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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. Hypervelocity stars are also described as having received kicks and high-velocity stars as well; I'm not sure of the mechanism in these cases: encounters of a third star with a binary star are also capable of ejecting one of them with some velocity.