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Submission + - Arizona Passes Sweeping Internet Censorship Law ( 3

scottbomb writes: It will be interesting to see how long this new law lasts until it's struck down in either the AZ courts or the US Supreme Court. I can't help but wonder just how the AZ legislature thinks this will pass Constitutional muster.
From the article:
"The law, which is being pushed under the guise of an anti-bullying campaign, would mean that anything communicated or published online that was deemed to be “offensive” by the state, including editorials, illustrations, and even satire could be criminally punished."


Submission + - Massive Black Holes Fed On Two Accretion Disks (

astroengine writes: "One of the most enduring mysteries hanging over astrophysics is how supermassive black holes got so big. The leading theory for black hole evolution is that they sucked in huge quantities of matter that formed an accretion disk. This disk supplied the growing black holes with mass. However, there's not enough time in the Universe for black holes to reach millions (or even billions) of times the mass of our sun. So, researchers from England and Australia have modeled a situation where a primordial black hole feeds on two accretion disks. If there's an inner and outer accretion disk skewed at an angle, as they settle and spread, they collide. The collision of matter causes a rapid slowdown, allowing the gravity of the black hole to take over, consuming up to 1,000 times more mass that it would just by feeding off one accretion disk. This may explain how supermassive black holes, that live in the centers of most galaxies, became so big so quickly shortly after the Big Bang. "We don't know exactly how gas flows inside galaxies in the early universe," said Andrew King of the University of Leicester, "but I think it is very promising that if the flows are chaotic it is very easy for the black hole to feed.""

Submission + - Micro-black holes make poor planet killers (

astroengine writes: Physicists are getting excited about the possibility of micro-black holes (MBH) being produced by the LHC and an international group of researchers have done the math to see what kind of impact they could have on the Earth. Unfortunately, if you're a megalomaniac looking for your next globe-eating weapon, you can scrub MBHs off your WMD list. If a speedy MBH is produced, flying through our planet, it will only have a few seconds to accrete the mass of a few atoms. It would then be lost to space where it will evaporate. If a slow MBH is produced, dropping into the Earth where it sits for a few billion years, the results are even more boring...

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