black holes in possible action

From io9: What Would a Black Hole Really Look Like?

io9 is a fun science fiction blog that's especially awesome because it also talks about science and how reality and fiction collide. In this post, Annalee talks about science art and illustration of black holes. There are a couple really sweet videos. Can't go wrong with the collision of two black holes!

indecent singularities

From Scientific American: Do Naked Singularities Break the Rules of Physics?

In this article, Dr. Pankaj Joshi at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai discusses the possibility of naked singularities. (I know that sounds a little naughty, but bear with me, because it actually is thrilling in its own way.) Naked singularities are basically black holes, without an event horizon. So, there would be a point of infinity density without the same effect on gravity; there would not be the same "point of no return" as there is with black holes. In addition, if naked singularities do exist, it would be possible for them to be observed directly. Theoretical models seem to show that with a certain inhomogeneity of density in a star, this type of singularity could be formed.

what came first?

From BBC News: Black holes 'preceded galaxies'

It was unclear whether black holes came first, helping create galaxies by pulling matter towards them, or whether they arose in already formed galaxies.

"It looks like the black holes came first," said Dr Chris Carilli, from the US National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Socorro, New Mexico, who took part in the study. "The evidence is piling up."

This is pretty interesting. The infancy of the universe is a mysterious time. I guess this makes sense, though. The universe was much smaller at around 1 billion years old. Maybe those metal-poor stars back then were the same way today's metal-rich stars are: lots of different sizes and masses, and some of them had to become black holes and then pull matter and stars to themselves as the universe expanded.

milky way super cute black hole

From BBC News: Black hole found in Milky Way

Kickass! They found our black hole. Apparently it's 4 million times heavier than the Sun and 27,000 light years away. I wanted to calculate the mass, but the mass of the sun has thirty zeros and I can't deal with that. Instead, I'll compare it to the mass of the Sun as compared to the mass of the Earth. The Sun has the mass of 332,946 Earths, so our black hole is... 1,331,784,000,000 Earths. I think that's right.

What should we call it? Milky Way Black Hole is pretty long. I was thinking "the Milky Hole," but I realized that just sounded really dirty.