Is the Fastest Known Star S301 Accompanied by Alien String Experimentalists?

The fastest known star S301 was discovered recently to move at a speed of up to 8.5% of the speed of light next to the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A* (SgrA*) at the center of our Milky-Way galaxy. The different panels show its orbit and brightness relative to other stars at different observing times, based on data from the GRAVITY instrument at the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope. (Image credit: K. Abd El Dayem et al. 2026)The fastest star ever observed was reported recently here. It orbits the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky-Way galaxy, Sagittarius A*, with an extreme eccentricity of 0.98, reaching a speed of up to 25,600 kilometers per second at closest approach to the black hole. This speed corresponds to 8.5% of the speed of light.Sagittarius A* is located at a distance of 27,000 light years from Earth and carries a mass of 4.3 million times the mass of the Sun. The star S301 is inferred to be slightly more massive than our Sun, about 1.5 solar masses. The mass ratio between the star and the black hole is ten times smaller than the mass ratio between the Earth and the Sun and their separation at closest approach (pericenter) is 24 times the Earth-Sun separation. This mass ratio and separation are of planetary system scales. However, the huge mass of Sagittarius A* implies that the star arrives within 140 times the Schwarzschild radius of the black hole’s event horizon — the outer boundary of the region from where even light cannot escape.If the star S301 gave birth to a space agency on a habitable planet around it, then related alien astronauts have the privilege of entering the black hole during their lifespan.The orbital period of S301 is 8.7 years. A spacecraft launched to 8.5% of the speed of light in the direction opposite to the star’s velocity at pericenter would reach zero velocity relative to the black hole and fall directly towards it. Subsequently, it would take the spacecraft about 1.2 Earth days to fre