A group of citizen scientists participating in NASA’s Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 project have discovered a mysterious object zipping through space at a staggering 1 million miles per hour.
“I can’t describe the level of excitement,” Kabatnik, a citizen scientist from Nuremberg, Germany, said in a NASA press release. “When I first saw how fast it was moving, I was convinced it must have been reported already.”
The discovery has left astronomers baffled but excited, as they are now working to determine the identity of this rapid traveler. The breakthrough also underscores the invaluable contributions of citizen scientists to modern space exploration.
The Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 is a NASA-funded science initiative that invites volunteers worldwide to assist professional astronomers in scanning vast amounts of astronomical data for signs of new celestial objects.
These volunteers, often called “citizen scientists,” play a crucial role in the discovery process by analyzing images taken by telescopes and satellites, looking for anything unusual that automated systems might have missed.
The initiative was launched in 2017 to enlist the public’s help in scanning the Solar System for smaller, faint celestial objects, including potentially locating an elusive hypothesized ninth planet of our Solar System, often called “Planet Nine.”
While Backyard Worlds: Planet 9’s main goal is to locate a potential ninth planet in the distant reaches of our Solar System, the project has also led to the discovery of other significant objects, such as brown dwarfs, planetary bodies, and high-velocity stars.
Accessible through the popular citizen-science research portal, the Zooniverse, participants in the Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 project are given access to a vast archive of data, including infrared images captured by NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) telescope.
These images span several years, allowing volunteers to search for moving objects—indications of previously undiscovered celestial bodies. By comparing images taken at different times, volunteers can spot objects that shift position, suggesting they are closer to Earth than distant stars or galaxies.
The recently discovered object, dubbed “CWISE J1249,” was identified by volunteers sifting through NASA data in search of new planetary bodies or other celestial phenomena.
One of the most remarkable features of CWISE J1249 is its astonishing speed of 1 million miles per hour. For comparison, the fastest man-made object in space is the Parker Solar Probe, which, at its closest approach to the Sun, reaches speeds of 430,000 mph.
At its current velocity, CWISE J1249 surpasses most known objects in our Solar System and is fast enough to escape the Milky Way’s gravitational pull, propelling it into intergalactic space.
Hellbound and Down 