This is a computer model of a supermassive black hole 2.7-billion light years away sucking the gas off a red giant, based on the recent observations of such an event by astronomers using the Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) and Pan-STARRS telescope in Hawaii. Why they couldn’t capture ACTUAL video is beyond me, but I suspect it has something to with somebody forgetting to push record.

Astronomers say supermassive black holes rip apart stars very rarely, maybe just once every 10,000 years per galaxy.
“This likely happened when the star went through the red giant phase, where it expanded to 100 times its original radius,” Gezari said. “When it puffed up like that, it became vulnerable to the gravitational tidal forces of the black hole, and it would have been very easy to strip off the tenuous hydrogen envelope.

“However, the star then had to approach much closer, 100 times closer in, before it was completely disrupted by the black hole. We think it approached all the way in to one-third of an astronomical unit, similar to the orbit of Mercury [about one-third the distance between the Earth and sun]. We then saw the helium gas streaming into the black hole.”

Not to brag or anything, but I’ve swallowed stars before. I’ve also been known to eat my fair share of crescent moons. “Lucky Charms marshmallows don’t count.” THE HELL THEY DON’T.

Source: Geekologie.

Actor Robert Hegyes, one of the stars of the 70s sitcom “Welcome Back Kotter”died today of an apparent heart attack.

Hegyes was best known for his role as the Puerto Rican-Jew on that show — Juan Luis Pedro Phillipo de Huevos Epstein. Epstein for short.

Hegyes reunited with John Travolta and the rest of the Sweathogs last year to accept TV Land’s 35th Anniversary Award.

He also co-starred on the hit drama, “Cagney and Lacey.”

Hegyes was in his New Jersey home this morning when he suffered the heart attack. He died at JFK Medical Center in Edison, NJ. He was 60 years old.

Retired NBA star Yao Ming has added another line to his post-basketball resume — politician — becoming a member of an advisory body to Shanghai’s legislature.

Since the 31-year-old Yao announced last July that injuries had ended his career with the Houston Rockets, he has become a university student and set up a wine business to go with owning a professional basketball team in China.

Photos in official media on Monday showed Yao at the weekend closing ceremony for the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference Shanghai Committee.

“There are about 142 members in the group, and Yao is the youngest,” Kong Rong, who works in the service office of committee, was quoted as saying by the China Daily.

The advisory committee does not have any real power, but the newspaper said Yao is supposed to attend regular meetings, and can make suggestions for the advisory body and government departments.

Yao was quoted as saying “raising proposals is very serious business, and I do not want to be hasty.”

It is common for sports figures to move into politics in China. Olympic gold medal hurdler Liu Xiang is a member of both the Shanghai and national political advisory bodies.

Yao, one of the most popular celebrities in China from his eight seasons in the NBA, is a student at Jiaotong University, one of the top universities in his hometown Shanghai.

In November, he released the first-ever bottles of his new Yao Ming-branded wine, a 2009 Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon currently available only in mainland China, where the market for imported wines has boomed over the past decade.

Source: The Daily Caller.

Two planets orbiting a star 950 light-years from Earth are the smallest, most Earth-size alien worlds known, astronomers announced Tues., Dec. 20. One of the planets is actually smaller than Earth, scientists say.

These planets, while roughly the size of our planet Earth, are circling very close to their star, giving them fiery temperatures that are most likely too hot to support life, researchers said. The discovery, however, brings scientists one step closer to finding a true twin of Earth that may be habitable.

“We’ve crossed a threshold: For the first time, we’ve been able to detect planets smaller than the Earth around another star,” lead researcher François Fressin of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass., told SPACE.com. “We proved that Earth-size planets exist around other stars like the sun, and most importantly, we proved that humanity is able to detect them. It’s the beginning of an era.”

To discover the new planets, Fressin and his colleagues used NASA’s Kepler space telescope, which noticed the tiny dips in the parent star’s brightness when the planets passed in front of it, blocking some of its light (this is called the transit method). The researchers then used ground-based observatories to confirm that the planets actually exist by measuring minute wobbles in the star’s position caused by gravitational tugs from its planets.

“These two new planets are the first genuinely Earth-sized worlds that have been found orbiting a sunlike star,” University of California, Santa Cruz astronomer Greg Laughlin, who was not involved in the new study, said in an email to SPACE.com. “For the past two decades, it has been clear that astronomers would eventually reach this goal, and so it’s fantastic to learn that the detection has now been achieved.” [Gallery: Smallest Alien Planets Ever Seen]

Chances for life

The two Earth-size planets are among five alien worlds orbiting a star called Kepler-20 that is of the same class (G-type) as our sun, and is slightly cooler.

Two of the star system’s planets, Kepler-20e and Kepler-20f, are 0.87 times and 1.03 times the width of Earth, respectively, making them the smallest exoplanets yet known. They also appear to be rocky, and have masses less than 1.7 and 3 times Earth’s mass, respectively.

