Appreciate your reply to my original post questioning the binary-star theory. Have for some unknown reason been thinking about the physics, and am convienced it could not have a binary-star.

Tour example of a ball attached to a string and swung around your head doesn't work, as the fulcrum would not be your hand, but instead a point somewhere in between depending of the size of the objects and the gravtional properties shared between them.

However, believe your on the right track, but instead of a binary-star… it could have been accelerated by a TRINARY STAR, whereas, the larger (or, 1st) star was trapped by the black hole's gravational pull, and it's release was an accelerated by a close pass of the remaining star (or, 3rd star) around the remaining (or, 2nd star) accelerating it out of the grational pull of its' sisters, both of which were gobbled-up by the black hole.

Just a thought, but the fulcrum would not be your, therefore, in my mind (at least) it doesn't fit the physics.

Rev.

[...] לידיעה ביוניברס טודיי [...]

D. Madison says: "Gas in the Magellanic Clouds in general is metal poor as compared to gas in our own galaxy. He should have inserted the word “heavy� before the word “elements�. Without that word, the sentence lacks meaning. A higher mass star will have a higher density, and therefore a higher concentration of elements, than a low mass star.

Oh my….
Higher mass stars tend to be large, and mostly hydrogen and other light elements. They do not have a higher concentration of elements than, say, a red dwarf. It's density may not be greater either. Compare Wolf-Rayet stars with white dwarfs.

The word "heavy" is problematic too. Heavy elements in astronomy are anything greater than oxygen or so.

A bit about how hypervelocity stars are ejected. Fraser's article linked to in the beginning of the story explains it a little as well. Essentially, because of the conservation of angular momentum, when the one star in a binary system gets captured, the other has nothing more to rotate around. Think of spinning a ball attached to a string around your head, and then letting that ball go. Your hand is the star that gets trapped by the black hole, and the string – which is the gravitational bond between the two – is disrupted and lets the ball go free. The ball is just like the star that goes flying off, only at millions of miles (per hour, of course).

As for the LMC black hole possibility: the mechanisms for creating hypervelocity stars is still in the works like many things in astronomy, but it's been posited that the only way it can happen is through this interaction with a black hole. This discovery is tantalizing because of that fact, making it all the more cool! New Scientist had an article that focused on other researchers who postulate about a black hole in the LMC because of the star written about here. Check that out at: http://space.newscientist.com/article/dn11019

[...] Hyperfast Star Ejected from the Large Magellenic Cloud Astronomers at the Carnegie Institute show that one star rocketing away from the Milky Way hearkens from the Large Magellanic Cloud. There have been ten such hypervelocity stars discovered, but where this one came from was quite a conunudrum. (tags: space star science) [...]

In ruling out the origin as the Milky Way, he writes, “The concentration of elements in Large Magellanic Cloud stars are about half those in our Sun.� Gas in the Magellanic Clouds in general is metal poor as compared to gas in our own galaxy. He should have inserted the word “heavy� before the word “elements�. Without that word, the sentence lacks meaning. A higher mass star will have a higher density, and therefore a higher concentration of elements, than a low mass star. The subject changes without that word.

As others have noted, the author was less than clear on the mechanism for how a black hole might accelerate a star.

Are you suggesting, that a "slingshot" effect has been created by the Black Hole itself and its energy transferred to boosting, or knockin' a homerun with the remaining star — outta' the Magellanic Park?

A Black Hole at the center of the Magellanic Cloud? Believe the Magellanic Cloud is made-up of gaseous vapors and dust from it's self-termination… where's the Black Hole?

Very confusing, doesn't make sense? Sorry, plese re-explain!

That's really slow because the Falcon does the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs.

Conservation of mass and energy preclude such changes.