Curious layman Posted August 16, 2020 Share Posted August 16, 2020 Quote In the center of our galaxy, hundreds of stars closely orbit a supermassive black hole. Most of these stars have large enough orbits that their motion is described by Newtonian gravity and Kepler's laws of motion. But a few orbit so closely that their orbits can only be accurately described by Einstein's theory of general relativity. The star with the smallest orbit is known as S62. Its closest approach to the black hole has it moving more than 8% of light speed. https://phys.org/news/2020-08-fastest-star.amp Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Halc Posted August 20, 2020 Share Posted August 20, 2020 Closest approach (about 16 au) is still well outside the Roche limit of Sgr-A (about 1/30th that distance). So imagine the speed of an object getting that close. Just outside that limit, I imagine a passing star would still get pretty torn up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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