Kepler-20e makes a circle around its star once every 6.1 days at a distance of 4.7 million miles (7.6 million kilometers) — almost 20 times closer than Earth, which orbits the sun at around 93 million miles (150 million km).

CONTINUED at Fox News.

*Written by Rob Rimes.

The Douche a.k.a. The Donald thinks he’s the hottest shit on the planet and he thinks that people actually give a fuck what he thinks about the 2012 presidential race. Actually, some people do care but those people are clueless dolts who follow around and obsess over celebrities as if they are somehow “experts” on everything. Fuck Trump. Most of us are laughing at this guy and it’s not because he has a dead possum on his head or the fact that he looks like he’s shitting his pants whenever he talks.

You see, his ego has once again got the best of him and subsequently backfired, which has those of us that actually understand the political process gleefully pleased. This sycophant to himself recently got together with Newsmax, a magazine that has no shred of dignity apparently, and decided to put together their own GOP primary debate. Not only has this reality star cockpuppet given us another one of these shit shows amidst a sea of already too many debates but he also propped himself up as the moderator of the upcoming debate, as if he is some sort of political genius that thinks he knows what the hell he is talking about. He knows jack shit, in fact I exposed this stupid bastard’s lack of political intelligence in my article “Trump the Chump“.

Truth be told, Trump is a lost piece of shit that has horrible ideas on running this country. Yet the conservative wing of the mainstream media pimps him out like some sort of politico aficionado genius! Thank you Fox News for giving this egomaniacal fucksack more airtime than he deserves and thanks for continuing to shove him down our throats, even though he has said several times that he would consider running against the GOP in the election, which goes against your agenda of defeating Obama in every way. I’d hate to shit on easy targets, actually I love it, but the big three: O’Reilly, Hannity and Van Susteren have been giving this guy just as much time, if not more, than most of the candidates who are actually running.

For those of you that are on this moron’s dick that are pissed off at my attack on Trump’s intelligence, let me just throw down the fucking trump card right here, pun certainly intended. This guy’s biggest issue, to draw attention to himself, was the whole fiasco of trying to prove that President Obama wasn’t born in America and therefore isn’t an American citizen, which means that he can’t be president. This alone shows how much of a fucking idiot this cumstain is, as well as anyone else buying into this ridiculous sham. The fact of the matter is, Obama’s mother Stanley Ann Dunham was an American citizen, and whether or not Barack was born on U.S. soil or not makes no difference. By default he IS an American citizen. Leave it to this self-promoting ass clown to overlook that very common and well-known fact and leave it to those who are dumb enough to applaud him to continue to lobby for this guy to be our future dictator. The fact of the matter is that anything involving Trump is a circus, yet Trump is nowhere near as fucking cool as actual carnies. He’s just the ringmaster over a sea of donkey shit.

As far as the debate goes, it is, as Jon Huntsman described it, “entertainment politics”. What’s wrong with that? Well, the office of the president isn’t a joke, it’s a serious matter and to taint the class, dignity and honor of the office by subjecting those vying for the job to take part in a third-rate debate on a fourth-rate cable network hosted by a celebrity means that we treat the position on the same level that we treat Flavor Flav, Snooki, Kim Kardashian, Heidi Montag, Hulk Hogan, Kate Gosselin and the Playboy bitches who love jocking for dinosaur cock. What’s next, VH1 rounding up the candidates and putting them in another season of “Charm School”? Do we really need a debate hosted by the guy who can’t stop Meat Loaf and Gary Busey from murdering each other over fucking pizza! Yep, this is what America has come to. We demand everyone else to respect us and to respect our president but then we turn around and want candidates for that very job to parade themselves around just so some dick can get a fatter contract to produce future seasons of his trash television show. If you can’t see why and how this is a joke, you are a part of the problem.

At least most of the candidates are smart enough and respectful enough to not partake in this one man show. Then again, there are two who are jumping on this shit train: Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum. I bet Herman Cain would be a part of it as well as he loves kissing Trump’s ass and he shadows Gingrich everywhere he goes because he is secretly hoping to be his running mate. We all benefitted from Cain being a quitter when shit got real.

Now with Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum being the only people involved in this debate, there really is no reason to even have it. First of all, Rick Santorum may be the worst candidate I’ve ever seen since I started paying attention and Newt Gingrich just wants to jump on every debate possible because he’s good at them and I have a strong feeling that he is the man that Trump is going to endorse. That is, if Trump doesn’t decide to just run as an independent and fuck the whole race up. If Trump did, that would just show that he really doesn’t care about the GOP or actually defeating Obama and he is only out for himself. Then again, it doesn’t take a genius to know that Trump is just in this for himself, not America. Trump doesn’t care about any of us; he just cares about the money that too many of you give him.

