Mini-black hole is smallest ever but still strong

NASA scientists have identified the smallest black hole ever found — less than four times the mass of our sun and about the size of a large city.
But the mini-black hole, dubbed J1650, could still stretch a person into a “strand of spaghetti” with its pull, the researchers told a meeting in Los Angeles.

“This black hole is really pushing the limits. For many years astronomers have wanted to know the smallest possible size of a black hole, and this little guy is a big step toward answering that question,” Nikolai Shaposhnikov of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, said in a statement.

It would likely be stronger than bigger black holes found at the centers of galaxies. Shaposhnikov said if someone ventured too close to J1650, its gravity would “stretch your body into a strand of spaghetti.”

Like other black holes, it was formed by a star that ran out of fuel and shut down, collapsing due to its own gravity.

Shaposhnikov and his Goddard colleague Lev Titarchuk used NASA’s Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer satellite and a new method to estimate the size of the black hole, found in a system in the southern constellation Ara, in our own Milky Way Galaxy.

It measures the oscillation of hot gas piling up near the black hole as it sucks in matter, they told a meeting in Los Angeles of the American Astronomical Society High-Energy Astrophysics Division.

The new black hole has a mass of 3.8 Suns and would be about 15 miles across, they estimate. “This makes the black hole one of the smallest objects ever discovered outside our solar system,” Shaposhnikov said.

The smallest black hole previously identified was GRO 1655-40, with a mass of about 6.3 Suns.

“Amazingly, equations from Albert Einstein predict that a black hole with 3.8 times the mass of our Sun would be only 15 miles across — the size of a city,” NASA said in a statement.

A collapsing star that was much smaller than J1650 would likely form a neutron star and not a black hole, the researchers said. -yahoo

Unidentified object flies Canterbury skies

Teenager Andrew Wilkinson captured an apparently fiery object in the Canterbury sky on his digital camera last night.

Wilkinson, 17, photographed the object, at left, from his Halswell home at 7.27pm.

He said it was too slow to be a meteor or a plane, and wondered if it might be satellite debris in the western sky.

A handful of other observant Cantabrians also spotted the orange ribbon standing out brightly in the dusk.

“I got the camera and took a photo. It was moving extremely slowly, so I thought it might have been a plane for a minute. The front looked like a fireball.

“I didn’t hear any noise. It looks like it might have been extremely high up, given the speed it was moving,” he said.

Police southern communications shift supervisor Trevor Cross said he received one phone call about the phenomenon. A policeman at Oxford also saw it and thought it might be a vapour trail.

The superintendent of the University of Canterbury’s Mount John Observatory at Tekapo, Alan Gilmore , said his “immediate reaction” was it was a plane.

“The slowness would be due to the plane’s movement. I assume from the contrail’s angle that it is a plane heading for Australia,” Gilmore said. “The trail doesn’t look at all like a meteor or space-debris trail.” - stuff

BBC NEWS | Technology | Computers to merge with humans

from news.bbc.co.uk posted with vodpod

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Secret ‘dino bugs’ revealed

from news.bbc.co.uk posted with vodpod

Freaky fish found

Ring. Ring. I know what that fish is.

Everyone seems to have a theory about the identity of the unknown fish featured in a Page One story in Wednesday’s Standard-Examiner. It was found with thousands of other dead fish near Pioneer Park pond in Brigham City. The majority of feedback from the public is that it may be a snakehead fish.

Snakehead fish made headlines when they were discovered in a pond in Maryland. The state contained the species in the pond where it was found, but fishermen have caught others in the Potomac River in recent years.

Author Eric Jay Dolin wrote about the incident in a book, “Snakehead, A Fish Out of Water.” Dolin said it is possible that the fish found in Brigham City was a northern snakehead which is capable of living in very cold climates. The fish has been found in the U.S. as far north as Maine and they are now an established invasive species in Maryland.

Ben Nadolski, aquatic biologist for the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, said he spent Wednesday morning fielding phone calls from people who wanted to guess the species of fish and media outlets calling for more information.

The DWR said late Wednesday they have a different idea about the fish.

Aquatics biologist Matt McKell said a snakehead has a dorsal fin that differs from the specimen.

“The specimen is in pretty poor shape,” McKell said. “It doesn’t appear to me that it’s got that kind of configuration for the dorsal fin.”

After taking another look, McKell believes the remains are those of a lake trout. McKell said the prominent teeth seen in the carcass are normally covered by flesh and due to the decay appear larger than they would when the fish was alive.

The Standard-Examiner also received e-mails and phone calls with guesses as to the fish’s origin.

Clay Bass, of Eden, believes it looks like a dogfish or bowfin, which he once caught when he lived in the South.

“I can tell you the boat wasn’t big enough for the two of us. I cut my line rather than risk coming in contact with those teeth,” Bass wrote in an e-mail to the Standard-Examiner.

