• University of Minnesota professor Roberta M. Humphreys estimates the radius of VY CMa at 1,800 to 2,100 solar radii. To illustrate, if our Sun were replaced by VY Canis Majoris, its surface might extend to the orbit of Saturn. Assuming the upper size limit of 2100 solar radii, light would take more than 8 hours to travel around the star’s circumference, as opposed to 14.5 seconds for the sun. It would take over 7,000,000,000,000,000 (7 Quadrillion) earths to fill VY Canis Majoris. The diameter of VY Canis majoris is Est. 3,063,500,000 km.

    —VY Canis Majoris - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

  • I had a bet with Kip Thorne of the California Institute of Technology that in fact Cygnus X-1 does not contain a black hole. This was a form of insurance policy for me. I have done a lot of work on black holes, and it would all be wasted if it turned out that black holes didn’t exist. But in that case, I would have the consolation of winning my bet, which would bring me four years of the magazine Private Eye. In fact, although the situation with Cygnus X-1 has not changed much since we made the bet in 1975, there is now so much other observational evidence in favor of black holes that I have conceded the bet. I paid the specified penalty, which was a one-year subscription to Penthouse, to the outrage of Kip’s liberated wife.

    —

    A cosmological credit default swap.

    Stephen Hawking (via jstn)

  • “Gainer calculated the average US salaries for a number of occupations and found a selection of rings based on the two-month rule. She assembled these into a series of twenty prints each featuring nine rings and the occupation name.” (via lee gainer: ‘two months salary’)

  • In order to become a “follower” on Twitter, teens first must flash their high-beam headlights at an oncoming motorist on the highway. Then, if that motorist flashes his or her high-beam headlights back in reply, the teen must kill the motorist in order to be initiated into “following” the online gang. The catch is that one can only use 140 sentences to plan a total of 140 events—that is, any combination of orgies, gang fights, suicides, and highway killings totaling 140 planned situations or activities.

    —McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: Truly Groundbreaking Marketing Research: Understanding Twitter.