Fastest star orbiting Sagittarius A* reaches 8% light speed, revealing black hole secrets

At the heart of our galaxy, a star races around the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A* at eight percent the speed of light — the fastest stellar motion ever recorded in the Milky Way. This discovery is less about breaking a cosmic speed record and more about what that velocity reveals: for the first time, astronomers hold a natural instrument precise enough to measure how fast the black hole itself is spinning. In the long human effort to understand the most extreme corners of the universe, this star's path through warped spacetime may be one of the most consequential clues nature has ever