'If you lived on one, you'd be in for a wild ride': Our Milky Way galaxy hurls planets out into space at 30 million miles per hour

When galaxies wander too close to the huge black hole at the centre of our Milky Way galaxy, planets can be 'fired' off into space at up to 30 million miles per hour.

The planets are 'slingshotted' to a significant fraction of light speed by the supermassive black hole at the heart of the Milky Way, 26,000 light years from Earth.

‘If you lived on one of them, you'd be in for a wild ride from the center of the galaxy to the universe at large,’ said astrophysicist Avi Loeb of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

A 'runaway planet' hurled into space from our galaxy: Eventually, such worlds will escape the Milky Way and travel through the lonely intergalactic void. A glowing volcano on the planet¿s surface hints at active plate tectonics that may keep the planet warm

‘Other than subatomic particles, I don't know of anything leaving our galaxy as fast as these runaway planets,’ added lead author Idan Ginsburg of Dartmouth College.

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