ext3 can take several hours to fsck. We have a few TB filesystem full of hard-links (a versioned rsync backup). It does take endless hours to fsck, so you have to switch off the automatic check. Hopefully ext4 should fix this (or btrfs later).
Long-lived magnetic fields are sustaining a mammoth network of spaghetti-like gas filaments around a black hole, a new study suggests. Previously, it was not clear what prevented the delicate filaments from being destroyed by competing gravitational forces.
The black hole lies at the heart of a large galaxy known as NGC 1275, which itself lies near the centre of a cluster of galaxies called Perseus.
As the black hole sucks in gas from its surroundings, it powers jets of matter that produce bubbles of energetic particles in the surrounding cluster gas. As these bubbles grow and rise, cooled gas from NGC 1275's core gets drawn into long tendrils in their wake, like the strings that trail behind balloons.
New Scientist has a Hubble photo of the "spagetti monster" in the article."
I'd rather just believe that it's done by little elves running around.