One-way trip into black hole takes 200,000 years

I find this quite interesting. It seems as each week goes by, science is closer and closer to having another major breakthrough. The next few years will no-doubt bring a huge revelation in the field of science and the organization and formation of the universe.

The one-way journey from the heart of a galaxy into the oblivion of a black hole probably takes about 200,000 years, astronomers said on Monday.

By tracking the death spiral of cosmic gas at the center of a galaxy called NGC1097, scientists figured that material moving at 110,000 miles an hour would still take eons to cross into a black hole.

Black holes are drains in space that have gravitational pull so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape. Huge ones are believed to lurk at the centers of many galaxies including the Milky Way, which contains the sun.

“It would take 200,000 years for gas to travel the last leg of its one-way journey,” Kambiz Fathi of Rochester Institute of Technology told reporters at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society.

No one has ever seen a black hole, but astronomers study the way matter and energy behave around them.

An international team led by Fathi studied the black hole at the middle of NGC1097, a behemoth with 100 million times the mass of the sun.

The team managed to observe behavior 10 times closer to the black hole than ever before, Fathi said, seeing clouds of material within 10 light-years of the galactic core, where the black hole is believed to reside.

Previous research has detected gas clouds from 100 to 1,000 light-years from the galaxy’s heart.

A light-year is about 6 trillion miles, the distance light travels in a year. The galaxy is about 47 million light-years away from Earth, relatively close in cosmic terms. Yahoo! News

Blue Skies, Sunshine

Lately I’ve been on a Masta Ace kick. I can’t get enough of his music. It’s probably because I’ve been listening to CunninLynguists’ A Piece of Strange a lot lately. APOS is 16 tracks that make up a story. Listening to the album from beginning until end, it’s an amazing story. The tracks hold their own if you just want to listen to some tracks too. You won’t feel you missed out on something. How is that related to Masta Ace? Well, Masta Ace has done albums like this in the past. The album Disposable Arts is the story of Ace getting out of prison and turning his life around by enrolling in school. This isn’t an ordinary school, it is a school where you learn to tag, dj, and even rap. There are some great skits featuring Ace’s roommate, MC Paul Barman. What makes the album so great is that it too tells a story and the tracks are also able to be played independently. The latest album by Ace, A Long Hot Summer tells the story of how Ace wound up in jail. It’s almost a prequel to Disposable Arts. The story involves Ace writing and preparing to go on tour. He brings along a neighborhood friend, Fats Belvedere, a local Italian sounding hustler with money making schemes. It turns out that Ace was pretty much in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong people, and the album discusses how he got caught up in it. It’s another fantastic album. More rappers should be creative and do these things with their music. This is the type of hip hop that should be on the airwaves. Sadly, it’s not. I suggest you all check out the albums mentioned in this post if you are looking for something different. And the first time you listen, really listen, and pay attention, as if you were watching a movie or reading a book. There is some great story telling there.

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St. Louis Post-Dispatch is Using WordPress

I was browsing StLToday.com and noticed a couple of things. First off, there is a new design. I haven’t been there in a while, so I’m not sure how fresh this new design is. It’s not bad, but I liked their old design better. What can I say, I love blue. The second thing I noticed, while browsing Gordo’s Tip Sheet, is that all their blogs are running WordPress. Check out their blogs. This is a wise decision. Their old blogs had long, crusty URLs, but now with WP they are short and sweet. I don’t know what their old system was like, but I’m sure it’s easier for the columnists as well. Good job St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

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Jesus ‘healed using cannabis’

Jesus was almost certainly a cannabis user and an early proponent of the medicinal properties of the drug, according to a study of scriptural texts published this month. The study suggests that Jesus and his disciples used the drug to carry out miraculous healings.

The anointing oil used by Jesus and his disciples contained an ingredient called kaneh-bosem which has since been identified as cannabis extract, according to an article by Chris Bennett in the drugs magazine, High Times, entitled Was Jesus a Stoner? The incense used by Jesus in ceremonies also contained a cannabis extract, suggests Mr Bennett, who quotes scholars to back his claims.

“There can be little doubt about a role for cannabis in Judaic religion,” Carl Ruck, professor of classical mythology at Boston University said. Read more

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Google Cube

There are rumors circulating about a Google computer with Google OS and possibly called Google Cube. The rumors that are flying say it’s going to be a Google linux system and that Google has been talking to Wal-Mart to sell the machines for a low, low price. What would it look like? Here is one possibility (purely for fun):
google cube