Weighing in at over 6 billion times the mass of our solar system, astronomers have found the most massive black hole yet at the center of galaxy M87. Three times large than Pluto’s orbit, it’s very, very big.

Not to be outdone, chubby loving astronomers have their eyes on one that may even be even bigger than that one at 19 billion times the mass of our solar system. Woop woop.

Astronomers calculate mass of largest black hole yet

Listen to the WeirdThings Podcast gang talk about this story as well!

If you were discovered in Beirut, as the center of attention making everyone around you laugh it up only to be found by some new friends who insist you travel with them to Brazil, you might think yourself a pretty lucky jet setter.

If you are Omega the chimpanzee, it’s even more impressive. Sure he was nabbed by animal rights workers who were revolted by the idea of him blowing buts in a Lebanon zoo. But still, free trip to Brazil!

“The chimp still regularly smokes … if someone will throw him a cigarette he’d pick it up and go for it straight away,” said Jason Meier, executive director for animal rights group Animals Lebanon.

Organizers of Omega’s evacuation say it marks the first time a chimpanzee has been rescued in Lebanon, a country with virtually no animal rights protection laws.

In his younger years, Omega was used in one of the local restaurants to entertain people and was made to smoke cigarettes and serve water pipes to customers. After he grew stronger, he was locked up and taken to a zoo where for the past 10 years he has lived in a cage measuring 430 square feet (40 square meters).

Hopefully, they packed some Nicorette. Quitting smoking could be quite the monkey on Omega’s back.

[AP]

The beautiful dream of a bionic eye has come one step closer to mainstream reality when three blind patient regained sight after having a microchip implanted in their retina. This method is revolutionary as it doesn’t rely on a camera to transmit images to an artificial retina, but rather uses the eye itself to communicate the images to the brain.

Awesome.

[Independent UK via reader ITNinja]

On April, 11 1980 a Peruvian pilot came across a UFO. They locked into combat and this is what followed:

When the Peruvian Sukhoi was already near the UFO, the object made a sudden stop, violating the laws of inertia. The fighter-bomber flew past it, with both vehicles at an altitude of 11,000 meters (36,000 feet) “the object pulled away quickly, gaining altitude at the same time. Later, it stopped abruptly, and I had to maneuver to avoid colliding with it,” said Santa María.

It was thus that Lt. Santa María and his aircraft went from being hunters to prey. He was being pursued by the UFO at 19,000 meters (62,000 feet), nearly 1000 meters beyond the aircraft manufacturer’s specifications. Furthermore, his fuel supply was running low.

Faced with this situation, Oscar Santa María decided to abandon his mission and withdraw, even as the UFO continued to ascend, losing itself in space. He was eighty-four kilometers away from his base, and 22 minutes had elapsed since his first contact with the UFO.

After landing, the UFO reappeared, remaining visible to the air base for nearly two hours.

AND the UFO showed off for two hours? Glad that on the way to inventing space travel and superior flight technology they stopped to pick up a little good sportsmanship.

This particular story has apparently been repeated for years amongst Peruvian pilots but has only been made public now thanks to government declassification.

[Inexplicata]

This picture was taken in 2007 by a college biology professor simply trying to test the flash during a research project near Lake Travis, TX. The professor and his student wrapped up their business near the creepy lake and left.

It was only after he noticed two points of light that he thought was an animal in the distance. He light blasted the snaps and eventually revealed the lumbering monster you see above.

What could it be? Bigfoot? Ghost? Old Man Withers who wants to scare everyone off the lake so he can buy the land cheap and build an amusement park?

Thanks to Weird Things reader Mike for passing this along.

[Examiner]

A work crew in Edmonton found a huge dinosaur bone while working in a sewer tunnel. What’s amazing is not necessarily the discovery, but the cavalier attitude held by the museum official the crew turned the fossil over to.

Museum officials say finding dinosaur bones in Canada’s Alberta province is a relatively common occurrence.

“I can go out on a hike on a Sunday and find a dinosaur bone. But it’s really a question of how significant the find is,” said Leanna Mohan, the museum’s marketing coordinator.

Okay Indiana Jones, calm down. Let’s not go crapping all over the coolest thing to happen these guys since Larry slipped face first into a pile of human waste because he was trying to reenact a CFL touchdown dance.

Besides, what if it’s weirder than that? Ever seen that movie Relic? What if that monster ate a real dinosaur in the sewer.

It’s early.

[BBC]

In an update to our story from last week (Asteroid Heading For Earth (in 2182)!), NASA is considering sending a probe to the ominous asteroid 1999 RQ36 to collect rock samples so they can more accurately when and if it will collide with earth. The project is being proposed as part of the New Frontiers program, and is competing with a trip to Venus for funding.

Basically, we are choosing between finding out when Earth will be destroyed or finding somewhere else to go before it is. Considering Bruce Willis will most likely not be around when the time comes I think we can safely write off the ‘Armageddon Option.’

