Alien visitor from afar.

Even the most unassuming neighbor can hide a giant secret. New calculations of the orbit of a dim, low-mass star just 300 light-years from the solar system suggest the body may be a runaway from another galaxy. After analyzing the speed and direction of motion of the tiny star, Adam Burgasser of MIT and colleagues reported June 9 that the object's orbit indicates that it may have originated from a galaxy beyond the Milky Way. They propose that the star, dubbed 2MASS 1227-0447, may have come from a small galaxy that ventured close enough to the Milky Way to be ripped apart by gravitational forces.