Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's super Neptune! But this Superman-mimicking planet is not blasting through space on its own. It is being dragged along by its parent star.
NASA scientists have discovered what they suspect is the hypervelocity star racing through space with a Neptune-like planet in tow. The system appears to be moving at an incredible speed of 1.2 million miles per hour (1.9 million kilometers per hour). If the discovery is confirmed, this will be the fastest extrasolar planet, "exoplanet," system ever seen.
"We think this is a so-called super-Neptune world orbiting a low-mass star at a distance that would lie between the orbits of Venus and Earth if it were in our solar system," said team leader Sean Terry, a researcher at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. "If so, it will be the first planet ever found orbiting a hypervelocity star."
