Black Holes have the reputation of the bad boys of outer space. Nothing phases them, they simply swallow their challengers as soon as the challenger comes close enough. However recent evidence suggests that they may not have quite the digestion we believe them to have.

Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have been conducting a science project on a super massive black hole in a galaxy almost 300 million light years away from Earth. They have identified “tidal disruption flare” with a curious pattern in the energy emitted by the flare. It was seen in the Ultra Violet range of the electromagnetic spectrum associated with the black hole.

This pattern was repeated 32 days later, but this time it was in the X-ray band of the electromagnetic spectrum. The MIT observations were confirmed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center telescope as well. They believe that the energy echos are due to  a star being quickly ripper apart by the black hole.

Dheeraj Pasham said that this black hole has not had much to feed on for a while, and suddenly along comes an unlucky star full of matter. What is being seen is that  this stellar material is not just continuously being fed onto the black hole, but it’s interacting with itself — stopping and going, stopping and going. This is telling us that the black hole is ‘choking’ on this sudden supply of stellar debris.

If all of space was involved in a dance as celestial bodies moved around, this pair of dancing partners would really make a special sight. Astronomers at the Michigan State University have found a star that moves around a black hole at the really fast pace of twice an hour.

The unusual dance of the companion star and black hole have been sighted and confirmed by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, NASA’s NuSTAR and the Australia Telescope Compact Array. Arash Bahramian, from University of Alberta, said that this white dwarf is so close to the black hole that material is being pulled away from the star and dumped onto a disk of matter around the black hole before falling in.

Luckily for this star, Bahramian does’t think it will follow this path into oblivion, but instead will stay in orbit. While Bahramian may wish the white dwarf star safe from being sucked into the black hole, others in the astronomy community are not sure that it will continue to whip around the black hole for eternity.

There is a science project that suggests that eventually the dancing star will lose enough mass that it no longer resists the pull of the black hole. How long it will be before that happens is pure speculation. Till then we get to see these celestial dancing partners give us an unusual show.

Did you ever wonder how humans would be able to identify the fact that there were aliens in existence? There have been a number of different ways that researchers have hunted for proof that aliens exist. The latest science project comes from Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

The researchers here have a theory that the mysterious phenomena called fast radio bursts is actually evidence of alien technology. They feel that these bursts might be leakage from planet-sized transmitters powering interstellar probes in distant galaxies. Sounds like science fiction? Well what did you expect with aliens involved?

For Avi Loeb the fact that these fast radio bursts may have an artificial origin, is a fact well worth investigating. These millisecond-long flashes of radio emission were first brought to the attention of the scientific community in the year 2007. At that time they were thought to originate from galaxies far away.

Manasvi Lingam believes that they may be caused by a transmitter that is being used to power a light sail. In order to carry living passengers across interstellar or even intergalactic distances a huge amount of power would need to be continuously generated. And maybe as the transmitter focuses its beam on the light sail we on Earth may see it as fast radio bursts.

No, really it’s actual advice that researchers at Texas Tech University give us. If a student is feeling bad about scoring poorly on an exam which he may or may not have prepared adequately for, it may be a good idea for him to play a video game he enjoys.

The positive feedback that playing the video game well brings to the student will be able to help mitigate the negative self image feelings that the student got due to scoring bad marks. The reason this happens is because playing the game well reaffirms the student’s ability to do well in an area that is important to them.

John Velez, assistant professor at the Department of Journalism & Electronic Media in the Texas Tech University College of Media & Communication, says that parents need to praise their children’s video game playing abilities. Instead of criticizing them for playing all the time and ignoring studies.

This helps the students accept that as they spend more time on the game they do well playing it, so if they spent more time doing studies their grades will also improve. Changing study habits for the students would be easier if they were able to come to this conclusion on their own, said the results of this science project.

A cyborg is a living thing which has electronic parts. At least that’s what the science fiction books tell us. Now scientists are researching ways in which to create a plant which may actually have electronic tissues. Turning the regular plant into a cyborg plant.

Eleni Stavrinidou and her Linköping team have already managed to grow a plant that has a wire going up it’s stem. What’s unusual is not the presence of the wire but the fact that the wire grew inside the plant stem on it’s own. There is naturally a great deal of excitement over this new plant.

Researchers are looking into producing plants that may perhaps work better than the alternatives that Mother Nature has provided us in terms of generating power. Think about the revolution it would create if these cyborg plants could take the sun’s light and convert it right into electrical energy then and there.

It would be the end of the energy crisis as we know it today.  The Linköping team may have started the process off with their science project by getting the wire to grow organically within a plant, but there is a lot more to be done before you will be powering your home with your rose garden.