Good morning.
Whitewater looks forward to a mostly sunny day with a high of fifty-five.
This day in 1986, as the New York Times recalls, marked “the world’s worst nuclear accident occurred at the Chernobyl plant in the Soviet Union. An explosion and fire in the No. 4 reactor sent radioactivity into the atmosphere; at least 31 Soviets died immediately.”
The accident was deadly and memorable, and the world may yet face others, but we have the comfort of knowing that no one, in good times or bad, will ever again have the unfortunate designation of Soviet. There one finds an assurance political rather than technological.
Google offers a geologist’s question for its daily puzzle: “Does the gemstone that’s composed of only one chemical element have a high or low refractive index?”
Look past our world, to the composition and nature of another, and Saturn will astound with images from the European Space Agency. Some of the space agency’s latest ‘Spectacular photos capture the bizarre workings of Saturn’s F ring (+video).’
Here’s that video — enjoy —