Rare Type of Black Hole Found

Typically, black holes come in two varieties.  There are the stellar black holes, formed when big stars go supernova, and supermassive black holes which dwell at the center of galaxies and are theorized to have a key role in galaxy formation.  Stellar black holes are anywhere from 10-100 solar masses, while supermassive black holes are upwards of a million solar masses.  Finding a black hole whose mass is somewhere in between those two ranges is incredibly rare, so rare that scientists dispute whether or not such things even exist, let alone agree on their characteristics.

Astronomers at the University of Maryland have found one of these rare, intermediate mass black holes.  The black hole in question lies in M82, a galaxy 12 million light years away.  M82 also happens to be the closest "starburst" galaxy, meaning it has an accelerated rate of star birth.  While observing this galaxy in the past, scientists noted an unusually bright source of X-rays, imaginatively named M82 X-1.  It was suspected that this object was an intermediate-mass black hole, but accurate estimates of its mass could not be obtained.

To get a more accurate mass estimate, the scientists measured individual x-ray particles from M82 X-1, finding a distinct pattern of light pulses which formed a 3:2 ratio.  This ratio could be used to measure the mass of the black hole, which is pretty amazing, when you think about it.  They found the black hole's mass to be 428 solar masses, give or take a 100.  Doesn't sound very accurate, but it does make this black hole definitively heavier than any stellar mass black hole.  Stars don't get that massive.  So, now the challenge is figuring out how a black hole of 400 solar masses forms.

My Favorite Video Game

I haven't played an especially large amount of video games, but the ones I do play are almost always among the best.  There's one though, that stands far above all the others.  I've played games where the fates of entire worlds are placed in my hands, but my favorite game features absolutely none of those incredibly high stakes.  Sure, there's a story, and an exciting conclusion, but nowhere near the level of some of my other favorites.  At the end of the day, it's basically just a puzzle game.

Portal 2 is my favorite video game.  There's no violence, no killing, there's a gun, but it fires portals (shocking), and it solves puzzles.  I just recently starting playing the game again because I have a computer that can actually handle the graphics.  It's been a few years, so my recollection of the puzzles is hazy at best.  It's almost like I'm playing the game for the first time again.  I get to laugh at the absolutely hilarious dialogue once more, no small feat for a video game to pull off.  Humor's a difficult thing to pull off, but Portal does it almost perfectly.  The gameplay is smooth and the game looks good too.  I've never been one for hyper-realism in my video games, it's why I'm so partial to Team Fortress 2, and why I've been going pretty hard at Borderlands 2 the past couple months (I'm sure I'll have something to say about that game, just not now).  There's no cartoony aspects to Portal, but the scale of everything in the game is just so vast, it can't possibly be real.

I don't think many people would deny that Portal 2 is a great game, but I don't imagine many would call it their favorite.  What does it for me?  Simple.  When I first played the game, I played with a couple friends watching, and that experience made everything so much better.  The game is great, but the interactive aspect of that first playthrough made a great game so much better.  I've heard the same thing from other people who've played the game, playing it with other people around made it better.  The game might not look all that interesting on the surface, but trust me, it's probably the most fun I've ever had playing a video game.