Free Republic

You never really know what you might find hiding in your own backyard, especially if those things are particularly adept at escaping detection. Just 1,924 light-years from the Solar System, in the constellation of Aquila, astronomers have just discovered a black hole. And it's not just any black hole. Named Gaia BH3, or BH3, the object is the most massive stellar-mass black hole we've ever spotted in the Milky Way, clocking in at a hefty 33 times the mass of the Sun. It's the second-closest black hole we've found to our home-world, and it's just hanging out, quietly in space,...

Where are the damn car keys? The socks? The left sneaker, when only the right one remains where you last pulled them off? In the greater universe of smaller things, some objects seem to have a mind, and get-away plan, all their own. Explaining it away as aging grey matter, just one of those days or mind games played by the dog, most of us just blindly move forward — always keeping an eye out for our much loved but still missing bric-a-brac. But what if science could open a door into this lost world? What if the brightest men...