[Telegraph.co.uk]

You want dragon? Here is how you’d make one with revisionist evolution…

[Pop Sci]

File this under “Things We Didn’t Know Were Super Cool Until We Heard It Was Real”:

HONG KONG (Reuters) – Researchers have discovered four new species of octopus in Antarctica with venom that works at sub-zero temperatures.

They hope to analyze the venom to see if it has medical uses, said one of the researchers, Bryan Fry, of the University of Melbourne. Their discovery, during a six-week expedition to Antarctica in 2007, was published in the journal Toxicon.

Experts have long known there were octopuses in Antarctica, but what surprised Fry and his colleagues was the sheer biodiversity and how natural selection changed the way they hunted and the nature of their venom.

The question now, does Sub-Zero Venom make a name for a band, album or song?

[Reuters]

Everyday this week…Brett Rounsaville brings us the Weirdest Disasters ever to strike down man or beast.

On January 15, 1919 an enormous, fifty-foot tall molasses tank collapsed, overrunning a portion of the great city of Boston with such sugary goodness that 21 people were killed, 150 were injured and eleventy-billion cavities ensued.

Thanks to the now pervasive colloquialism, “Slow as molasses,” I can’t help but picture this otherwise deeply depressing disaster as a scene out of an Austin Powers movie wherein Boston’s citizens scream and point at a 15-foot tall wave of dark brown molasses without ever making an effort to turn and run as it ever so slowly envelopes them.

The truth, however, is that this terrifying Blob-like blob was flying down the streets of Boston at 35 mph and crashing into structures and people alike with such force that it destroyed buildings, lifted a train off its elevated track and tossed a truck into Boston Harbor.

People and horses were stuck in the gooey tide like flies on flypaper, like flies in honey, like flies in Vaseline. (Why is it that flies get all the good “stuck in” similes?!) Some of the trapped horses were even shot by police rather than watch them struggle. (For the sake of what’s left of BPs PR I’m glad that’s not how struggling animals are handled today.)

Rather than wait for the molasses to ferment and stage the largest rum-fueled street party the world has ever seen, the city elected to begin the cleanup process immediately. It took 87,000 man-hours to clean up the streets and buildings affected by the Great Molasses Flood. That’s almost 20 years of one man working 12 hour days! (OR, to put it in terms you guys might be able to comprehend, that’s roughly the same amount of time it would take to clean the blood from your ears after listening to any given Nickelback album from beginning to end!)

If you had to be killed by a wave of something, what would you choose? Know of any Weird Disasters that absolutely have to make it into this week’s list?

The official Weird Things review of Inception? See it. Now. Stop reading.

You back? How awesome was that movie? I know! Remember that part when (REDACTED FOR SPOILERS)? So awesome. Anyhow, here is where science is in terms of making all that a reality. Or rather, a dream. The dream you might share as a reality. Or something.

[Live Science]

There is no official folder sitting in a dusty basement file room marked “Sea Monsters: CLASSIFIED” containing a hundred years worth of reports from parchment to dot matrix print outs about krakens, giants squid and God knows what else lurks under the waves.

At least that’s the official story after a freedom of information request was filed asking the British Royal Navy about a central record database for sea monster sightings.

A marine biologist inquired whether the Ministry of Defence held records about “abnormally large or dangerous sea monsters hundreds of metres under the sea” that had not been revealed to the public.

In reply an official wrote: ”The RN (Royal Navy), and MoD in general, does not maintain any form of central repository of information purely devoted to sea monsters.

“Personnel might be inclined to record unusual sightings in ship’s logs but there is, as far as we know, no actual requirement for them to do so, and it would be beyond the resource constraints of an FOI request to check every line of every RN log book for any such references since 2005.

“However, the RN does invite people to report sightings of marine mammals, and it’s possible this could include unusual sightings.

“These are forwarded to the UK Hydrographic Office at Taunton.”

Tales of insane sea creatures have been around as long as boats, seems like a real missed opportunity.

[Telegraph]

A breakthrough in how we understand brain development has led a group of researchers to totally change a developing fish brain into one that looks like another species of fish…

In another part of the study, the team wanted to see if they could use chemicals to change the patterns of gene expression and hence the brain development of the embryos. Could they, in fact, alter the brain of a rock-dwelling embryo to that of a sand-dwelling embryo? Turns out they could.

Sylvester treated the embryos with lithium chloride for three to five hours during an early stage of anterior-posterior patterning. After treatment, he returned the embryos to fish water and then took samples for study at different developmental stages. He found that each time he checked, treatment with lithium chloride up-regulated Wnt signaling, which led to a reallocation of brain precursors to the posterior thalamus.

So for those of you with “Playing God” bingo cards, please mark down that square.

[Science Daily]