Holy Shit, Black Holes!

Somewhere out in the inconceivable vastness of space, there are regions that were once incredibly massive stars which have now collapsed upon themselves. The result is a chunk of mass so incredibly dense that its gravitational field lets nothing escape. Not even light, and light is pretty damn fast, as you may well know. When mass gets that compacted, space and time get warped and deformed around it, which causes what we call a black hole.

When I say compacted, I mean really, ridiculously, unbelievably compacted. To the point where a black hole the size of a marble would have more mass than the entire Earth. Despite that, there are actually micro black holes that are so imperceptibly small that they have about the same mass as a flea's egg. On the other hand, there are black holes in that same category that have approximately the same mass as the moon. Is that sinking in? The smallest category of black holes range in mass from about the same as a flea's egg to about the same as the freaking moon.

At black hole density, this would sink to the core of the Earth and cause very bad things.

The next category up contains stellar black holes, which get up to about the size of Manhattan and have about ten times the mass of the sun. After that comes intermediate-mass black holes, which is where it starts getting harder to fathom. These get up to the size of the Earth and have the mass of one thousand suns.

Then we get into the last category. The supermassive black holes. These puppies are some of the biggest things in the known universe. They can reach up to 10 Astronomical Units in size. That's 10 times the distance between the Earth and the sun, which is about 93 million miles. Times ten. At that size, their mass could be the same as one billion suns. Supermassive black holes are, therefore, rather aptly named. Scientists believe that they exist at the center of every galaxy in the universe, which means we are currently orbiting a star which is itself orbiting an incredibly enormous distortion in space and time.

The bright spot in the center is light being warped and consumed

One more thing, and I think you know what it is. It's the burning question that always creeps up from the back of your mind when you think about black holes. What happens when you go into one? The answer, mostly, is that we don't know. What we do know, however, is what it would look like to observers.

So let's say your friend is in a spaceship headed toward a black hole, toward the point of no return known as the event horizon. As the ship gets closer, it seems to slow down - time is dilated in such a way that anything close to the event horizon appears to be moving slower and slower, until finally the movement is so small that it can't be seen. Eventually, it stops. As far as you're concerned, your friend is frozen in time forever. But that's just you. Your buddy will experience whatever there is to experience in the black hole. Probably death, I'm sure, but as it happens, time around him will pass. Infinitely.

Holy shit. That might be a little too heavy, so here's a puppy:

D'aww

Holy Shit, Dogs!

I grew up in a household that had, at one point, 4 cats. We had a dog once, but she had major health problems that resulted in big bald patches, not much energy, and a short life. For those reasons, I've always thought of a cat as a much more suitable companion than a dog. It turns out my domestic animal worldview was lacking an important piece of information, which is that holy shit, dogs are awesome.

Exhibit A

It's not that dogs are smarter or nicer. It's that dogs and humans go way back. So far back, in fact, that we've adapted to communicate with each other. A study of animal interactions with humans (specifically dogs and chimps) showed how water, as it turns out, is sometimes thicker than blood. Keep in mind, chimpanzees are widely regarded as one of the most intelligent species on the planet. Genetically, they are nearly human themselves.

Here's how the study went down: researches would show the animal a treat, then hide it under one of several upturned cups. They would then point to where the treat was. Chimps, for all their intelligence and genetic similarity to us, just don't understand what the hell we're doing when we're putting our fingers out there like that. "Maybe he touched some poo and would like me to smell it," they wonder, sniffing cautiously at the outstretched digit.

Big deal, mine always smells like that.

Dogs, despite being decidedly non-primate, know exactly what we mean when we point somewhere. They follow the cues and get their treat right away. And pointing isn't the only thing they understand. They innately understand human behavior in the same way we do.

When you first meet someone, your eyes usually drift slightly to the left. It's a subconscious behavior, and it helps you to read emotions - that half of your face is more emotive. The only time we ever do that is when we're looking at another person's face, and no other animal does the same with each other. Guess what happens when researches flash images of human faces to dogs? Even though they don't have the same emotive asymmetry, dogs viewing human faces will almost always tilt their eyes to the left.

It doesn't seem like much, but think of the implications. It happens too often to be a coincidence, and no other animal does it. The unavoidable conclusion is that dogs can almost definitely read and understand human emotions. They can tell at a glance how we're feeling and adjust their behavior as a result. Crazy, right? It gets better.

That understanding goes both ways. Humans, especially dog owners, can actually, certifiably, understand what dogs are saying. To prove this, researches recorded dogs in various situations - being taunted with a toy, barking at a squirrel, needing to go outside, being reunited with a loved one after a long absence - and played their vocalizations for people who were familiar with dogs. The people listening were able to describe almost exactly what was happening to the dogs.

After learning all of this, I had to rethink the camp I had chosen. Don't get me wrong, cats are terrific. They're playful, sometimes cuddly, and always good for popularity on the Internet. But dogs are integrally linked to the development of humanity. They aren't our closest genetic relatives by far, but no other species is so closely connected to our own experience. More than anything else on Earth, dogs understand us.

Holy shit.