Locked in orbit with a young blue star named LB-1, which is located around 13,800 light years away from the constellation Gemini, is this newly found black hole that researchers discovered. But what is so fascinating about this black hole? It is so massive that scientists are puzzled about it.

With a mass of about 68 suns, it is far heftier than other stellar-mass black holes (those with masses below about 100 suns) in and around the Milky Way, scientists say. That’s not just a record, it’s also a conundrum. According to theory, black holes in our galaxy that form from the explosive deaths of massive stars — as this one likely did — shouldn’t be heavier than about 25 suns.

[...]

“I never thought in my wildest dreams you could form a black hole this big [in the Milky Way],” says Michael Zevin, an astrophysicist at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. “If the observations pan out to be correct, this is really going to have people scratching their heads.”

Get more details about this over at ScienceNews.

(Image Credit: NAOJ/ ScienceNews)

Marie-Madeleine Fourcade was born into privilege in France in 1909. She grew up as a socialite, and gained notice as a reporter in the Paris fashion industry. Fourcade was also independent and adventurous, qualities that gained focus when Germany invaded France during World War II. The socialite became a resistance spy and recruiter and then leader. Fourcade was captured by the Gestapo twice.

The second time Marie escaped arrest was a much closer call and far more extraordinary story. In a Gestapo prison in Aix-en-Provence, she considered taking cyanide that she’d kept hidden on her in case of capture, but knew by doing so, she would be sentencing the rest of her remaining agents to death as well. In her cell, there was a small barred window with wooden boards to let in a small amount of air and light. When her guards went off duty in the small hours of the morning , she stripped naked and began forcing her petite body through an impossibly tight opening. After a few failed and excruciatingly painful attempts, Marie had made it out, clutching her dress by her teeth, bloody and bruised. Dodging the flashlight of a guard who had heard noises, she darted across the street to find refuge inside the mausoleum of a cemetery. She later found a small creek to wash her wounds and lose the scent of blood that would surely put German search dogs on her trail.

Read the rest of that story and those of Fourcade's other exploits at Messy Messy Chic.

Here’s a method that you can use if you’re looking to sell something for extra cash: try looking for all the ‘90s items either you or your parents had. All the random stuff your family might have allowed to collect dust in your home can make you rich. From Beanie Babies to Pokemon cards to old game cartridges, these items can sell for hundreds to thousands of dollars. Here’s an excerpt from Cosmopolitan, where they listed some of the items that are to guarantee you a big sum: 

Old ‘Harry Potter‘ Books

If you own an original Harry Potter book, you could be looking at major $. Hardcover first editions of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (aka the English Version) with the print line “10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1" are worth up to $55,000, while Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (aka the American version) is worth up to $6,500 if it has the print line “1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 8 9/9 0/0 01 02” on the copyright page. I’ll give you a moment to look at your copy.

image credit: Bloomsbury via Cosmopolitan

Mac & Cheese Flavored Candy

The holiday season is here! Do you find yourself starving for great stocking stuffer ideas? Gifts that are as deliciously unique as their recipient? Behold the Mac & Cheese Flavored Candy from the NeatoShop. The Mac & Cheese Flavored Candy may seem cheesy, but we know that those with a refined sense of humor and a sophisticated palate will appreciate your thoughtfulness. 

The Mac & Cheese Flavored Candy comes in a keepsake tin. Each yellow and white candy is individually wrapped. They are perfect for sharing with friends. Get your candy before they are gone. 

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more great Mints & Candies. New items arriving all the time. 

Don't forget to stop by the NeatoShop to see our large selection of customizable apparel and bags. Come by and create a truly unique family gift. We specialize in curvy and Big and Tall sizes. We carry baby 6 months all the way to adult 10 XL shirts. Can't find what you are looking for? Contact us! Special orders and bulk orders are available. 

Starbucks has just opened its sixth Reserve Roastery in Chicago. The Roastery covers about 35,000 square feet, making it the largest Starbucks in the world. Visitors can go around the building’s five stories for coffee, pastries, pizza, cocktails, and more. Harpers Bazaar got a sneak peak inside this Roastery, and let me tell you, it can be one of your dream places to visit!

image credit: Connor Surdi via Harpers Bazaar

An 18,000-Year-Old Puppy Has Been Found In Siberian Permafrosthttps://t.co/kroxT80zH5 pic.twitter.com/c7LpPYrb1n

— IFLScience (@IFLScience) November 28, 2019

A frozen dog has been unearthed in Siberia in amazingly fresh condition. They named him Dogor, which means “friend” in Yakutian. Scientists believe he was about two months old at his death. They are not sure if he was an ice age wolf, a modern wolf, a domestic dog, or possibly something in between.

While the work has managed to discover the specimen is male and approximately 18,000 years old, preliminary genome sequencing was unable to tell whether it is a wolf, a dog, or perhaps a proto-dog common ancestor of the two.

“The Centre has Europe’s largest DNA bank of all canines from around the globe, yet in this case they couldn’t identify it from the first try,” Love Dalén, professor of evolutionary genetics at the CPG, told The Siberian Times.

“This is intriguing, what if it’s a dog? We can’t wait to get results from further tests,” added Sergey Fedorov from the Institute of Applied Ecology of the North at the North-Eastern Federal University in Yakutsk.

Humans started to settle in this northern part of Russia around 32,500 years ago. Furthermore, previous research has suggested that humans domesticated dogs from wolves some 10,000 to 40,000 years ago. This means that Dogor could, in theory, fit anywhere within this range as a loyal household dog, a ravenous wild wolf, or anything in between.

