NASA astronomers have identified a bizarre red sphere shooting across the Milky Way at speeds topping one million miles per hour. The object, named CWISE J1249 and detected by the agency’s WISE infrared telescope, is so unusual that scientists admit they have nothing like it in existing cosmic catalogs, as reported by The Daily Galaxy.
The discovery began when WISE flagged an unusually bright point of light shifting position far faster than expected. “I can’t describe the level of excitement,” said citizen scientist Martin Kabatnik, who first noticed the object’s extreme motion. “When I saw how fast it was moving, I thought it had to be a known source already.”
But it wasn’t. And its speed alone sets it apart. Typical rogue planets drift quietly through the galaxy, while even runaway stars rarely exceed half a million miles per hour. CWISE J1249 is moving at more than double that, implying it was launched by a powerful event or gravitational slingshot.
Early spectroscopic data from NASA deepened the mystery. CWISE J1249 has extremely low mass, lacks metals found in most stars and planets, and displays an infrared signature unlike any previously observed object. It is neither a normal star nor a known planet and does not match the behavior of familiar substellar bodies.
According to reporting from the Times of India, scientists are weighing two main explanations. One idea is that the sphere is a surviving fragment of a white dwarf, hurled into space during a supernova long ago. Its primitive composition and extreme speed are consistent with that scenario, though other traits do not neatly align with known remnants of stellar explosions.
The second possibility is that CWISE J1249 is a failed star or rogue planet pushed out of its system through a violent gravitational interaction. If it is a brown dwarf that never ignited or a massive planet flung from its orbit, it could point to a category of objects that has rarely been observed traveling at such speeds.
For now, CWISE J1249 remains an astrophysical mystery. NASA researchers are preparing follow-up observations to determine whether the strange red sphere is debris from an ancient blast, a wandering substellar body, or something entirely new to science.
