holes

Super Stickman Golf 2 (99 cents) is a 2D golf game that is definitely a worthy sequel to the original with new levels, new special course elements, and much more. It's really easy to pick up and play, with tons of fantastical themed courses, interesting power-ups, and excellent physics-based gameplay. Though the game has a huge amount of arcadelike features, the goal is always the same: try to get the ball in the hole in as few shots as possible. The challenge is that it can be much harder than it looks.

Rather than your standard 3D layout seen … Read more

An innovative X-ray telescope operated by NASA, working in concert with a European Space Agency satellite, has directly measured the rotation of a supermassive black hole lurking at the heart of a distant galaxy, researchers said Wednesday.

The observation confirms predictions made by Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity regarding gravity's ability to twist and distort the fabric of the cosmos and gives astronomers a powerful new tool to probe the evolution of galaxies and the black holes that now appear to be a common, if not required, feature.

"The result we're announcing today is that … Read more

Black holes are created when a supernova explosion destroys a massive star. Scientists have discovered dozens of black holes, but all of them are already formed. So, when scientists recently saw different distorted remains of a supernova, they knew it something special.

What the scientists believe they observed was the infant phases of a black hole, or the youngest black hole ever recorded in the Milky Way galaxy.

Caught on film by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, the "remnant," or W49B, is seen as a vibrant swirl of blues, greens, yellows, and pinks. As seen from Earth, it … Read more

At the center of our galaxy, chaos ensues: a supermassive black hole absorbs everything, young stars materialize, and elder stars explode. This violently beautiful cycle of activity creates galaxy-size bursts of charged particles that eject from the center of the Galactic Plane, and now you can see what those emissions look like.

Ettore Carretti, who works with Australian scientific research organization CSIRO, along with several other researchers around the world, describes the mega waves of energy in last week's issue of Nature. Team member Gianni Bernadi notes that the supersonic outflows -- which travel in excess of 621 miles per second -- originate from more than 100 million years of stars forming and exploding at the center of the Milky Way. … Read more

LOS ALAMOS, N.M.--I got sucked into a black hole and lived to tell the tale. Fortunately for me, the black hole is the Black Hole here in Los Alamos, a sprawling store full of old surplus equipment from Los Alamos National Laboratory.

The lab's legacy The national laboratory was founded during World War II, giving it ample time to pile up a lot of equipment like oscilloscopes, Teletype machines, RadioShack computers, and cryogenic gear.

All that stuff has to go somewhere when it gets replaced by newer machines. For many years, the Black Hole welcomed this detritus with open arms.

The store's founder, Ed Grothus, passed away in 2009. The former laboratory employee and ardent peace activist collected and sold surplus from the lab. A former Piggly Wiggly convenience store was transformed into the Black Hole. It's still open today.… Read more

Wonders of the Universe -- based on the BBC series of the same name from HarperCollins -- is an elegant and visually gorgeous app that lets you explore our known universe on your iPad. The app comes with more than 2.5 hours of HD video, dazzling 3D graphics of everything from subatomic particles to galaxies, and tons of information to read as you explore, and it offers an excellent use of the iPad's touch-screen interface to browse all the content.

We got a sneak peak at the app, but Wonders of the Universe will not be available until tomorrow in the iTunes App Store. HarperCollins says the app will be at the discounted price of $6.99 initially, but will go up to $9.99 sometime after the launch.

The app starts you off by explaining the touch-screen interface and how to navigate through all of the content.… Read more

Although black holes are invisible, they can be found by watching their effect on nearby gas and stars. For stellar-mass black hole IGR J17091, this is exactly what is happening. Its gravity is pulling gas away from a companion star and this gas has formed into a disk around the black hole, which is driving off wind.

However, there's something special about IGR J17091--the wind it's creating is the fastest wind ever discovered blowing off a disk surrounding a stellar-mass black hole.

In most other ways IGR J17091 is pretty much a ho-hum black hole: it's located … Read more

Here at Geek Gestalt, every day is different. The world of geek culture is broad--sometimes bewilderingly so. A typical year's coverage can easily include stories on everything from Burning Man to Lego, aviation to 3D printing, NASA to tech startups, MythBusters to Pixar movies, and so on.

That makes coming up with predictions for next year in culture a difficult task--but we're here to serve, so that's just we're offering. Of course, trying to settle on just five ideas for 2012 means leaving a lot of things out.

Still, prognosticating culture's next steps meant talking … Read more

Back in February of this year a malware utility called BlackHole, or MusMinim by security company Sophos, was found for OS X. BlackHole is a backdoor server program RAT (Remote Access Tool) that runs on an infected system and allows a remote user to interact with the system by sending shutdown commands, displaying screen messages, opening URLs, and requesting usernames and passwords. In essence it is similar to a remote desktop utility, but is not distributed for productive purposes.

Unlike more recent malware attempts on OS X that try to keep hidden and steal information automatically, the BlackHole malware is … Read more