that fabric. Massive objects like black holes warp the
[11:39] Speaker 3: geometry of space, time, and stars simply follow those curves.
[11:43] Speaker 2: Right, so far, that makes sense. Like a heavy bowling
[11:45] Speaker 2: ball placed on a trampoline creates a dip and a
[11:48] Speaker 2: marble rolling past will curve around the dip. Perfect analogy,
[11:51] Speaker 2: but general relativity when a step further, specifically regarding objects
[11:55] Speaker 2: that spin. And we know that essentially everything in the
[11:57] Speaker 2: universe is spinning, including super massive black holes. Very much so.
[12:00] Speaker 2: And Einstein predicted that a spinning object doesn't just create
[12:04] Speaker 2: a static dip in the trampoline, It actively twists the
[12:08] Speaker 2: fabric of reality itself.
[12:10] Speaker 3: Yes, and that phenomenon is known as frame dragging or
[12:13] Speaker 3: the lens thirring effect.
[12:14] Speaker 2: Frame dragging. Right.
[12:16] Speaker 3: If a massive object is rotating, it literally drags the
[12:20] Speaker 3: space time immediately surrounding it along for the ride.
[12:23] Speaker 2: A common way to picture that is imagining a spinning
[12:25] Speaker 2: bowling ball sitting in a thick vat of honey right now, Okay, yeah,
[12:29] Speaker 2: As the bull rotates, the friction physically pulls the honey
[12:33] Speaker 2: around it in a swirling motion.
[12:35] Speaker 3: Yes, although it is important to remember that in the
[12:38] Speaker 3: case of a black hole, there is no friction, oh right,
[12:40] Speaker 3: because space time isn't a physical fluid. Frame dragging is
[12:44] Speaker 3: a purely geometric effect.
[12:45] Speaker 2: Okay, so it's math.
[12:47] Speaker 3: Yes, the black hole is altering the actual geometry of space,
[12:50] Speaker 3: creating a whirlpool, and the mathematical grid of reality. But
[12:53] Speaker 3: the outcome is very similar to your honey analogy. The
[12:56] Speaker 3: space time surrounding Sagittarius A is swirling, which means that
[13:01] Speaker 3: the stars orbiting it are traveling through space. That it's actively.
[13:04] Speaker 2: Moving, which changes everything it does.
[13:06] Speaker 3: As a result, their orbits cannot remain simple closed ellipses, right.
[13:11] Speaker 2: They don't just trace the exact same oval path over
[13:14] Speaker 2: and over again like a planet orbiting a standard star. No,
[13:18] Speaker 2: because the space they are traveling through is twisted. The
[13:21] Speaker 2: orbit itself shifts over time.
[13:23] Speaker 3: It wobbles precisely. The technical term is precession. Instead of
[13:27] Speaker 3: drawing a single ellipse, the orbit of S three to
[13:29] Speaker 3: zero one slowly rotates around the black hole, tracing out
[13:33] Speaker 3: a shape that looks somewhat like a spirograph.
[13:35] Speaker 2: Oh yeah, like the drawing toys.
[13:36] Speaker 3: Exactly, or a flower with many petals. And this brings
[13:39] Speaker 3: us to the insights of Reinhard Genzel.
[13:42] Speaker 2: Ah.
[13:42] Speaker 3: He's a researcher from the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial
[13:46] Speaker 3: Physics in Germany, right, and he is an absolute authority
[13:49] Speaker 3: on this. He actually shared the twenty twenty Physics Nobel
[13:52] Speaker 3: Prize for his decades of work discovering and tracking stars
[13:56] Speaker 3: around the Sagittarius A black hole.
[13:58] Speaker 2: Which is an incredible achievement on its own.
[14:00] Speaker 3: Oh definitely, And Genzel emphasizes that decades of painstacking observation
[14:05] Speaker 3: have led precisely to this moment. Because S Threeho one
[14:09] Speaker 3: orbit's incredibly close to the black hole, I mean, close
[14:13] Speaker 3: enough to deeply penetrate that swirling vortex of space time.
[14:16] Speaker 3: It opens a completely new window to measure this effect.
