Hypervelocity star found to have been ejected from centre of the Milky Way by supermassive black hole

An international team of researchers have found a hypervelocity star that's been ejected from the centre of our galaxy by the resident supermassive black hole, Sagittarius A*. The star — S5-HSV1 — is now travelling at more than six million kilometres per hour (or 1,700km/s).

But the breakup happened five million years ago when it was half of a binary star system that strayed too close to the black hole. The two stars were in a very tight orbit around each other, until the black hole wrenched them apart, capturing one and flinging S5-HSV1 at extremely high speed away from its companion and ejecting it from the centre of our galaxy.