Astronomers have found six sunlike stars traveling through the Milky Way at about two million miles an hour. That's fast enough to eventually escape the galaxy's gravitational pull completely.
The stars are just emerging from the center of the galaxy, where a huge black hole runs things. Astronomers theorize the stars were originally parts of binary systems near the center, and the black hole swallowed the other stars in the systems, ejecting these at stupendous speeds. The center of our galaxy is still something of a mystery because huge amounts of dust there obscures astronomers' view. By studying these stars racing out, astronomers hope to get a better idea of the kinds of stars that occupy the center.
Just a wild thought-- an extremely advanced civilization could possibly put huge settlements in orbit around such wicked fast stars, using them to bridge intergalactic space.
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