NASA Is Turning Black Friday Into “Black Hole Friday”

Black Friday, the shoppingest day of the year, is increasingly synonymous with two things: great deals and the hilarious/disturbing lengths to which people will go to get them. But NASA is trying to give Black Friday a much-needed makeover, and on Twitter the agency has rechristened the day #BlackHoleFriday.

For the rest of the day, America's space agency is going to be sharing fun facts about everyone's favorite galactic trash compactors.

It's #BlackFriday, but for us, it's the 2nd annual #BlackHoleFriday. Today, we'll post pics & info about black holes pic.twitter.com/6npxklEw2N

— NASA (@NASA) November 28, 2014

Check out, for instance, this simulation of two black holes merging. It's even more amazing than Black Friday deals!

2 for 1 #BlackFriday deal! Actually, it's 2 black holes merging into 1: http://t.co/ymZxzddNcv #BlackHoleFriday pic.twitter.com/AAHGgGShiG

— NASA (@NASA) November 28, 2014

Black holes, says the Independent, are formed “when matter is pressed into a tiny space”—like a crush of shoppers at a door buster sale. The result here, however, is not tragic tramplings but a singularity of incredibly density: 

Black holes aren't empty holes at all! They're a massive amount of matter packed in a tiny area #BlackHoleFriday pic.twitter.com/2tDuxhCgNM

— NASA (@NASA) November 28, 2014

This is the second year for NASA's #BlackHoleFriday shenanigans. One last reason to prefer this version of Friday-after-Thanksgiving—while the labor movement has protested the treatment of workers on Black Friday, we don't see physicists and astronomers lining the streets outside the world's telescopes and computer modeling centers to protest #BlackHoleFriday.

Colin Schultz | | READ MORE

Colin Schultz is a freelance science writer and editor based in Toronto, Canada. He blogs for Smart News and contributes to the American Geophysical Union. He has a B.Sc. in physical science and philosophy, and a M.A. in journalism.