Contamination map of the Chernobyl region in 1996. Twenty one years later the hottest areas remain off limits, but quasi-normal life has returned in the less affected "unnamed zone," including the Rivne Province at the west (left) end of this map. (Credit: CIA Factbook/Sting/MTruch) Regular readers of this blog know that I normally focus on cosmic topics: comets, exoplanets, dark matter, the search for alien life, and the like. I don't tangle so much with the everyday challenges of life here on the ground. I enjoy taking a break from the quotidian. But the truth is, the two sides are never very far apart. They are both--all--part of one universe, governed by one set of physical laws. The nuclear reactions that regulate the afterglow of a supernova explosion are the exact same ones that established the harsh consequences of the Chernobyl nuclear accident. I'm not picking that example at random. I recently had the privilege of working with two historians (Kate Brown at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, and her colleague
Olha Martynyuk of the National Technical University of Ukraine) on their first-person exploration of the legacy of the 1986 Chernobyl incident on villagers living in the outer part of the contaminated zone. They returned from their trip full of unexpected stories about life in one of the most notoriously irradiated parts of the world. Their experience got me thinking once again about the juxtaposition of cosmic and terrestrial issues.
