Weirdest news of the day

It is claimed that Jack Black has been cast in a movie adaptation of Rudy Rucker's earlyish novel Master of Space and Time. I haven't read the novel (I think it's been out of print for some time), but Black as a Rucker hero seems like a good fit, if the movie doesn't suck for some other reason.

Centaurus A

There have been lots of pretty pictures coming from space lately, but my favorite this week was of Centaurus A, one of the most famous radio sources in the sky. It's a giant elliptical galaxy in the process of eating a spiral galaxy, and it looks more or less like this 1998 Hubble picture in visible light: the spiral provides that dark lane of dust.

But recently the Spitzer Space Telescope used infrared light to get a better look at the victim. You can clearly see the spiral structure of the devoured galaxy inside of the elliptical.