NASA Found This Amazing Monster Black Hole Inside A Teeny Galaxy, No Big

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, STScI-RCC14-41a

We have SCIENCE! that is so cool, we're going to start with that today. (Look up. Look at the science. Isn't it pretty?) We also have a Very Interesting Theory, a super absurd conspiracy theory, the future of travel, and a guy who races the subway ... and wins.

• Look what NASA found :

  Astronomers using data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and ground observation have found an unlikely object in an improbable place -- a monster black hole lurking inside one of the tiniest galaxies ever known.

  The black hole is five times the mass of the one at the center of our Milky Way galaxy. It is inside one of the densest galaxies known to date -- the M60-UCD1 dwarf galaxy that crams 140 million stars within a diameter of about 300 light-years, which is only 1/500th of our galaxy’s diameter.

  If you lived inside this dwarf galaxy, the night sky would dazzle with at least 1 million stars visible to the naked eye. Our nighttime sky as seen from Earth’s surface shows 4,000 stars.

  The finding implies there are many other compact galaxies in the universe that contain supermassive black holes. The observation also suggests dwarf galaxies may actually be the stripped remnants of larger galaxies that were torn apart during collisions with other galaxies rather than small islands of stars born in isolation.

• Our kid sister Happy Nice Time People reports on this report about the eight hours of Sarah Palin's interweb teevee show thingy, most of which are "straight-up infomercials for Sarah’s other products." But Happy has a verrrrrry innnnnnnteresssssting theory about that:

  Back when Sarah Palin first published her memoirGoing Rogue,the half-term halfwit made headlines when she spent $63,000 in PAC money to buy copies to give away to fans. It would be illegal for the PAC to simply had Palin money, but it’s perfectly okay for her to collect royalties on the books bought by the PAC. Pretty nice way to funnel money to herself, right?

  In the most recent Sarah PAC filing, the money spent on Sarah’s own books has dwindled to just under $10,000 . That cash cow is almost out of milk.

  And along comes Sarah Palin TV.

  Go read the rest of it and let us know what you think. Seriously. Happy needs some love.

•  Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha :  

  

  
   The always-though-not-intentionally comedic tweeter genius behind the official account for the Republican National Committee deleted the referenced tweet, but we havesogot your back because we screenshot that sucker for you to also hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha so hard too:  

  

  
   For real, always-though-not-intentionally comedic tweeter genius behind the official account for the Republican National Committee, we love your work. Come write for us!

•  Offered without comment (because we're too busy laughing at this too):

  David Gregory, the ousted moderator of NBC's "Meet The Press," thinks Washington's political media are too lazy to go against the "narrative."

•  Snowmobile truthers . That's a thing now.

  Alaska Sen. Mark Begich says GOP opponent Dan Sullivan’s latest ad accusing him of pretending to ride a snow machine is a “lie,” and he has the frostbite to prove it.

  In Sullivan’s latest ad , X Games medalist Cory Davis accuses the freshman Democrat of “pretending to ride” a snow machine in an earlier spot and concludes: “I’m tired of the phony politicians and Mark Begich’s laaaaame tricks.” [...]

  Begich likened Sullivan’s ad, produced by FP1 Strategies, to the thoughts of a conspiracy theorist.

  “Did you know we didn’t really go to the moon? That was a conspiracy. That was all done in a studio — I don’t know if you knew that,” Begich joked. “Yes. It was me on the snow machine. … Look at the picture of me when I take my helmet off. That’s what we call ‘helmet hair,’ that’s when you’re riding a snow machine.”

• Watch this dude race the tube in London. It's kind of amazing:

• We may not have jetpacks in the future, but we will have ... gondolas ?

  Laugh all you want (or cower in fear), but cable-drawn aerial transportation just might be the next big thing.

  To hear the evangelists tell it, the skyborne pods that have ferried skiers through the Alps for most of the last century are an integral part of the future of urban transport. Cheaper than terrestrial fixed guideway transit and quicker to build, the gondola is finally taking its rightful place in the urban landscape.

  "Depending on how you measure it," says Steven Dale of the Gondola Project , "it is the fastest growing transportation method in the world."

By the way, tomorrow's Friday. Most important news of the day, right?