Drew Cushing, warm water sport fish and community fisheries coordinator for the DWR, said he has also received numerous phone calls. Cushing is “absolutely certain” it is not a snakehead.

“It doesn’t fit the mold,” Cushing said. “It definitely wasn’t a snakehead.”

Cushing believes it could be some sort of a decomposed trout species.

According to aquaticcommunity.com, the northern snakehead is from China and is “highly adapted to surviving in areas exposed to seasonal dry periods.”

The fish has the capability to live in water with very low oxygen content and can use its labyrinth organ to absorb oxygen directly from the air.

The fish also is capable of traveling across land, which matches the original description from Ogden angler Bernie Develin who said he thought the fish appeared to have crawled out of the water on its own. -standard

Crawling fish may be part of new family

A University of Washington professor says a recently discovered fish that crawls instead of swimming and has forward-looking eyes like humans could be part of an entirely unknown family of fishes.
The creature sighted in Indonesian waters off Ambon Island has tan- and peach-colored zebra-stripping. It uses its leglike pectoral fins to burrow into cracks and crevices of coral reefs in search of food.

UW professor Ted Pietsch says this relative of the anglerfish will have to undergo DNA scrutiny to verify that it is unique. But the world’s leading authority on anglerfish says he’s never seen anything like it.

Pietsch says they have probably escaped notice until now because they are so good at sliding into narrow crevices. - Yahoo

Malaysian Fisherman Reels in Shark with ‘Webbed Feet’

Has anyone ever seen a baby shark with webbed feet? A worker of the Malaysian Fisheries Development Board (LKIM) in Batu Maung, Penang, made this unusual find when she was given the 1.7kg fish by a fisherman at the jetty recently.

Mary Looi, 48, said she only realised the shark was different when she wanted to cook tomyam fish for lunch for her family.

“It was only when I was about to cut the shark the day after I received it that I found two webbed feet sticking out from the lower part of the body.

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“The shark is one-metre long,” she said.

Looi said she dared not cook the fish after consulting her husband Gooi Man Kaw, 57, who told her that according to Chinese belief, eating fish with unusual features could bring disaster or ill luck.

“Immediately, I returned the fish to the fisherman that night at about 10pm.

“He threw it back into the sea,” said Looi.

Looi, who has been working at LKIM for 10 years, said this was the first time she had stumbled upon such an unusual find.

When contacted, Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) Muka Head marine research station head Prof Dr Zulfigar Yasin said this is the first time he had heard of fish with legs found in the Malaysian waters.

“There is a possibility that the fish could have swum from other waters into Malaysian waters.

“As far as I am concerned, fish species with legs or bony fins can only be discovered in the waters of North Sulawesi in Indonesia or South Africa,” he said. - uwt

Priest ‘made £3m from fake exorcisms’

A senior priest in Florence is under investigation for fraud after allegedly amassing £3 million by performing fake exorcisms. Prosecutors said that Father Francesco Saverio Bazzoffi would “stage shows” at the House of the Sainted Archangels, an organisation he founded.

During the events, which regularly attracted crowds of over 400 people, a number of associates would “pretend to be possessed by demons” and Fr Bazzoffi would allegedly exorcise them using ancient and obscure rites.

He would then offer to “heal” members of the audience who were sick, and solicit donations to his organisation.

One witness told police: “During Mass, the priest spoke in Aramaic, and strange things happened. I do not know if it was group hysteria or our suggestibility, but I remember one old woman screaming in a man’s voice while five big guys held her down.”

Prosecutors, who have also put 13 of his associates under investigation, started monitoring Fr Bazzoffi in 2005. His house was raided last month, and several documents were seized that showed the priest had £3 million in his bank account.

Fr Bazzoffi, who heads the matrimony office of the diocese of Florence, was publicly cautioned against performing exorcisms last October by the Archbishop of the city, Cardinal Ennio Antonelli.

In a letter, the cardinal wrote: “I would like to make clear the following: any sort of special rite of benediction, such as the laying on of hands, is forbidden. Exorcisms are also prohibited.” Only priests authorised by the diocese are permitted to carry out exorcisms.

Fr Bazzoffi denies that he had “ever practised” exorcisms and admitted that he did not have a licence. “I have always only carried out blessings,” he said. He added that he “welcomed” the cardinal’s admonition, since “it showed that work like mine can trigger suspicion”.

He denied that he had ever “encouraged” sick people to believe he could heal them. “These accusations would make me laugh, if it was not such a serious thing.”

He added: “The House of the Sainted Archangels is not a registered business and does not have a bank account. So I opened one in my own name.

“All the money for our charitable works goes through it. It may seem like a lot, but it is made up of lots of small donations. Around 30,000 people come to us every year. The police should be able to see that the money always goes out to our projects in India and the Philippines.” -telegraph

All exorcisms are both fake and real. Fake because there are no demons, real because people’s false belief that demons possess them may really be removed by the theatrics.  Many people know that what they are doing is a hoax, but lacking ethics, they believe that if the end result is beneficial, it is okay to lie.

