At the center of our galaxy is Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), a humongous black hole about four million times the mass of our sun. Being so big, its gravitational effects are extreme and they can be detected by looking at the stars in its immediate vicinity, Cnet reported.

Orbiting Sgr A* is a handful of stars (and some mysterious objects), locked in a cosmic two-step with the invisible monster, moving at mind-melting speeds.

And astronomers have just discovered the quickest of the lot, clocking its fastest speed around Sgr A* at 8% the speed of light.

A study, published in The Astrophysics Journal on Tuesday, examined the area surrounding Sgr A*, looking for the signature signs of stars. Previous research has discovered dozens of stars moving around the supermassive black hole on highly unusual orbits. This population of stars is known collectively as the S-stars and some of them orbit incredibly close to the black hole, making them difficult to detect.

But the research team, using instruments installed at the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile, scoured through images taken between 2004 and 2016, adding five new stars, S4711-S4715, to the population and tracking their movements around Sgr A*. Their results show more evidence that a distinct population of stars orbit Sgr A* at distances comparable to the size of our solar system.

And being so close to the terrifying, bottomless abyss at the center of the Milky Way, they are privy to some extreme physics.

Florian Peissker, an astronomer at the University of Cologne in Germany, and his team have been studying the region of space close to the black hole intensely. In January, they reported observations of the star S62. Their observations, published in the Astrophysics Journal, revealed S62 was orbiting the black hole once every 9.9 years, giving it the shortest orbital period and making it the fastest star to blitz around the Milky Way’s black hole.

But Peissker and colleagues’ new data has seen S62 drop both of its records.

According to The Astronomer’s Telegram, one of the newly-discovered stars, S4711, orbits the Milky Way’s black hole once every 7.6 years, claiming the record for the shortest orbital period.

Another star, S4714, is even more extreme. It doesn’t quite get as close to Sgr A* as S4711 but it’s traveling around the black hole at 8% the speed of light. At that speed, the star is moving about 15,000 miles (24,000 kilometers) every second, which would mean it could make one full lap of the Earth in just over 1.5 seconds.

The highly-eccentric orbits of the S-stars aren’t just cosmic curiosities either; the stars help to establish further evidence for Einstein’s general theory of relativity. The theory predicts how space, time and gravity interact and suggests huge, dense objects like black holes can warp space around them. Studying the S-stars, astronomers can see some of the motion predicted by Einstein’s theory. A team from the Max Planck Institute recently did so, when they studied the star S2 earlier this year and found it adhered strictly to Einstein’s theory.

The team believes improved data analysis could yield even further insight into the space around Sgr A* and they expect more stars on extremely tight orbits to be discovered in “the near future.” The Extremely Large Telescope, which is expected to become operational in 2025, will gather 13 times more light than any optical telescope operational today and should help locate a few more. Until then, S4714 gets to wear the crown.

When a massive star reaches the end of its life, it implodes. This releases stellar material into space, creating a fiery explosion known as a supernova. In turn, that material gets recycled to form new stars and planets.

While supernovas are important events in the evolution of stars and galaxies, the inner workings of these stellar explosions remain a mystery.

Meteorites — the rocky shards of comets or asteroids that fall to Earth — are formed from the material left over from the birth of the solar system. Therefore, these tiny pieces of space rock preserve the original chemical signatures of the stellar material released during supernovas.

Using meteorites, researchers from the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan investigated the role in the supernova process of particles called electron antineutrinos, which are released during the explosion, according to a statement.

Neutrinos are subatomic particles that have no electric charge and a mass so small it has never been detected. The antineutrino, an antimatter particle, is the counterpart of the neutrino. An electron antineutrino is a specific type of antineutrino.

“There are six neutrino species. Previous studies have shown that neutrino isotopes are predominantly produced by the five neutrino species other than the electron antineutrino,” Takehito Hayakawa, lead author of the study and a visiting professor at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, said in the statement. “By finding a neutrino-isotope synthesized predominantly by the electron antineutrino, we can estimate the temperatures of all six neutrino species, which are important for understanding the supernova explosion mechanism.”

To learn more about what happens during supernovas, the researchers measured the amount of Ru-98, an isotope of the element ruthenium, contained in meteorites. This, in turn, helped the researchers estimate how much of Ru-98’s progenitor, Tc-98 — a short-lived isotope of the element technetium — was present in the material from which the early solar system formed, according to the statement.

Neutrinos from dying stars interact with other particles in space to form technetium. The amount of Tc-98 is largely influenced by the temperature of the electron antineutrinos released in the supernova process, as well as the amount of time between the stellar explosion and the formation of the solar system, according to the statement.

Therefore, studying the Tc-98 concentration in meteorites sheds light on neutrino-induced reactions that occur during supernova explosions, the study said.

Published Sept. 4 in the journal Physical Review Letters, the study shows that the expected abundance of Tc-98 at the time that the solar system formed is not much lower than current detectable levels, suggesting that researchers may soon be able to precisely measure the substance and better estimate the time between the last supernova and the formation of the solar system.