New Black Hole, potentially closest to the Earth so far

 "They’ve found plenty of big and medium-size ones over the years—including a supermassive monster at the heart of our galaxy. But until recently, they’ve seen no signs of small ones, and that’s presented a long-standing mystery in astrophysics.

Now, astronomers have discovered a black hole with just three times the mass of the sun, making it one of the smallest found to date—and it happens to be the closest known black hole, at just 1,500 light-years from Earth.      

The discovery “implies that there are many more [small black holes] that we might find if we increased the volume of space that we searched,” says Tharindu Jayasinghe, an astronomer at Ohio State University and lead author of a new paper detailing the discovery in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. The finding “should create a push to find these systems.”

Jayasinghe and his colleagues have dubbed the object the “unicorn,” in part because it is unique, and in part because it was found in the constellation Monoceros, named by ancient astronomers after the Greek word for unicorn. By studying this unicorn and other objects like it, researchers hope to get a clearer picture of what happens to stars in the final moments of their lives and why some of them collapse to become black holes while others leave behind dense stellar husks called neutron stars."

Source: National Geographic

 

The Return Of The 'Blue' Calamintha Bee

 As soon as the blue calamintha bee arrived on the scene, scientists worried it might be gone for good.

The indigo insect was last spotted in central Florida in 2016, five years after it was first identified. But this spring, just as Americans began to hunker down because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the rare blue bees, known scientifically as Osmia calaminthae, were rediscovered in the same region foraging on Ashe's calamint, a dainty violet flower that blooms in certain scrub habitats.

Chase Kimmel of the Florida Museum of Natural History confirmed the bees’ survival in March. At first, he couldn’t believe his own eyes. “It was a great feeling; those first few nights were hard to sleep due to the anxiousness and excitement,” he says. “The first few times I found the bee I couldn’t help [but] constantly question my own eyes and judgment on the diagnostic characteristics of the bee. I needed to look multiple times at the photos to confirm their identity.”

In all, Kimmel and colleagues documented just 17 rare bees and never more than three at any one time. To find these few, and record them for potential legal protections, Kimmel ventured to different sites across the Lake Wales Sand Ridge, a 150-mile long region along the dirt roads of central Florida marked by sprawling citrus groves and Bok’s Singing Tower, a 205-foot iridescent neo-Gothic structure. It’s a place where the jasmine-like scent of orange blossoms hangs thick in the air.

“The Lake Wales Ridge is a pretty specialized environment composed of unique scrub habitat that is limited in geographic extent,” Kimmel says. The flower that hosts the bee is restricted to a few of these isolated scrub pockets, predominantly along the ridge, Kimmel says, meaning the bee has probably always been restricted to a small area.

The Mandalorian, Sarlacc and Boba Fett

 In the book, 'Tales of the Bounty Hunters' Boba uses grenades to blast a hole in the side of the Sarlacc, afterwards, the bounty hunter Dengar found him in the desert and nursed him back to health.

If Dengar (in a future episode) rescued Boba in the past in the Mandolorian, that will tell us something about current canon, because Dendar helps Boba back to health in the book, or not.

Like Kierkegaard taught us, everything is an internal conundrum of the unknown -- with the Sarlacc, doubly so.

"In a wild and battle-scarred galaxy, assassins, pirates, smugglers, and cutthroats of every description roam at will, fearing only the professional bounty hunters-amoral adventurers who track down the scum of the universe...for a fee. When Darth Vader seeks to strike at the heart of the Rebellion by targeting Han Solo and the Millennium Falcon, he calls upon six of the most successful-and feared-hunters, including the merciless Boba Fett. They all have two things in common: lust for profit and contempt for life."

Epic Games has defied the App Store Monopoly #FreeFortnite

Epic Games has defied the App Store Monopoly. In retaliation, Apple is blocking Fortnite from a billion devices. 

"Epic Games has premiered a new short film called Nineteen Eighty-Fortnite that runs less than a minute long and says that it has 'defied the App Store monopoly.' The video was showcased in Fortnite's Party Royale mode shortly after Epic Games sued Apple."

The 'Dark Knight' Rises

Trump commutes prison sentence of longtime adviser Roger Stone

Stone was sentenced to three years and four months in prison after being found guilty on seven felony charges brought by Special Counsel Robert Mueller amid the Russian collusion (self-incrimination witch hunt) investigation.

Welcome to Bizarro World 2020!

Bizarro World, Week of  July, 1st

Neo Noir photography: Voices from Beyond Vol. #1

"For everything known, therein lies the conundrum of the unknown." - SPC

Mysterious History: The long lost Pelasgians

The name 'Pelasgians' was used by some ancient writers to refer to populations that were either the ancestors of the Greeks or preceded the Greeks in Greece.

Strabo dedicates a section of his Geography to the Pelasgians, relating both his own opinions and those of prior writers. Of his own opinions he says:

"As for the Pelasgi, almost all agree, in the first place, that some ancient tribe of that name spread throughout the whole of Greece, and particularly among the Aeolians of Thessaly."

He defines Pelasgian Argos as being "between the outlets of the Peneus River and Thermopylae as far as the mountainous country of Pindus" and states that it took its name from Pelasgian rule. He includes also the tribes of Epirus as Pelasgians.. Lesbos is named Pelasgian. Caere was settled by Pelasgians from Thessaly, who called it by its former name, "Agylla". Pelasgians also settled around the mouth of the Tiber River in Italy at Pyrgi and a few other settlements under a king, Maleos.

1100 lbs Dinosaur Bone Unearthed in France ...

Paleontologists have unearthed a 140-million-year-old dinosaur bone, 6.5 feet in length, weighing 1,100 pounds in France. The thigh bone was discovered in Charente, an area that dates back 140 million years and has been a treasure trove for archaeologists in the past.



“This is a major discovery,” Ronan Allain, a paleontologist at the National History Museum of Paris said in an interview with Reuters. “I was especially amazed by the state of preservation of that femur.”

Hidden Wonders in Georgia: Rock garden in Calhoun

Calhoun Rock garden

Location: F278+HC Calhoun, Georgia

This mysterious little wonder is a rock garden tucked behind the Calhoun Seventh Day Adventist church in Calhoun, Georgia. It is full of miniature creations of iconic towns, castles, cathedrals, bridges, and even the Coliseum. Home to more than 50 diminutive structures, the garden’s miniature replicas are crafted from tiny stones.