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Much Faster than a Speeding Bullet, Planets and Stars Escape the Milky Way

Idan Ginsburg, a graduate student in Dartmouth's Department of Physics and Astronomy, studies some of the fastest moving objects in the cosmos. When stars and their orbiting plants wander too close to the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, their encounter with the black hole’s gravitational force can either capture them or eject them from the galaxy, like a slingshot, at millions of miles per hour.