"I was willing to bet that there was going to be a universe, and I hit the nail on the head." The other day we had Avram Davidson, which got me thinking of Calvino's Invisible Cities, but all the recent talk about black holes made me remember that Italo Calvino is at his most charming when he's playing with physics, math, and cosmology in Cosmicomics.
posted by vraxoin on Nov 20, 2002 - 15 comments

Black Holes Merge. Massive layoffs expected throughout galaxy. Analysts predict big payoffs for the economy, however. "A burst of gravitational waves that could warp the very fabric of space will go a long way towards increasing shareholding value," said one economist. Both black holes had recently suffered a dramatic drop in stock price, and were under the threat of hostile takeover from industry leader Black Hole 86184-B before the merger was announced, which took Wall Street pundits off guard. "Much to our surprise, we found that both were active black holes," Stefanie Komossa of the Max Planck Astro-Economics Institute in Germany, said in a statement. Proponents of big business greeted the announcement with pleasure: "This supports the idea that black holes can grow to enormous masses in the centres of galaxies by merging with other black holes."
posted by tweebiscuit on Nov 19, 2002 - 17 comments

Another massive celestial object, with a companion star in tow, has been discovered hurtling through the Milky Way. Unlike similar discoveries confirming the bow shock theory of stellar dynamics, this week's phenomenon is considerably older, as it's an aftereffect of the galactic core's formation. The French and Argentine astromoners making the discovery believe what they've witnessed may be a black hole, though theoretically, the collasped matter may be a gravistar.
posted by Smart Dalek on Nov 19, 2002 - 10 comments

Wot, no black holes? Those wacky boffins in science land have already had a pop at the Higg's boson, but now they're moving on to everybody's favourite theoretical singularity, with a new theory about what happens when a star kicks the astral bucket.
posted by stuporJIX on Jan 26, 2002 - 6 comments

Black holes blow as well as suck. It's amazing what we find out about the universe. Imagine what we don't know?
posted by crawdad on Jun 7, 2000 - 2 comments