No benefit in drinking eight glasses of water a day, scientists say

The idea that drinking eight glasses of water a day is good for your health has been dismissed as a myth. Scientists say there is no evidence drinking large amounts of water is beneficial for the average healthy person, and do not even know how this widely held belief came about.

Specialists in kidney conditions in America reviewed research on claims eight 8oz glasses of water help flush toxins from the body, preventing weight gain and improving skin tone.

Dr Dan Negoianu and Dr Stanley Goldfarb, of the Renal, Electrolyte and Hypertension Division at the University of Pennsylvania, said no single study indicated average healthy people needed to drink this amount of water - a total of 3.3 pints - each day.

“Indeed, it is unclear where this recommendation came from,” they say in a review in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology.

The researchers did find some evidence that individuals in hot, dry climates, as well as athletes, need to increase the amount of water they drink. Studies have also shown that drinking lots of water helps the body to clear salt and urea.

But no studies have found any benefit to the organs of increased water intake.

Drs Negoianu and Goldfarb also investigated the theory that drinking more water makes you feel full and curbs appetite.

Proponents say this may help maintain a healthy weight and fight obesity, but the evidence for this claim remains inconclusive, states the review.

No carefully designed clinical trials have measured the effects of water intake on weight maintenance.

Headaches also are often attributed to water deprivation, but there is little data to back this up, claim the scientists.

Only one small trial has addressed this question, and while trial participants who increased their water intake experienced fewer headaches than those who did not, the results were not statistically significant.

In addition, water has been touted as an elixir for improved skin tone.

The authors said that while dehydration can decrease skin stiffness, no studies have shown any clinical benefit to skin tone as a result of increased water intake.

The literature review by Drs Negoianu and Goldfarb reveals there is no clear evidence of benefit from increasing water intake. On the other hand, no clear evidence exists of a lack of benefit. “There is simply a lack of evidence in general,” they explain.

On average, the body uses between 1.7 and 2.6 pints (one-1.5 litres) of water daily and more in high temperatures or when exercising.

This is replaced through drinks but a large amount is also contained in food, so it is not necessary to drink an equivalent amount to replace water levels.

Too much water can affect the balance of salts in the body causing “water intoxication”, which can be fatal. -telegraph

See: Dihydrogen Monoxide

Flying Spaghetti Monster takes up residence at county courthouse

Among the county’s historic directional sign post, farm equipment and gazebo stand several monuments and expressions of free speech. The displays include an Iraq and Afghanistan Soldier’s Memorial, Statue of Liberty, chainsaw-carved monkeys and bears, Jesus carrying a cross, and the most recent display added — a Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Several onlookers and tourists have stopped to take pictures of the sculptures.

The Flying Spaghetti Monster is the latest display to a slew of others that have been erected on the lawn over the past year. Several marches and demonstrations have also taken place on the courthouse grounds.

A free speech zone?

Cumberland County Buildings and Grounds Committee Chaiman Harry Sabine explained the committee has deferred all decisions on displays and handling of the courthouse grounds to County Mayor Brock Hill.

“I think at some point this may become ridiculous. I’m not so sure if now is the point or not. My concern is about what could or may go up there … I mean the committee could ultimately decide to remove all displays, but at this point we haven’t. I think a time limit on the displays may need to be enacted, though. I do think that too many of these displays tend to detract from the beauty of our courthouse lawn. I think our courthouse lawn is among the prettiest in the state. I hate to see that sacrificed,” 1st District Commissioner Harry Sabine said.

On her Web site, www.itlovesyou.blogspot.com, a blog explaining the Flying Spaghetti Monster, Crossville artist Ariel Safdie states, “We are lucky enough to live in a country that allows us, its citizens, the freedom of speech. I have chosen to put up a statue of the Flying Spaghetti Monster to represent the discourse between people of all different beliefs. The many faiths, ethnicities and backgrounds of Cumberland County’s residents make our community a stronger richer place. I respect and am proud that on the people’s lawn, the county courthouse, all of these diverse beliefs can come together in a positive dialogue. Here, we are all able to share the issues close to our hearts whether it is through a memorial to the soldiers killed fighting for our country, the Statue of Liberty honoring our nations welcoming promise to all, a group’s fight to stop homelessness, or powerful symbols of faith. I greatly treasure this open forum between everyone in the community.”

Although it may seem silly to some, Safdie adds, “The Flying Spaghetti Monster is a pile of noodles and meatballs, but it is meant to open up discussion and provoke thought. Being able to put up a statue is a celebration of our freedom as Americans; a freedom to be different, to express those differences, and to do it amongst neighbors — even if it is in a noodley way.” -crossville