COMPACT STAR SYSTEM

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This artist's concept depicts a planetary system so compact that it's more like Jupiter and its moons than a star and its planets. Astronomers using data from NASA's Kepler mission and ground-based telescopes recently confirmed that the system, called KOI-961, hosts the three smallest exoplanets currently known to orbit a star other than our sun. An exoplanet is a planet that resides outside of our solar system. The star, which is located about 130 light-years away in the Cygnus constellation, is a red dwarf that is one-sixth the size of the sun, or just 70 percent bigger than Jupiter. The star is also cooler than our sun, and gives off more red light than yellow. The smallest of the three planets, called KOI-961.03, is actually located the farthest from the star, and is pictured in the foreground. This planet is about the size of Mars, with a radius of 0.57 times that of Earth. The next planet to the upper right is KOI-961.01, which is 0.78 times the radius of Earth. The planet closest to the star is KOI-961.02, with a radius 0.73 times the Earth's. All three planets whip around the star in less than two days, with the closest planet taking less than half a day. Their close proximity to the star also means they are scorching hot, with temperatures ranging from 350 to 836 degrees Fahrenheit (176 to 447 degrees Celsius). The star's habitable zone, or the region where liquid water could exist, is located far beyond the planets. The ground-based observations contributing to these discoveries were made with the Palomar Observatory, near San Diego, Calif., and the W.M. Keck Observatory atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

HEAVY CRIME IN THE NAKED CITY

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A woman described as "heavyset" and naked except for her shoes was pulled off the J-Church line on Tuesday morning, and while cops and medical personnel were evaluating her near the intersection of 24th and Church in Noe Valley, San Francisco. She threw off a blanket that had been wrapped around her, walked up on the hood of one man's car, and stomped on his windshield. The man, John Knight, described the crazed woman as about 250 pounds, and he had a lot of explaining to do to his insurance company. “They asked if the car was on the side of a street or in a parking lot,” says Knight. “I told them, ‘No, a naked woman just got on my hood and stomped on it.’ They didn’t really know what to make of it.” The woman was hospitalized but it does not seem that she was arrested. Knight says he won't press charges because, well, she's unhinged.


Update: SFist commenter Paula Maxa posted the following pic of said woman in action:
I missed this! Too early for me now that I've retired. It happened just two blocks from my coffee hangout.

80 YR OLD ORIGINAL GANGSTER FILM

This blistering pre-code gangster saga towers over the rest--an unnerving portrait of a brutally evil and immoral man (patterned very loosely after Al Capone) obsessed with the power that crime and other perversions have carved out for him. Blissfully violent and sexually profane, SCARFACE sears itself onto your unsuspecting brain like few other films can. Starring Paul Muni, Ann Dovrak, Boris Karloff, Karen Morley. Directed by Howard Hawks. In B&W. 35mm Studio Archive Print. 93 mins.