[14:18] Speaker 2: That is the crucial point, isn't it because we can't
[14:21] Speaker 2: see the twisting of space time. No, the black hole
[14:23] Speaker 2: itself emits no light, but S Threeho one acts as
[14:27] Speaker 2: a tracer dye. By meticulously mapping out the exact shape
[14:31] Speaker 2: of S three oh one's spirograph over time, you know,
[14:34] Speaker 2: by measuring precisely how much its orbit wabbles due to procession,
[14:38] Speaker 2: astrophysicists can reverse engineer the invisible physics of the black hole.
[14:42] Speaker 3: That's exactly right.
[14:43] Speaker 2: They can calculate exactly how fast Sagittarius A is spinning.
[14:46] Speaker 2: But I mean the challenge with measuring anything in astronomy
[14:49] Speaker 2: is that the universe operates on timelines that usually dwarf
[14:52] Speaker 2: human lifespan. Usually yes, and we just spotted S three
[14:55] Speaker 2: one in twenty twenty three. If it has an eight
[14:56] Speaker 2: point seven year orbit, what are we actually going to
[14:58] Speaker 2: get the data we need to make? Calculation that we
[15:00] Speaker 2: can be waiting one hundred years.
[15:02] Speaker 3: Well, the timeline is actually incredibly rapid by astronomical standards.
[15:06] Speaker 3: We don't have to wait centuries for the answers. Astronomers
[15:10] Speaker 3: are eagerly anticipating the star's next closest approach to the
[15:13] Speaker 3: black hole, which will occur in twenty thirty one.
[15:16] Speaker 2: Okay, twenty thirty one, that's just around the corner it is.
[15:18] Speaker 3: However, one orbit is not enough to map the intricacies
[15:23] Speaker 3: of frame dragging. The team requires highly precise data from
[15:27] Speaker 3: two complete orbits.
[15:29] Speaker 2: Two complete orbits, that makes sense, Yeah, Because the first
[15:32] Speaker 2: orbit establishes the baseline path. You need the second orbit
[15:35] Speaker 2: to measure the delta to see exactly how far the
[15:37] Speaker 2: path is shifted from the first lap.
[15:39] Speaker 3: Exactly. Two full laps will provide the trajectory data with
[15:43] Speaker 3: such extreme precision that they can directly mathematically derive the
[15:47] Speaker 3: black hole's rotation. Wow and French astronomer and study co
[15:50] Speaker 3: author Juan Osorno highlighted how incredibly fortunate this discovery is
[15:54] Speaker 3: for the scientific community so well. He explained that if
[15:57] Speaker 3: S three oh one had not been found, we would
[15:59] Speaker 3: be forced to track other much more distant stars. Oh
[16:02] Speaker 3: I see, And because those stars are further away, the
[16:05] Speaker 3: frame dragging effect is weaker and their orbits take much
[16:09] Speaker 3: much longer to complete.
[16:11] Speaker 2: So it would just take forever.
[16:12] Speaker 3: We would have had to wait several more decades to
[16:14] Speaker 3: gather enough data to even attempt a spin measurement. S
[16:18] Speaker 3: three oh one is quite literally a cosmic shortcut.
[16:21] Speaker 2: Which means we are on the clock. Yes, and the
[16:23] Speaker 2: study detailing all of this was just published in the
[16:26] Speaker 2: journal Nature this past Wednesday, setting the stage for the
[16:29] Speaker 2: next decade of observation. But we should pause here and
[16:33] Speaker 2: ground this in reality for a second. Sure, what does
[16:36] Speaker 2: this all mean? We have talked about some massive concepts today,
[16:40] Speaker 2: stars moving at twenty five thousand kilometers, a second, binary star, breakups,
[16:44] Speaker 2: telescopes using lasers to compensate for atmospheric distortion, and the
[16:49] Speaker 2: fabric of space time behaving like a world.
[16:51] Speaker 3: A lot of big ideas, Yeah, but.
[16:52] Speaker 2: Why does measuring the spin of a super massive black
[16:55] Speaker 2: hole twenty six thousand light years away matter to us,
[16:59] Speaker 2: right should we care?
[17:01] Speaker 1: Well?
