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.
In addition to its hypervelocity, CWISE J1249 possesses several unique features that make it difficult for NASA scientists to adequately classify it as a celestial object. Namely, it appears to be a low-mass object, somewhere in the class of a brown dwarf or between the mass of a gas giant and a low-mass star.
However, additional data from the W. M. Keck Observatory in Maunakea, Hawaii, shows that CWISE J1249 contains much less iron and other metals than other stars or brown dwarfs.
“This unusual composition suggests that CWISE J1249 is quite old, likely from one of the first generations of stars in our galaxy,” NASA notes.
While the exact nature of CWISE J1249 remains unknown, several possibilities are being considered.
One possibility is that the object is a rogue planet—an exoplanet that has been ejected from its original solar system and is now wandering through space unbound to any star. Rogue planets are difficult to detect due to their lack of a nearby star to illuminate them, making this a significant find if confirmed.
Another possibility is that the object could be a brown dwarf, a celestial body larger than a planet but not massive enough to sustain nuclear fusion in its core like a true star.
Brown dwarfs are sometimes called “failed stars.” They occupy the mass range between the heaviest gas giant planets and the lightest stars. Given the object’s high velocity, it could be a rare example of a high-velocity brown dwarf, providing valuable insights into the dynamics of such objects in our galaxy.
There is also speculation that CWISE J1249 could be a hypervelocity star. Hypervelocity stars are rare stars that travel at unusually high speeds, often due to being ejected from a binary star system after a supernova explosion or interaction with the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way.
“When a star encounters a black hole binary, the complex dynamics of this three-body interaction can toss that star right out of the globular cluster,” Dr. Kyle Kremer, a professor in UC San Diego’s Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, explained.
Considering the various controversial theories surrounding the 2017 detection of “Oumuamua,” the first interstellar object observed passing through our Solar System, it’s worth noting that there is no evidence to suggest CWISE J1249 is a massive extraterrestrial spacecraft.
NASA says that the object’s composition and characteristics are now under close examination by professional scientists looking to definitively identify what type of celestial body it is.
This is not the first time citizen scientists involved in the Backyard Worlds project have made a significant discovery.
In 2018, participants in the project found the “oldest and coldest known white dwarf – an Earth-sized remnant of a Sun-like star that has died – ringed by dust and debris.” The find represented the first known evidence of a white dwarf with multiple dust rings.
More recently, citizen scientists identified another high-velocity object, CWISE J1249+3621, which was later determined to be a very low-mass star or brown dwarf moving at an unusually high speed.
“CWISE J1249+3621 is the first hypervelocity very low mass star or brown dwarf to be found, and the nearest of all such systems,” researchers wrote in a study published in Astrophysical Journal Letters. “It may represent a broader population of very high velocity, low-mass objects that have undergone extreme accelerations.”
In all, NASA says that Backyard Worlds citizen scientists are responsible for the discovery of more than 4,000 new brown dwarfs. However, unlike this recent mystery object, none of those were on their way out of the Solar System.
Ultimately, the success of the Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 project underscores the growing importance of citizen science in the field of astronomy. As technology advances and the amount of data generated by telescopes and space missions continues to increase, the role of citizen scientists becomes ever more critical.
These volunteers provide a valuable resource, offering fresh eyes on data and sometimes spotting things that automated systems or even professional astronomers might miss.
NASA and other space agencies increasingly rely on the global community of amateur astronomers to help with data analysis, particularly in large-scale projects where human intuition and pattern recognition can complement computers’ capabilities. Collaboration between professional scientists and citizen volunteers is becoming a vital part of space exploration, opening up new possibilities for discovery.
As for the mysterious object CWISE J1249, moving at 1 million miles per hour, the coming months will likely bring more detailed observations and analysis, which could help unlock its secrets.
Whether it’s a rogue planet, a brown dwarf, or something entirely unexpected, the discovery reminds us how much there is still to learn about our universe and how anyone, regardless of their formal training, can contribute to that journey of discovery.
Tim McMillan is a retired law enforcement executive, investigative reporter and co-founder of The Debrief. His writing typically focuses on defense, national security, the Intelligence Community and topics related to psychology. You can follow Tim on Twitter: @LtTimMcMillan. Tim can be reached by email: tim@thedebrief.org or through encrypted email: LtTimMcMillan@protonmail.com