Astrophysics (Index) | About |
A velocity kick (or just kick) is the substantial acceleration of an astronomical object giving it a substantial peculiar velocity, often the result of a supernova. A common use of the term is for the acceleration of a neutron star due to asymmetry in the core collapse supernova that produced it. This is called a neutron star kick (NS kick), or if it is a pulsar, a pulsar kick. A stellar-mass black hole may also show evidence of such a kick, an I presume the black hole must have formed from material which had already received the kick. All these are presumed to arise due to asymmetric blasts but the exact mechanisms are of research interest.
Such kicks are also presumed to be the cause of some free-floating planets due to interactions between planets within a planetary system, and of some hypervelocity stars due to interactions within a globular cluster. An object not in its expected location may be termed kicked out. Interactions between pairs of objects are relatively simple and limited, and sometimes substantial kicks result when a third object is involved. I believe some supermassive black hole's have been presumed to be kicked away from the galaxy center by a larger one, after a galaxy merger.