The Fastest Things In The Universe!

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Did you know that some galaxies move relative to us faster than the speed of light? Interesting huh?!
Actually, the universe is getting bigger all the time. Some of the nearest galaxies to the Milky Way are receding at a rate surpassing 240,000 kilometers per hour. And those are the slow pokes; the most distant galaxies actually zoom away from us faster than the speed of light. It’s important to bear in mind that this high-speed galactic exodus breaks no laws of physics, however, from its viewpoint; the universe itself is expanding, that is the very spacetime fabric upon which all of existence is stitched.

The fastest moving Hot Jupiter is called WASP-12b which orbits an unremarkable star known as “2 MASS J06303279+2940202” or “MASS J0630” ,for short, located 870 light years from Earth in the constellation Auriga. The term WASP refers to “ Wide Angle Search for Planets” and the number “12” is because this was the 12th star for which the WASP project discovered an orbiting planet, moreover, the “b” letter is placed to indicate that the planet is the second object known in this star system. For example, “WASP-12a” would be the parent star itself. Meanwhile, if a second planet were discovered around this star it would be called “WASP-12c”.


3- The fastest Earth-sized planet, discovered by NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope, is called Kepler-78b which is so close to its parent star that a year on that exoplanet lasts about 8.5 hours, making it the one of the fastest exoplanets ever seen. The planet is far outside the habitable zone of its parent star, where liquid water and maybe life could exist. Due to these findings, scientists have described the Kepler-78b as a “lava planet”. However, a good relieving discovery for scientists is that the parent star of this planet is bright enough for other telescopes to closely spot and observe its surface along with the other undiscovered planets that could exist in this star’s system. Due to the fact that Kepler-78b is bearing a resemblance to the earth from a size perspective, it’s more likely to be a hot Earth. Actually, it’s about 100 times closer to its star than the Earth is to the Sun; in addition to this, it’s orbiting a star system that’s about 750 million years old which is about six times younger than the solar system. The planet's surface temperature reaches from 2,026 to 2,826 degrees celsius.

4- Due to the homogeneity and isotropy of our universe, measuring any dynamical property of a celestial body depends on a particular reference frame, such that, there’s no preferred point in our universe. For example; when we measure the speed of an object, the answer depends on our point of view. One physical concept to understand is the Doppler effect which is, by definition, an increase or decrease in the frequency of sound, light or other waves as the source and observer move “towards” or “ away from” each other. The effect causes a sudden change in pitch noticeable in a passing siren, as well as the Red Shift seen by astronomers. Bearing this concept in mind, any claims of a cosmic speed record need to be qualified by the point of view from which they were measured. In particular, we have illustrated how the exoplanet WASP-12b orbits its parent star at an extremely fast speed which is actually measured from the perspective of the parent star itself. You may ask yourself, if we are going to consider the relative velocity of the astronomical objects at hand, such as exoplanets and their parent stars, then what if the star is also moving across space at some high speed?
Actually, this is a very good question. From an external point of view, our Sun is considered to be a racing star. As is every star we can normally see with the naked eye, the Sun is in orbit around the centre of the Milky Way galaxy. Additionally, the Milky Way rotates at an extremely slow rate that our solar system takes more than 200 million years to complete one cycle around the centre of the galaxy.

Credit: NASA/GSFC/Frank Reddy
Credits: David A. Aguilar/ CFA
Credits: Ron Miller
Credits: tng / A. Harutyunyan
Credits: nobel foundation archive
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