Science Cosmos

  Pulling material from a massive blue companion star is the black hole Cygnus X-1. An accretion disc around the black hole is created by that "stuff". (Image credit: NASA/CXC)   The first black hole ever found, six decades after its discovery, is still causing astronomers to scratch their heads. The celestial behemoth at the core of the Cygnus X-1 system turns out to be 50 percent more massive than previously believed, making it the heaviest black hole stellar-mass ever directly observed. An international team of researchers estimates that the black hole is 21 times the mass of our sun and that it spins faster than any other known black hole, based on recent observations. The recalculated weight leads scientists to reconsider the evolution of bright stars turning into black holes and how easily they lose their skin before they die. A black hole's mass depends on its parent star's properties, such as the mass of the star and its metallicity (how much of it is ma...

  The Milky Way shines over the Sahara Desert in the night sky. (Image credit: Shutterstock)   In the Sahara, temperatures will drop overnight by an average of 75 degrees Fahrenheit (42 degrees Celsius). If you're taking a day trip to North Africa's Sahara Desert, you'll want to bring plenty of water and plenty of sunscreen. But if you're planning to stay overnight, it's safer to bring a snug sleeping bag with you too. This is because, according to NASA, temperatures in the Sahara will drop once the sun goes down, from an average high of 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degree Celsius) to An average low of 25 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 4 degrees Celsius) at night during the day. Then why, in arid deserts like the Sahara, does this dramatic temperature change happen? And how do such wild extremes cope with native animals and plants? Heat and humidity The reason why arid deserts get so hot, and subsequently so cold, is a combination of two main factors: sand and hu...

    A whitetail deer was found wandering through the streets of Farragut, Tennessee, with both of its eyeballs developing thick fur. The fur, the translucent portion of the eye covering the iris and pupil, protruded from flesh discs covering both the buck's cornea. According to Quality Whitetails magazine, the journal of the National Deer Association, the bizarre disease, called corneal dermoids, has been recorded in only one other whitetail in the state of Tennessee. By definition, a dermoid is a type of benign tumor that consists of tissues that normally occur in other parts of the body; in this case, complete skin tissue with hair follicles cropped in the cornea of the deer. "Maybe could tell day from dark, but I wouldn’t think it would be able to see where it was going, “Maybe the hairy-eyed deer could tell day from night. I'd compare it with a washcloth to cover your eyes. Day after night, you might say, but that's about it. According to the Cornell Wild...