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Slowly Pulling Facts from Black Holes

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the cosmic-vacuum-cleaner dept.

lee1 writes "Astronomers have proven the existence of the event horizon, the 'point of no return' that surrounds black holes. An MIT and Harvard team said they showed its existence by looking for X-ray bursts from neutron stars and more compact objects thought to be black holes." Relatedly beuges writes "IOL is reporting that by tracking the death spiral of cosmic gas at the center of a galaxy called NGC1097, scientists figured that material moving at 177 000km an hour would still take eons to cross into a black hole. '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."

9 of 261 comments (clear)

  1. Slowly Pulling Facts from Black Holes? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    Not another story about SCO...

  2. Great! by Voltageaav · · Score: 5, Funny

    So even if God does answer my prayers and my boss gets sucked into a black hole, it'll take forever.

    --
    Someone save me from this sanity.
  3. Marketing "Facts" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Pulling facts out of black holes?

    I don't see what the big deal is. The marketing department of (insert company name here) seems to do this all the time.

    ~The Anadromous Cowherd

  4. Re:orbit? by HermanAB · · Score: 4, Funny

    Makes me think of this little ditty about high falutin English:

    "Father, I have spilt some butter. What shall I do?"

    "Rub it briskly with a woollen cloth my son. For friction generates heat which quickly volatizes the sterine matter."

    --
    Oh well, what the hell...
  5. If you could destroy a black hole... by Centurix · · Score: 2, Funny

    You'd be messing with the Phantom Zone, and we'd perish under the rule of the great General Zod!

    --
    Task Mangler
  6. It hurts less... by Black+Parrot · · Score: 2, Funny

    ...if you pull the facts out quickly.

    --
    Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
    1. Re:It hurts less... by pintomp3 · · Score: 3, Funny

      but then it's less fun. btw, the pull out method does not work.

  7. Too many jokes by JakeD409 · · Score: 2, Funny

    There are way too many jokes to make about reaching the "point of no return" while being in a "black hole" to choose just one.

  8. Re:It was never in orbit by Intron · · Score: 2, Funny

    Damn. I just bought that star from the International Star Registry, too.

    --
    Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.