"It popped up out of nowhere," said astronomer Stephen Smartt, who first discovered the new supernova, and promptly named it "cow" according to the alphabetical protocol set by the International Astronomical Union (IAU).

The name might be fortuitous (I mean, we can all imagine astronomers yelling, "holy cow! a new supernova just popped out of nowhere!") but the heavenly event is a big deal in astronomy.

From this Nature news article by Davide Castelvecchi:

At first, Smartt discounted the effect as an unremarkable stellar flare in the Milky Way. But then, he realized that it was probably much farther off, in a galaxy called CGCG 137-068 known to be around 60 megaparsecs (200 million light years) away.

“It was 11 o’clock on a Sunday night, and I said to myself, ‘I better tell everybody about this.’” He sent out an alert through the Astronomer’s Telegram, a service for reporting and commenting on transient astronomical observations.

Immediate follow-ups confirmed that the object was a distant one, and so had to be stupendously bright. (It shone brightly enough that, despite its distance, a number of amateur astronomers were able to see it, too.)

And this was no ordinary supernova: it reached its peak brightness in days, not weeks. "Everybody put down what they were doing up to that point" and started following Cow, says Daniel Perley, an astrophysicist at Liverpool John Moores University, UK.

Initial data suggest that the supernova was caused either by a black hole tearing a star apart or a spinning neutron star.

(Image: ATLAS)

Every year, the Bookseller awards the Diagram Prize for the oddest book title to be published in the previous year. This year marks the 40th award. The many entries have been whittled down to six finalists, and the public is invited to vote for the one you think should win. They are:

Are Gay Men More Accurate in Detecting Deceits?
Call of Nature: The Secret Life of Dung
Equine Dry Needling
Jesus on Gardening
Joy of Waterboiling
Why Sell Tacos in Africa?

While there is no prize for the winning author besides exposure, a bottle of claret is traditionally given to the person who nominates the winner. This year's finalists were selected in-house, so a bottle will be given to a random person among those who vote for the eventual winner. Cast your vote here by November 16.  -via Vox

Joseph from Joseph's Machines, and his dog Matthew, show us his easy method of preparing a Thanksgiving turkey. -via reddit

Californians are usually worried about "The Big One", an anticipated mega-earthquake along the San Andreas Fault that could cause catastrophic damage.

But there's another natural disaster dubbed "The Slow One" that's happening right now. It's called that because it's a weird natural disaster that's unfolding slowly ...

Alejandra Reyes-Velarde and Rong-Gong Lin II from Los Angeles Times report:

A muddy spring mysteriously has begun to move at a faster pace through dry earth — first 60 feet over a few months, and then 60 feet in a single day, according to Imperial County officials. ...

Officials have been trying to drain water from the moving spring. Union Pacific built a 100-foot long wall of large boulders and steel more than 75 feet deep in the earth in an effort to protect the railroad.

But in October, the muddy spring sneaked underneath the wall, moving it ever closer to railroad tracks.

Overall, the pit, which produces a faint odor of rotten eggs, has moved more than 240 feet from where it was documented as being a decade ago. Based on publicly available satellite images, the spring hadn’t appeared to move much until roughly 2015, Hudnut said, but movement became particularly noticeable earlier this year.

Photo: Irfan Khan/LA Times

The emerald jewel wasp is a parasite that stings a cockroach to turn it into a zombie. It chews off half the roach's antennae, then leads it by the antenna to the wasp's nest, where it lays an egg inside the roach. The whole dreadful story is at Wikipedia. However, cockroaches have developed a defense against the wasp that resembles a martial arts film. It's hard to pick a champion when a cockroach fights a wasp, but this footage from Vanderbilt University is pretty cool. -via Metafilter

Vulture has compiled a ranked list of the 50 best dance scenes in movies. Whether or not you agree with their picks or their rankings, you'll enjoy watching at least some of the 49 accompanying videos (one was deemed too pornographic). You'll see Fred Astaire, Carmen Miranda, Prince, Patrick Swayze, Marilyn Monroe, Josephine Baker, Pee-Wee Herman, Ann-Margret, Elvis, Channing Tatum, Esther Williams, Grace Jones, Gene Kelly, John Travolta, Whitey’s Lindy Hoppers, and hoofers from Broadway to Bollywood. As enjoyable as those videos are, Metafilter points out some egregious omission, like Jumpin' Jive and the Bottle Dance.

(Image credit: Emily Denniston and Maya Robinson/Vulture)

No, sadly, those aren't aliens. Instead, the unusual lights over the Whitefish Bay in Lake Superior, were light pillars, which were caused by falling ice crystals.

Photographer Vincent Brady took the amazing photo. He wrote:

I was looking for auroras but was pleasantly surprised to see light pillars early Tuesday morning, October 16th. This is a shot north of Paradise, MI looking east over Whitefish Bay. The red lights are around the Canadian island Ile Parisienne and wind turbines.

See more of Brady's fantastic photos over at his Instagram - via APOD

This tiny and motherless kitten with sad eyes finally found happiness when Melinda Blain of Bottle Baby Fosters in Phoenix, Arizona, nursed her back to health.

Melinda continued round-the-clock feedings. As the kitten got stronger, she regained her appetite. "After her first week with me, she became so attached to me and constantly meowed at me for snuggles when she heard my voice."

Cherie had the saddest eyes and loudest cries. She didn't want to be alone and would cling to her foster mom until she fell asleep on her chest.