The only thing everyone can agree on is that he was a good boy. -via Metafilter

Well, that didn't take long. The notorious 11 foot 8 bridge in Durham, North Carolina, was raised to a new height of 12 feet 4 inches. We thought that might be the end of the website 11 foot 8, which documented the many trucks whose tops were sheared off by the bridge after the driver underestimated their truck's height, or else was not paying attention. But Jürgen Henn still has his webcam trained on the Gregson Street trestle, and on Tuesday it caught the first incident since the bridge was raised. A rental truck scraped against the bridge, and small pieces fell off. We don't know the extent of the damage, since the truck didn't stop.  

This is Little Runmo, a short film that Gooseworx created over a period of two years. The short film starts with Runmo, a video game character, dying twice from spikes. At his third life, Runmo hesitates to jump over the gap, and talks with Pikit, a one-eyed signboard. Pikit then wonders at what point in a pit does Runmo die, which sparks curiosity to the latter. Runmo then slowly goes down to the pit and finds himself on a wild adventure he never would have thought of.

Via The Awesomer

(Video Credit: Gooseworx/ YouTube)

It has been long known by scientists that the proteins that package DNA need a chaperone. But what this chaperone looks like, and how it acts, is unknown to scientists. It has been a mystery until now.

A team of researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder has cracked the puzzle of the Facilitates Chromatin Transcription (FACT) protein structure. This protein is partly responsible for making sure everything goes smoothly and no improper interactions take place when DNA temporarily sheds and replaces its guardian proteins, or histones.

The findings of this study might help us to understand genome and gene transcription, as well as cancer. It might also help us in the development of anti-cancer drugs.

"This is just the start for this protein. It's not the end," said Yang Liu, a research associate in the Department of Biochemistry at CU Boulder and one of the study's lead authors.

Check out PHYS.org to know more about the study.

(Image Credit: Liu et al. 2019)

A delivery truck in Brookhaven, Georgia, spilled part of its load on Tuesday. The Brookhaven Police Department dispatched officers posthaste to bear witness to the tragedy. Several cases of Krispy Kreme donuts were scattered about the road, and some were even in the gutter. It was a traumatic experience for the responding cops.

The Associated Press has more.

Police say their response time to the call was stellar, but they missed the five-second rule. The post asked for thoughts and prayers as the total loss of the doughnuts deeply affected all the department’s officers.

Police later added a comment with an update to the so-called tragedy. It says officers in Gainesville sent a batch of sympathy doughnuts to Brookhaven police in their time of mourning.

Thoughts and prayers. -via Boing Boing

Animals like sharks, penguins, and turtles could help us monitor oceans through the transmission of oceanographic information from electronic tags. 

Thousands of marine animals are tagged for various research and conservation resources. At the present, however, the information gathered from them is not used widely to track climate change and other shifts in the ocean. 

Research vessels, underwater drones and thousands of floating sensors instead are used in monitoring the ocean.

However, large areas of the ocean still remain under-sampled - leaving gaps in our knowledge.

A team led by the University of Exeter says animals carrying sensors can fill many of these gaps through natural behaviour such as diving under ice, swimming in shallow water or moving against currents.

"We want to highlight the massive potential of animal-borne sensors to teach us about the oceans," said lead author Dr David March, of Centre for Ecology and Conservation on Exeter's Penryn Campus in Cornwall.

"This is already happening on a limited scale, but there's scope for much more.

More details about this over at EurekAlert.

(Image Credit: Miquel Gomila/SOCIB)

Find a telescope to see the ringed planet along with the moon on Black Friday (Nov. 29), provided that the weather will be clear. On Thanksgiving evening, the moon will dance with Jupiter and Venus, and the moon will be with Saturn on Friday night.

It will soon be time to bid a fond adieu to the showpiece of the solar system, the magnificent ringed planet Saturn. In about a month, Saturn will begin to disappear into the sunset fires. And Friday will bring one of the final opportunities for many skywatchers to make a positive identification of the ringed planet, as it will appear close to the waxing crescent moon. 

See instructions on how to spot Saturn over at Space.com.

(Image Credit: Pixabay)

If you want to make a proper Welsh rabbit, first you must build a log cabin. Jon Townsend (previously at Neatorama) brings us an 18th-century recipe for toasted cheese, or Welsh rabbit. I'm all in for that! But we watch Jon for more than recipes. He knows all that one can know about the American frontier of the 1700s, and he teaches it to us in such a pleasant manner. If you want to watch how he built that cabin, continue reading for the three-part series.

Yes, they are one-line drawings, but they are also much more. Dr. Bob Bosch, a mathematician who teaches at Oberlin, created this image of Botticelli's Birth of Venus using the shortest possible line while still rendering the image. It's an illustration of the Travelling Salesman Problem.

What's that? The Oxford Dictionary of Psychology defines it as:

The problem of finding the shortest path that passes through a set of given points once and only once, as when a travelling salesman needs to visit a number of specified cities exactly once, using the shortest possible route. The problem is notoriously difficult to solve, because the number of possible tours rises rapidly with the number of cities.

You can see five other examples here, including images of the Mona Lisa and a Van Gogh self-portrait.

-via Flowing Data

In 1926, a woman sent a gift to President Calvin Coolidge- a raccoon to be served for Thanksgiving dinner. The note that came with it said that it had a "toothsome flavor." The president did not eat the raccoon for Thanksgiving, nor did anyone else at the White House. But despite the title, we never get an explanation of why not in an article at Atlas Obscura. What we do get is a history of raccoon as dinner in America, and we find out what happened to the toothsome raccoon that was presented to Coolidge.

(Image source: Library of Congress)