Physics Blog Post 2

Here is my second blog post for physics, taken off of my first blog that has so far been entirely messed up.

This week I read about black holes. I read about them on an article titled "Black Holes" by Ted Bunn

What I learned this far, is that black holes are much more confusing that I originally thought. At first, I thought very little of the science involved and accepted the fact that black holes were exactly what their name suggests. Black holes of nothingness that we knew very little about. However, after reading up on the article, I learned a couple of very interesting things about black holes. But just because I learned some facts about black holes doesn't mean that I understand the concepts behind them at all. One concept that is particularly confusing about black holes is that it gravity is just a manifestation of the bend of space time, but because black holes are so powerful, it distorts gravity even further, which apparently causes black holes to have some extremeley weird properties. Another interesting thing I learned was the concept of the "event horizon" I always assumed that black holes slowly sucked up everything and anything arond them, and would eventually consume everything. What I did not realize is the fact that unless you cross the threshold into the event horizon, you never actually get sucked in, and it is quite safe. This is purely hypothetical of course, as no one has actually been able to fly into/near/around a black hole. A different but even crazier fact that I learned was that there is a very strong possibility of a MASSIVE black hole at the center of the Milky Way. Massive being millions of times bigger than our sun.
Black holes are very interesting to me, and it would be very cool if we could talk about it more inclass.

Blog 1. Science Article on Zombies

This is my first blog (albeit reposted since my first blog malfunctioned and Mr. Goertz didnt seem to be getting any of my emails)

This week, I read an article on the possibility of zombies, and how likely a diesease or some sort of transmittable organism could evoke the symtoms of zombies, although in real life cases the subjects would more likely than not still be alive, just with decreased brain function. I was surprised to find out how this alread happens in rats, and how a small parasite that can only survive in the inside of a  cat will take over the brain of the rat and actually make it run TOWARD the cat until it gets consumed, where it will spawn in the intestine of the cat and repeat the process. The article also talked about how several contaigions have the
 potential to decrease the brain function the absolute barest minimum of basic life functions, basically creating ravenous beasts that resemble mad cows infected with mad cow disease. Luckily, as the article points out, the chances of any of these actually turning into a mind controlling zombie disease is slim to none. Even if it did happen, there are several reasons we would be alright. A) There has been enough zombie killing games to know that headshots ALWAYS work. B) Were Texan. That means there are an awful lot of guns and people who know to use them. But in all seriousness, even if this happened, most experts agree it would be difficult to transmit and should be able to be contained rather quickly.