Pre-Y2K panic had its moments, but it never left us wondering, “How would it feel to be devoured by a black hole?” Here’s a snippet from an ABC News article published 2 years ago, before the Large Hadron Collider was a hot topic:

Although scientists haven’t directly observed a black hole (since a black hole swallows light), they have observed the effect of a black hole on surrounding material. Astronomers say the first sign of a black hole’s approach would be subtle changes in the night sky. The gravity from a black hole would distort Earth’s orbit and we’d begin to notice differences in the orbits of other planets and stars in the galaxy.

If a rogue black hole ever closed in on our solar system and crept up next to Earth, the resulting havoc would seem like the wildest science fiction. Either Earth would career out of its orbit, spinning out of the solar system, or in the opposite direction, toward the sun, and we’d suffer a deadly warming.

Enter the LHC (via BBC):

…There are a small but significant group of naysayers who worry that the LHC is not 100% safe. Opponents say it is possible the collider could produce micro black holes and dangerous “strangelets”, and that catastrophic effects from these cannot be ruled out.

Afraid? This blog post on backreaction.blogspot.com should calm you down:

In short: If tiny black holes were produced because large extra dimensions did exist in the necessary number with the necessary radius, and if they did not evaporate within 10^-26 seconds as expected (Hawking evaporation is considered a very robust prediction, so this scenario is not confirmed by well founded theories), most of them would have such a high velocity that they escaped the gravitational field of the Earth for good. Even if they travelled straight through the centre of the Earth, the few nucleons they can hit wouldn’t change their momentum in an appreciable way.

Phewf!

“Most physicists believe the risk of a cataclysm lies in the realms of science fiction. But there have been fears about the possibility of a mini-black hole - produced in the collider - swelling so that it gobbles up the Earth.”

Frank Fam, and contributor to the Tuff Gong chapter, Liz Solms, just let us know about her new blog www.sweetpeabanana.tumblr.com.

A foundation grant first lead Liz Solms to Jamaica in 2005 to establish an organic growers association in the agricultural area of St. Elizabeth, a part of the Island known just as much for its beauty and bounty as its rampant use of agricultural chemicals. Years later, you can still find her championing the organic cause both on the Island and off. Back in the States you can find Liz hooking up families and dinner parties with the most banging meals made with local ingredients, or connecting weddings and other large events with local farms for their food service. And in JA, you may find Liz reasoning with a farmer on how to do it the organic way, or lacing out the dopest of villas with its very own kitchen garden. Check her out at www.sweetpeanourishment.com and www.bananatreeconsulting.com

If the monkeys who drink the most get to lead the others, Frank151 could be leading a freakin’ army.

Oh wait, maybe we kind of already are.

In honor of Earth Day, we’d like to share a few recent Enviro-stories with y’all…

* Our friends at Vice recently published a killer expose on the plight of North Pacific Gyre — a Texas-sized meeting point for all the major currents in the Pacific Ocean.  Because everything converges there, anything caught in those currents also ends up getting caught and floating around perpetually.  Vice’s Thomas Morton went to the Gyre to see how it looked; what he found was basically every piece of plastic that’s ever wound up in the Pacific, floating there right now.  Truly disturbing. Read the article — the consequences get scarier and scarier (especially when we start eating fish).

* The National Toxicology Program acknowledged today that Bisphenol A (a chemical found in common plastics and used for everything from baby pacifiers to CDs to dildos) has been linked to breast cancer, hormonal changes and Down syndrome… which means all the aging ravers out there have some serious issues by now.

* And, amid all this, Al Gore says things are actually worse now than they were before An Inconvenient Truth.  Let’s all pretend to be surprised.

* On a (slightly) lighter note, when you finally leave this pollution-ridden world, you can do it “green” — London funeral home Green Endings is pioneering new eco-friendly funeral services.  Buy stock now — business will only pick up as the environment starts killing us faster and faster.

Census Bureau theorists are projecting the world population will hit exactly 6,666,666,666 on May 10 this year.  That’s just a few days away. 

Frank151 recommends you do everything you’ve always wanted (but never had the cojones) to do… by May 9. 

Just in case of apocalypse.  You understand.  

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This just in from the NY Times, via Frank fam ChinoBYI… you peep it directly on his excellent blog here.

“Sixteen nautical miles from the Indian River Inlet and about 80 feet underwater,a building boom is under way at the Red Bird Reef. One by one, a backhoe operator has been shoving hundreds of retired New York subway cars off a barge, continuing the transformation of a barren stretch of ocean floor into a bountiful oasis, carpeted in sea grasses, walled thick with blue mussels and sponges, and teeming with black sea bass and tautog.

‘They’re basically luxury condominiums for fish,’ Jeff Tinsman, the artificial reef program manager for the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control, said as one of 48 of the 19-ton retirees from New York sank toward the 666 already on the ocean floor. But now, Delaware is struggling with the misfortune of its own success. Having planted a thriving community in what was once an underwater desert, state marine officials are faced with the sort of overcrowding, crime and traffic problems more common to terrestrial cities.

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Back in ‘05, the guys from Team HeadHunter did what many in the sport-fishing world thought was impossible — they caught the Warsaw Grouper, world’s largest legal grouper trophy fish.  The Warsaw lives 300+ feet down, in regions which are notoriously difficult for deep-sea fishing; to make it worse, they’re huge, unusually aggressive groupers.  There’s a reason those things hadn’t been caught before.

But when they learned about a cluster of Warsaws that had taken up in a sunken freighter, Team HeadHunter jumped at the chance to bring a few in.   They got more than they bargained for — about 300 lbs more — and they’ve got shots to prove it.  

While this story was covered in the sporting press at the time, Frank151 has just been passed an email from Team leader (and diver who caught this monster fish) Dan MacMahon, describing the entire experience of catching this bad boy for us, in full detail.  And it’s a damn good story. 

Follow the jump to read highlights — and to see some more pics of the beast.

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 Just a little too late for Valentine’s Day, researchers at Denmark’s University of Aaarhus recently completed a study of spider mating habits — and were suprised to learn that female nursery web spiders really, really dig the quiet guys….  In fact, they like the strong & silents so much that male nursery web spiders’ most successful courtship strategy is to play dead.  

Follow the jump to read more. (more…)

Tonight was 2008’s only total lunar eclipse…

After the Earth moved in between the Sun and the Moon, there was still a thin circle of sunlight passing through our atmosphere – which apparently scattered the blue light spectrum so that we cast a red shadow across the Moon’s face.  People used to call it the blood moon.

This was the same kind of eclipse Columbus supposedly used to fool the first Americans he met into thinking he had the favor of the gods — which really set a benchmark for European honesty towards indigenous people in years to come. 

Regardless, tonight’s eclipse was real cool.  Hope y’all caught it.