Most news outlets were buzzing at an announcement based on findings from the Kepler Space Telescope …
Kepler 22-b is about 2.4 times the size of Earth, with a temperature of around 72 degrees fahrenheit. Astronomers say it's the closest confirmed planet to one like ours.
Although the planet is in the "habitable zone" — it's 15% closer to its star than the Earth is to the sun — astronomers haven't yet determined whether it's made of rock, gas or liquid.
Kepler 22-b is one of 2,236 "candidate" planets discovered by the Kepler space telescope, but it's the first to be independently confirmed as Earth-like. 207 other candidate planets are roughly Earth-sized.
Here's the thing about that: so? One planet may be habitable, if they can one day figure out whether or not it's solid of gaseous. That's not news. You want some freaking news? Check this out:
Scientists have found the biggest black holes known to exist – each one 10 billion times the size of our sun.
A team led by astronomers at the University of California, Berkeley, discovered the two gigantic black holes in clusters of elliptical galaxies more than 300 million light years away. That's relatively close on the galactic scale.
"They are monstrous," Berkeley astrophysicist Chung-Pei Ma told reporters. "We did not expect to find such massive black holes because they are more massive than indicated by their galaxy properties. They're kind of extraordinary."
The previous black hole record-holder is as large as 6 billion suns.
Don’t like ads? Become a supporter and enjoy The Good Men Project ad freeIn research released Monday by the journal Nature, the scientists suggest these black holes may be the leftovers of quasars that crammed the early universe. They are similar in mass to young quasars, they said, and have been well hidden until now.
The scientists used ground-based telescopes as well as the Hubble Space Telescope and Texas supercomputers, observing stars near the black holes and measuring the stellar velocities to uncover these vast, invisible regions.
Black holes. Billions of times bigger than the freaking sun, yo. Possibly left over from the beginning of the universe. That's game over. Drop the mic, exit stage left. Wow.
[Source: The Guardian, TDW Geek]