Ron Paul and Jon Huntsman were the first to pass on Trump’s invitation and Trump, as well as Fox News, immediately responded irately and verbally insulted both candidates for not seizing the opportunity he was providing. Nope, sorry, Paul and Huntsman just respect the highest office in the land a lot more than any of those people do. The next to jump on the bandwagon were Rick Perry, Mitt Romney and Michele Bachmann. I think Perry just knows that he sucks at debates and wants to sit one out and really, I don’t blame him. I believe that Mitt, regardless of all his faults, has enough brain power and respect for the office not to do the Dance of the Dickheads with Trump, even though Mitt’s hair next to Trump’s would look like a golden castle next to a pile of mangy dog carcasses. From what I understand, Bachmann didn’t accept her invitation because it takes place two days after Christmas and she’ll probably still be sitting by the tree watching her 2,961 foster kids open their presents.

So if this is really just going to be Newt versus Scrotum boy, why don’t the two of them just do a Lincoln-Douglas style debate? Kick Trump to the curb and let the two candidates go at it. It would be a better debate if that were the case but Trump’s ego won’t allow him to not be in the spotlight. Ten dollars says Trump has more time on-screen than the two candidates combined. I bet the debate rules are that Trump can ask a five minute question but the candidates will only be given ten seconds to answer. At the end of the debate I bet Trump picks the winner by pointing to the loser and saying, “Ya Fired!”

To steal a talking point from comedy legend Lewis Black, are we really going to take a guy seriously who bankrupted a casino?! A casino, which is a place where the house always wins?! Yes this guy has built an empire but he has done it through multiple bankruptcies and through a shit load of evil deeds brought forth through crony capitalism. Trump is a part of the establishment problem and he strangles everything he touches. He even advocates going into every country we’re indifferent with, conquering them and taking their resources. Needless to say, that’s all he knows how to do. The big difference is, foreign policy isn’t corporate greed policy. You can crush companies because they don’t have bombs. Crush a few countries and see what happens. Philosophically, Trump is a terrorist.

Realistically, there is absolutely no way anyone can take this debate seriously. I mean, it is a joke and everyone buying into it might as well just crack an egg over their own head. Hey, maybe that how Trump does his hair in the morning! America deserves better than this, especially right now. Shame on Fox News and anyone else who is promoting this event like it is something serious. Megashame on Trump for once again putting himself before the struggle and plight of the American people who are currently suffering.

Don’t get it twisted people, this isn’t just some other opportunity for these candidates, it’s an opportunity for Donald Trump at the expense of all of us and all the great men who have sat in the Oval Office. If you aren’t disgusted by this charade, then you yourself are a disgusting person who deserves to be exploited and victimized by the very bastards and tyrants that you worship.

My Two Cents: Yep.. she’s learning hard lessons. End Two Cents.

*Taken from Fox News.

Talk about much ado about nothing.

Lindsay Lohan was released from a Los Angeles County jail just hours after she turned herself in to serve a 30-day sentence for violating probation.

Deputy Tony Moore said Lohan was released from the Century Regional Detention facility in Lynwood early Monday morning, less than five hours after she reported to jail.

The 25-year-old “Mean Girls” star was booked into the jail at 8:50 p.m. News crews staking out the jail and her Venice home said she made it back home by 2 a.m.

CONTINUED..

*Taken from the Telegraph.

Actress Scarlett Johansson has reportedly become the latest celebrity to fall victim to apparent leaked nude photos from her mobile phone, which appeared on a website on Wednesday.

*Taken from Prison Planet. Written by Paul Joseph Watson.

Highlighting how the Department of Homeland Security has turned its attention to white middle class Americans as the primary terror threat in a series of recent PSA’s, actor Chuck Norris warns that the federal government is ignoring Al-Qaeda Muslims while shifting its strategy to target anti-big government citizen activists.

In a piece for TownHall.com entitled, Feds Still Enable Terrorists 10 Years After 9/11, Norris writes how, “Terrorism has been tempered and transformed ever since 2009, when President Barack Obama took office.”

“Alex Jones’ Infowars.com recently documented several examples of how the feds have “dispensed with all pretense of the war on terror being focused on Al-Qaeda Muslims,” writes the Walker, Texas Ranger star, making reference to our coverage of the DHS “See Something, Say Something” snitch campaign, which has been launched nationwide on the back of racially-motivated public service announcements which overwhelmingly portray white middle class Americans as the most likely terrorists.

CONTINUED..

*Taken from Reuters.

Astronomers have spotted an exotic planet that seems to be made of diamond racing around a tiny star in our galactic backyard.

The new planet is far denser than any other known so far and consists largely of carbon. Because it is so dense, scientists calculate the carbon must be crystalline, so a large part of this strange world will effectively be diamond.

“The evolutionary history and amazing density of the planet all suggest it is comprised of carbon — i.e. a massive diamond orbiting a neutron star every two hours in an orbit so tight it would fit inside our own Sun,” said Matthew Bailes of Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne.

CONTINUED..