Cold, Uncaring Universe News

It's a big empty void, but it's OURS

Not that it returns my affection.

A Very Questionable Headline

Tuorla Observatory News, 20th October 2006:

OJ continues to surprise

The binary black hole AGN, OJ287 continues to provide astronomers with surprises. Long term monitoring of OJ287's optical brightness now indicates that the system may be precessing very rapidly, setting a record for general relativistic precession of orbits.

Basically the article is a release about two supergiant black holes, including the largest on record, orbiting each other. Every twelve years, the one comes close enough to hit the disc of gas orbiting the bigger one, and blammo, huge explosion of radiation.

Interesting story.

Terrible headline.

Source: University of Turku

What the hell is the University of Turku, you ask?

Good question.

Source: Wikipedia

Giant Death Cloud of Antimatter
So there's a giant cloud of antimatter around our galactic core.

This I did not know.

It seems to be linked to certain giant star pairs, which may be somehow emitting it.

This is nifty. It runs into regular matter and gives off a lot of gamma rays.

This is, err, dangerous?

I love the universe. It has ten billion ways to kill you.

Source: NASA

This Hole Blows (Story Not Related to Courtney Love)
So there's a hole in the universe almost a billion light years wide devoid of matter. No stars, galaxies, even dark matter seems to be gone.

It's a mystery, but very cool.
Source: NASA

New Scientist from November has an extensive article about how the hole may in fact be the imprint of another universe entangled with our own, bleeding antigravity into ours, thus driving out the matter and making the hole.

Unfortunately, it's behind a pay-firewall on the web, so I can't link to the full article. Sorry.

I'll probably type up a bigger explanation along with some theories as to just when the Great Old Ones will eat us tomorrow.

Source: New Scientist

Mars Sucks and I Hate It
So Mars is going to miss that asteroid after all. It just had to go and ruin my fun.

Stupid red planet. We should show it what for. We have thousands of nukes and no place to dump them.

Source: Sky and Telescope