NASA's latest stargazing has revealed that 3C321, a system that has two galaxies revolving around each other, is currently being blasted by a nearby black hole. This never-before-seen event could have devastating effects on nearby planets, prompting NASA to take a close look. Check full articles for their findings.

The Earth is constantly bombarded by cosmic rays from our galaxy. However, a type of cosmic ray with ultra-high energies was discovered 95 years ago. Scientists didn't know where these cosmic rays came from because particles outside the galaxy can't travel far enough to hit Earth. Now they believe that the cosmic rays come from energy that escaped from a black hole.

Read more in the full article and find out if the Silver Surfer has anything to do with it.

With no more than three weeks after being claimed the largest black hole in history, the Messier 33 black hole (M33 X-7) and its accompanying star is belittled by a much larger contender. The new black hole is at least 24 times the mass of the Sun (compared with M33 X-7's 16-fold mass) and resides in galaxy IC 10, 1.8 million light years away from Earth.

Discovered by a team led by Andrea Prestwich of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the "stellar-mass" black hole (stellar-mass meaning the black hole comes in sizes of stars) may even have as much as 33 times a typical solar mass. That usually equates to impressive (and powerful) gravitational pull.

Galaxy IC 10 was observed as far as a year ago, and it was found that the black hole took in much of its accompanying star's gases. The material would be lost to this universe, but before it did, the gases heated up and emitted X-rays that were observable from Earth.

"We now know that black holes that form from dying stars can be much larger than we had realized," said Prestwich. She later added that there's a possibility that even more stellar-mass black holes exist in other galaxies which formed during the Milky Way's early days. This new find will be published in an unnamed paper on November 1.

Imagine a star venturing a little too close to a black hole's event horizon and getting caught in an inescapable death trap. What do you see? Most of us would probably think of the star spiraling its hydrogen and helium into the abyss of space, but scientists say that it might be more violent than that.

According to astronomers in the Observatoire de Paris, violent explosions resulting from immense gravitational turbulence could happen when a star is drawn in, making way from some truly astounding stellar fireworks.

While some theorists have argued that the differing pulls in the gravitational field of a black hole may flatten a star's material like a pancake, this may not be entirely true. Some scientists suggest that while the pancake stage may happen, there are definitely a lot of indications that say that explosions will eventually rip the star apart from within.

What results after the gravity tears the pancake apart is a mass of glowing matter falling into the vortex never to escape again. NASA's GALEX spacecraft may have already seen such an event which was originally suspected to be a supernova. What it actually saw might have been an invisible black hole which is feeding on a star and blew it up in the process.

Some experts, however, find these theories and observations inconclusive. Supernova specialist Chris Fryer of the Los Alamos National Observatory says that  simulating deaths of celestial bodies is hard work. The full grasp of how it happens is not at hand at this time, making for a puzzle with plenty of missing pieces.

It's not likely at this point in time, but if you ever get pulled into the immense gravitational influence of a black hole, there's really nothing to save you. Your spacecraft is sucked in and plummets to certain doom towards the central singularity of the celestial behemoth. Some scientists say that you may actually be able to travel back in time if you survive, but chances are, you won't.

The most likely scenario is a terrified astronaut experiencing one of the most grotesque and painful deaths possible: Spaghettification. Essentially, what happens is your body gets stretched thin before tremendous gravity shreds you into space dust. But that's after your organs fail after the horrific stress that they experience because of the gargantuan forces.

Fortunately, Australian astronomers Geraint Lewis and Juliana Kwan have found a way to lengthen your living time if you ever get in this predicament. They say that instead of struggling in futile fashion to break free, you're actually better off accelerating for some time and switching your thrusters off to prolong the fall to death. Kwan explains:

Consider a race to the centre between a free faller and a rocketeer. Suppose they cross the event horizon together holding hands. As they cross, they start identical stop watches. One falls inwards, while the other accelerates towards the centre for a little, then swings their rocket round and decelerates such that the free faller and the rocketeer meet and clasp hands again just before hitting the singularity. A check on their stop watches would reveal that the free faller would experience the most personal time in the trip.

In part, the old school of thought that black holes are like quick sands is correct. The more you struggle, the faster you cross to the afterlife. However, that's only half correct, according to this new theory. What actually must be done is to find the optimum speed and coast along like it was a Sunday afternoon. Kwan explains that the theory of relativity comes into play even when the laws of physics are bent in the oddest corners of space.

Be warned, though, that this trick will only work in a supermassive black hole. The other type, the celestial black hole, is smaller and less forgiving. You'll be dead in a fraction of a second in the much smaller abyss. The experience should be almost painless, but you won't have the time to say your prayers.

Physicists in Switzerland are inching closer and closer to bringing the most feared space monster to Earth, but don't worry, they'll be making harmless, microscopic versions of the fiend just so we can understand the universe better.

Using the Light Hadron Collider (LHC), scientists Henriette Elvang of MIT and Pau Figueras of the University of Barcelona are pulling out all the stops to test theories regarding space and time. The version of the black hole that they will be making will look a lot different from the ones in space, though. Elwang explains that the Earth-made hole will look more like a tiny black Saturn, meaning it will have one central black orb and a black ring, both of which will spin at high speeds to maintain the existence of the body if only for a few milliseconds.

"If you just had a ring, it would collapse. It's essential that it rotates to keep balanced," says Elwang.

Both the ring and the core are defined by their event horizons- virtual boundaries where gravity is so strong that not even light can escape. What can be seen would be very similar to a flattened microscopic chocolate doughnut.

So why don't they make bigger ones so everyone can see?

