Space oddity is going two ways at once

Press, 26 April 1979, Page 9

Space oddity is going two ways at once

NZPA Los Angeles A baffling cosmic discovery — possibly a doomed star in “some terribly weird kind of trouble” — has been described as one of the) strangest things found in the heavens in years. “It’s like nothing else we’ve ever seen,” says a University of California astronomer, Bruce Margon.

He says the evidence appears to reveal an object that is racing along at up to 184 M km/h in two directions at once — it seems to be coming and going at the same time. And the velocity swings up and down along a regular 160-day cycle. Mr Margon outlined the puzzle at a Washington meeting of the American Physical Society. He and a team of University of California scientists discovered the mystery while studying an inconspicuous: I star called SS 433, which like' our sun and 100 billion other) stars, is part of the Milky) Way Galaxy.

Too dim to be seen with) the naked eye, SS 433 is! about 10,000 light-years from) Earth. A light year is about 9.4 trillion kilometres.

Mr Margon says the dying star apparently rotates on a 160-day cycle. As it spins, it is spitting out two great streams of gas, much as a spinning lawn sprinkler shoots water from opposing nozzles.