Find out the rest of the story over at this post by Amy Bojo over at Love Meow.

More pics of the cute (but sad looking) cat below:

Pianist Hunter Noack travels the Pacific Northwest playing his music in some of the wildest places in the classical concert series, Classical Music in the Wild. Invited guest performers include , local poets reading cowboy poems, and fellow musicians and singers.

According to In a Landscape:

A 9-foot Steinway grand piano is brought to the middle of forests, fields, calderas and historical sites for classical music concerts.

To meet the acoustical challenges of performing in the wild, music is transmitted to the concert-goers via wireless headphones. No longer confined to seats, they can explore the landscape, wander through secret glens, lie in sunny meadows, and roam old growth forests.

This years concert series included Oregon locations such as Alvord Desert Hot Springs, Fort Rock State Park, Smith Rock State Park in Terrebonne, Lewis and Clark Timberlands at Cannon Beach, and Sumpter Valley Dredge in the heart of Oregon's gold country. And Washington State locations The Shire in Washougal and Cape Disappointment State Park in Ilwaco.

Every location has its challenges. Each event includes a What to Know section. Must know information includes a description of the area with GPS coordinates. Transportation: in which a 4x4 vehicle may be recommended and driving instructions. Lodging, which may be limited to camping only. And attendees will need to be aware of weather conditions, fire danger, and the possibility of rattlesnakes in the area.

Visit Hunter Noack's Instragram page for more pictures and videos.

This guy shows us three different ways to make a shower head out of a plastic bottle. Why would you want to do that? So you can play with your pet otter! The otter in this case is named Bingo, so suddenly the title of the video makes sense. Bingo sure does loves his shower. -via Metafilter   

You may have noticed that racehorses sometimes have really odd names. You can't just name a horse Bob or Joe, because There. Are. Rules. Lots of rules. But within those rules, you also want a name that will be memorable, of course. And some horse owners take those rules as a challenge.   

Another trend when it comes to naming racehorses is to simply pick a name that sounds funny or is difficult to pronounce, usually just to annoy racing commentators. An example of this is a horse bought by one of the writers of the film Airplane, David Zucker named All Pink. If that doesn’t sound all that funny we should note that Zucker specifically instructed the jockey riding All Pink to hug the inside of the track so the commentator would have to keep saying the phrase “It’s all pink on the inside”.

So what would you name a racehorse? Be careful that you don't break any of the many naming rules enforced by the International Federation of Horseracing Authorities, or any of the local authorities that often have additional name restrictions. Learn about these rules at Today I Found Out.

And for a laugh, watch the race won by Hoof Hearted.

(Image credit: David Ohmer)

Benjamin Carroll and his wife staged an open house to sell their home in Jackson, Michigan. One man drew suspicion when he wouldn't sign the guest book or leave his name. A check of the home's surveillance cameras revealed that the man had "inspected" the basement, looked through the washing machine, and stuffed two pairs of men's underwear down his pants! The story made the local news after Carroll posted the video at Facebook. -via reddit

We know that the Statue of Liberty was a gift to the United States from France, but who actually owns the statue today? Is it the entity that owns the island underneath? The federal government or the state? Which state? CGP Grey explores these simple questions, with answers that will have you scratching your head. History is complicated, and sometimes just plain silly. -via Boing Boing

How would you describe what scuba diving feels like to a disabled person, who's not physically capable of doing it? Through VR, of course!

Here's a neat story of the Amphibian Scuba Diving Simulator, a research project by Dhruv Jain of MIT Media Lab that let users experience diving underwater through virtual reality:

Most existing SCUBA diving simulations in virtual reality (VR) are limited to visual and aural displays. Amphibian advances the field of VR by engaging additional sensory modalities like thermoception (sense of temperature), equilibrioception (sense of balance), and proprioception (sense of spatial orientation and movement). Users lie on their torsos on a motion platform with outstretched arms and legs placed in a suspended harness.

An Oculus Rift head-mounted display and headphones allow them to see and hear the underwater environment. Various sensors are used to simulate buoyancy, drag, and temperature during the simulation. For example, Peltier modules attached to participants’ wrists through motion tracking gloves simulate temperature changes as they dive deeper into the water.

An inflatable airbag placed under the torso allows the user to control ascent or descent through breathing; inhaling makes the airbag inflate and exhaling makes it deflate. The virtual body rises up and down in sync. This is done using a gas sensor attached to a snorkel that measures the amount of air inhaled or exhaled.

For 28 years, John and Stella Chhan, husband and wife owner of a donut shop in Seal Beach, California, have been helping their customers.

But a few weeks ago, people started noticing that Stella had been absent from the donut shop ... Turns out, Stella had suffered an aneurysm, and that's when his customers sprang into action:

“Days went by and I just couldn’t get it out of my head,” said Dawn Caviola. “So I thought, if enough people would buy a dozen doughnuts every morning, he could close early and go be with his wife.” Caviola, “thinking out loud,” floated her idea on the neighborhood networking site Nextdoor early last week. The response was immediate and enthusiastic. Ever since, Chhan has sold out by noon – some three hours earlier than usual – freeing him to visit his wife at the rehabilitation facility. “We are so thankful,” said Chhan, 62, holding both hands over his heart.

Read the rest over at this heartwarming article by Susan Christian Goulding over at the Orange County Register.

(Photo: Paul Bersebach, Orange County Register/SCNG)