That's because they can't. These tiny black holes can only exist in a plane with four dimensions- length, width, height and time. We humans exist in three dimesions, so in a manner of saying, we don't live in the same reality where these things exist. However, scientists have discovered that in very small spaces, the third and fourth dimensions can actually be reconciled. If they smash protons in very small quantities with about a thousand times the gravity of the same subatomic particle, a tiny black hole will be born.

Of course, all of this is theoretical, but if all goes well, detectors in the LHC will light up to herald the vindication of theories by Stephen Hawking and those who followed him.

There's still a lot of doubt as to whether or not the black hole can stabilize before it dissipates, but the scientists in Geneva say that in a few years, it is very likely that they'll create a much smaller black hole to actually bridge the gap between the third and fourth dimensions.

Over at Astronomy Picture of the Day, they have the time-lapse movie below along with an explanation written by a professional astronomer (it's a bit technical, so we'll try to explain some things further). The movie shows stars in the central part of our galaxy. These stars have moved a lot in the past eight years. Stars don't usually move so fast, but these do.

If these stars are being moved and pulled that fast, then there must be something there that is massive (has a lot of gravity) but compact. This image shows only a small portion of the central part of our galaxy. In other words, there's something that's over one million times the mass of our Sun squished into a region less than one-fifth of a light year. That's really strong evidence for a black hole.

These stars are near a strange object that emits unique radiation. That object, called Sagittarius A* or Sgr A*, is marked with a yellow cross in the time-lapse movie below.

The radiation is consistent with theories about the energy that is released by matter when it falls at very fast speeds as it gets torn apart by a black hole. The subatomic particles get pulled at such high speeds - near the speed of light - that they scream out radio waves.

A rival theory is that there is no black hole. It could just be a very dense cluster of millions of stars. As we take better and better pictures of the center of our galaxy, it's up to professional astronomers to argue if there's still room in the picture for millions of stars.

There sure is a lot of action going on in space nowadays, especially concerning those black holes. After performing a headcount on them, here comes yet a new batch of startling set of observations on the blackhole. NASA scientists, along with their international partners, were able to observe utterly precise details of twisted space and warped time via the new Japanese Suzaku satellite.

Included in their observations were the clocking of the speed of the black hole's spin rate as well as the measurement of the angle at which matter pours into the void. They were also able to get evidence of gravity pulling back and flattening a wall of X-ray light.

What is ironic is that these information gathered were founded on a special feature in the  "broad iron K line", a light emitted close to the blackhole. This light used to be doubted by scientists if it was indeed a credible source of data given that the previous observations from it revealed poor resolutions. But now, it has been redeemed as it exposed unmistaken measures of a black hole's true gravitational force.

"Across the board, we are finding the broad iron K line to be an incredibly robust measure of black hole properties," said Andrew Fabian of Cambridge University, England, one of the team leaders of the project. "We are entering the era of precision black hole measurements."

The Suzaku satellite has a high-energy X-ray detector and an X-ray spectrograph. Put together, the satellite is then able to detect a vast range of X-ray energies, especially the higher ones. The Suzaku is geared for observations of supermassive black holes, which are the center of most galaxies, containing the mass of millions to billions of suns situated in a region deemed to be almost the size of our system.

Did you know that there are more than 200 supermassive black holes called Active Galactic Nuclei, or AGN in the local universe? Yup, that's right. And they provide a definitive census of black hole activity, allowing the team of NASA scientists to take into full account many new blackholes that were previously missed, and along the way, they discovered a whole lot of other surprises.

With this census, scientists are excited at the prospect of probing deeper into the universe, and hopefully with the new information that they have gathered, we could gain more understanding and knowledge of this vast blanket of mystery we are relegated in.

Using Swift's Burst Alert Telescope, which is sensitive to the highest-energy X-rays, a scan of the sky is made in between bursts of gamma-rays. Although many AGNs are hidden behind dust and gas which block lower-energy light, such as visible light, they still find no escape from Swift's penetrating gaze, thanks to its highest-energy X-rays. Says the census team leader Richar Mushotzky, "You can't understand the universe without understanding black holes." It is believed that blackhole activity plays a rather pivotal role in star formation. If this was the case, then we just might be looking at the answer to the question of how the universe was made really soon.

The answer to life, the universe and everything... could this be found in blackholes? Or was Douglas Adams right and the answer is actually 42?

Supernovae are a rare phenomenon indeed. Major ones tend to be seen only about once every 10 or 20 years. The most recent supernova, observed by scientists on Earth (before February 2006), occurred in 1998. The supernova (or death of a star) that was seen in 1998 was considered minor by celestial standards.

That explosion didn't even give rise to a black hole, as is common in the case of large exploding stars. A neutron star, common after smaller supernovae, was the final result of the 1998 explosion. The supernova that was observed this February was similar in size to the one in 1998; it was small, if you can call any supernova small.

NASA has a system in place that utilizes available technology to alert scientists as quickly as possible to instances of supernova in the vicinity and quickly pan their instruments and telescopes to gather data about the event. This particular supernova lasted an unusually long time (some 40 minutes); giving NASA's Swift satellite plenty of time to pan over to bring the supernova into view and gather as much data as possible.

"Usually these gamma ray bursts last fractions of a second to a couple hundred seconds," said Alex Filippenko, professor of astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley. "This lasted many thousands of seconds. "The Swift satellite finds these things as soon as they go off, but the longer they last the more we can watch in real time, and others can turn their telescopes to it in real time."

Scientists continue to speculate about why this supernova lasted so long and what made it so unique. By getting such a detailed view of this most recent supernova event scientists will be better able to answer questions about supernovae from concerned policy makers and even possibly create technologies or methods to mitigate any possible hazards the Earth may face from gamma ray bursts in the future.