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News from Japan's crippled nuclear reactors continues to be dire. On Thursday, reports of a potentially large
radiation breach, produced in part by rivers of salty seawater used to douse the boiling core and spent fuel stores, threaten to virtually split the island nation into North and South Japan.
But inspiring tales of human bravery are also filtering out. And if half of this is true, Hideaki Akaiwa is a bonafide a hero in every respect:
Past broken glass, past destroyed houses, past downed power lines arcing with electrical current, through undertow that could have dragged him out to sea never to be heard from again, he searched. Hideaki maintained his composure and navigated his way through the submerged city, finally tracking down his old house. He quickly swam through to find his totally-freaked-out wife, alone and stranded on the upper level of their house, barely keeping her head above water. He grabbed her tight, and presumably sharing his rebreather with her, dragged her out of the wreckage to safety.
That's not even the most amazing part: after rescuing his wife, Akaiwa went
back into the swirling abyss again and again, and rescued his mother.
- Not only are their fabulous prizes offered by Yuri's night, here's another contest with fab stuff available in several categories for the best amateur astronomy images.
- A star so cold it could have puffy water vapor clouds floating high in a blue sky:
So poke your finger in a nice, steaming cup of Costa Rica Tres Rios or a fine Darjeeling as the mood strikes you, and ponder a star of this temperature, just hot enough to bring water to a boil.
- After increasing the sensitivity of detectors by 1000x over the last decade,
scientists are starting to see the first signs that dark matter
particles are more than just a convenient concept to plug a hole in
observations. Three detectors have now seen what may be streams of dark
matter particles, and even more sensitive instruments are on the way.
For a substance that is utterly invisible, dark matter does a
remarkably good job of making its presence felt. Astronomers have been compiling evidence for it since the 1930s, tracing how it shapes galaxies, galaxy clusters and even bigger cosmic structures by the inexorable force of its gravity. Although its real nature is unknown, dark matter seems to outweigh the ordinary matter visible in stars and galaxies by roughly 5.5 to 1.
- Discover Magazine blogger Sheril Kirshenbaum has the results of a poll comparing US and Canadian views on evolution. And yeah, it isn't pretty.