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POPS50 Billion Suns! -The Biggest Single Object in the Universe Based on this self-regulating maximum rate, scientists at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Massachusetts, and the European Southern Observatory, Chile, have calculated an upper limit for these mega-mammoth masses. Fifty billion suns, that's 100 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 kg, otherwise known as "ridiculously stupidly big" and triple the size of the largest observed black hole, OJ 287.
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POPSTop 10 Racist Limbaugh Quotes (Leader of the Rebubbacan Party)
9. I think the media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well. They’re interested in black coaches and black quarterbacks doing well. I think there’s a little hope invested in McNabb and he got a lot of credit for the performance of his team that he really didn’t deserve. 10. Limbaugh attacks on Obama. Limbaugh has called Obama a ‘halfrican American’ has said that Obama was not black but Arab because Kenya is an Arab region, even though Arabs are less than one percent of Kenya. Since mainstream America has become more accepting of African-Americans, Limbaugh has decided to play against its new racial fears, Arabs and Muslims. Despite the fact Obama graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law school, Limbaugh has called him an ‘affirmative action candidate.’ Limbaugh even has repeatedly played a song on his radio show ‘Barack the Magic Negro’ using an antiquated Jim Crow era term for black a man who many Americans are supporting for president. Way to go Rush.
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POPSBlack Ice Black Ice is clear ice, free of snow and intermediate layers. It appears as black, because the reflected light has been completley absorbed by the water being under it Author: Hans Loepfe
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POPSBlack Hole created in US lab more: Professor Zhang and colleagues are experts in metamaterials and their latest creation is the most impressive yet: modeling black holes by taking "analogy" out of writing and into actual hard science. By designing a metamaterial whose reaction to light looks the same as another phenomena, you can effectively examine that phenomena. This is because "looks like" isn't based on color, or shape, but on having exactly the same equations defining its motion - so that it no longer matters if it's because of metamaterials reaction to light or general relativity's to matter. By setting up this "optical-mechanical analogy" you can study an all-consuming gravitational crusher in a simple chip of material.
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POPSNoah's Ark flood spurred European farming "When the Black Sea flooded at end of last ice age some people have suggested it was the origins of the Noah's Ark myth If you lived in that basin it would have seemed like the whole world had flooded."
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POPSNassim Nicholas Taleb: the prophet of boom and doom In December he lectured bankers at Société Générale, France’s second biggest bank. He told them they were sitting on a mountain of risks – a menagerie of black swans. They didn’t believe him. Six weeks later the rogue trader and black swan Jérôme Kerviel landed them with $7.2 billion of losses. As a result, Taleb is now the hottest thinker in the world. He has a $4m advance on his next book. He gives about 30 presentations a year to bankers, economists, traders, even to Nasa, the US Fire Administration and the Department of Homeland Security. But he doesn’t tell them what to do – he doesn’t know. He just tells them how the world is. “I’m not a guru. I’m just describing a problem and saying, ‘You deal with it.’” take a moment and read the article
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POPS White Radical Evangelicals Get a Pass "Thus, white evangelical Ministers are free to advocate American wars based on Biblical mandates, rant hatefully against Islam, and argue that natural disasters occur because God hates gay people...By contrast, black Muslim ministers like Farrakhan, or even black Christian ministers like Rev. Jeremiah Wright, are held with deep suspicion, even contempt. McCain is free to hug and praise the Rev. Hagees of the world, but Obama is required to prove over and over and over and over that he does not share the more extreme views of black Ministers."
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POPSWildlife in the DMZ: Vanishing rainforest of the Congo basin 1, The demilitarised zone (DMZ) separating South and North Korea is home to over 1,000 plant species and rare animals. The DMZ Forum is a lobby group promoting the idea of turning the area into a nature reserve. 2. The forest is the world's biggest after the Amazon. Now Britain and Norway have created a £108m fund to help protect it from logging and reduce carbon dioxide emissions. The Congo basin forest is home to around 50 million people in six countries including Cameroon, Central Africa Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, and Congo-Brazzaville. The Congo basin forest is twice the size of France and exceeded in size only by the Amazon. It is estimated that logging - much of it illegal - destroys an area the size of 25,000 football pitches every week. The UN estimates that at present rates two-thirds of the forest will have vanished by the year 2040.
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POPSObama Gives Victory Speech: Hundreds of Thousands in Chicago Awesome... Frigging awesome. (I guess it can be found on YouTube tomorrow) Black leaders from the Civil Rights struggle days of Martin Luther King have been on TV. They all say the same thing: They never thought they would live to see such a day. And with pride say that now their children can see pictures of a black family in the White House. And this is all they wanted, every wanted: equality, full participation in America, to see their story as fully integrated and seen as part of the American story. And then, these old hardened men, they cry.
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POPSBlack Bear Quintuplets When something as magical as this happens between man and animal, Native Americans say, 'We have walked together in the shadow of a rainbow.' And so it is with humility and great pleasure that I share these photos with you.