[17:01] Speaker 3: If we connect this to the bigger picture, it ultimately
[17:04] Speaker 3: comes down to understanding the absolute limits of the physics
[17:07] Speaker 3: that govern our universe. The laws of general relativity that
[17:11] Speaker 3: dictate how S three to OHO one whips around that
[17:13] Speaker 3: black hole are the exact same laws that govern the
[17:17] Speaker 3: gravity holding our feet to the ground. Right now, it's
[17:19] Speaker 3: all connected, it is, and black holes are not simply
[17:23] Speaker 3: static pits of gravity in the center of galaxies. They
[17:26] Speaker 3: are active, dynamic engines. The rate at which a supermassive
[17:30] Speaker 3: black hole spins dictates how much energy it pumps out
[17:33] Speaker 3: into its surrounding environment.
[17:35] Speaker 2: Right Because as it spins, it heats up the accretion
[17:38] Speaker 2: disk of gas and dust around it exactly well, that
[17:41] Speaker 2: generates massive magnetic field, shooting out jets of radiation that
[17:45] Speaker 2: can trigger or completely shut down star formation across the
[17:49] Speaker 2: entire galaxy.
[17:50] Speaker 3: Precisely, the spin is the engine's throttle. By measuring how
[17:54] Speaker 3: fast sagittary Usa is spinning, we are gathering critical clues
[17:57] Speaker 3: about how it grew over billions of years oh back
[18:00] Speaker 3: in time. Yeah, did it grow slowly by steadily feeding
[18:03] Speaker 3: on gas, or did it row violently by merging with
[18:05] Speaker 3: other massive black holes. Understanding the history of the black
[18:09] Speaker 3: hole helps us decode the evolutionary history of the Milky
[18:12] Speaker 3: Way itself.
[18:12] Speaker 2: That is fascinating.
[18:13] Speaker 3: We are looking at a system that shapes the environment
[18:16] Speaker 3: in which our own solar system eventually formed, and we
[18:20] Speaker 3: are on the verge of finally answering these profound questions
[18:23] Speaker 3: within the next decade. Simply by watching a faint dot
[18:27] Speaker 3: race around the dark.
[18:28] Speaker 2: It really makes you look at the night sky in
[18:29] Speaker 2: a completely different way.
[18:30] Speaker 3: It does.
[18:31] Speaker 2: It isn't a static painting. It is an immensely complex,
[18:35] Speaker 2: active machine, and we are finally building the tools precise
[18:39] Speaker 2: enough to watch the gears turn very well said, thank you.
[18:42] Speaker 2: You know we are going to learn an incredible amount
[18:44] Speaker 2: from S three oho one as it completes these next
[18:46] Speaker 2: two orbits by twenty thirty one. But as we wrap up,
[18:49] Speaker 2: I want to pivot away from the center of the
[18:51] Speaker 2: galaxy for a moment. Okay, we have spent all this
[18:53] Speaker 2: time marveling at S three oh one, the star that
[18:56] Speaker 2: survived the breakup and got trapped in the whirlpool, but
[18:59] Speaker 2: I cannot stop thinking about its lost binary partner. Ah.
[19:03] Speaker 3: Yes, the one that got away, the star.
[19:05] Speaker 2: That absorbed all that kinetic energy and got forcefully evicted
[19:09] Speaker 2: by the relentless grip of sagittary Usa. Yeah, just imagine
[19:13] Speaker 2: what it would be like to stand at a rocky
[19:14] Speaker 2: planet orbiting that exiled rogue star.
[19:17] Speaker 3: That would be quite a view.
[19:19] Speaker 2: It would. You would be hurtling at blinding speeds through
[19:23] Speaker 2: the absolute freezing void of intergalactic space, totally untethered from
[19:28] Speaker 2: any galactic.
[19:29] Speaker 3: Structure, just completely alone.
[19:31] Speaker 2: Right when you looked up into your night sky, you
[19:33] Speaker 2: wouldn't see the familiar, dense blanket of constellations like we do. No,
[19:37] Speaker 2: you would just see the faint, glowing spiral of the
[19:40] Speaker 2: Milky Way, shrinking further and further into the distance, forever
[19:44] Speaker 2: looking back at the massive galaxy that violently kicked you
[19:47] Speaker 2: out into the dark.

Shows are listed from Apple Podcasts' charts and directory, and Podcast Index where it is used. Every show and episode belongs to its publisher and plays from the publisher's own feed; this site hosts none of them.