Also on today’s menu:
Heavy Rains Cause Washouts In Alexandria, Bristol
Bridge Over Yellowstone River Collapses
Japan To Begin Releasing Contaminated Water
Professor Michael Kramer of the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Switzerland, says that shock waves scientists have detected from the orbit of supermassive black holes at the heart of distant galaxies may give the first direct evidence of their ability to distort space and time as they spiral in on each other. “It could tell us if Einstein’s theory of gravity is wrong; it may tell us about what dark matter and dark energy, the mysterious stuff that makes up the bulk of the Universe, really is; and it could give us a new window into new theories of physics,” Kramer said.
Kramer leads the European Pulsar Timing Array Consortium, one of several groups making the discovery by studying signals from dead stars called pulsars which rotate and send out bursts of radio signals at precise intervals. Researchers are testing the theory that there are gigantic black holes at the heart of all galaxies and that that they grow over billions of years.
Dr. Rebecca Bowler of Manchester University explained, “We know supermassive black holes are there, we just don’t know how they got there. One possibility is that smaller black holes merge, but there has been little observational evidence for this. But with these new observations, we could see such a merger for the first time, and that directly will tell us how the most massive black holes form.”
Heavy Rains Cause Washouts In Alexandria, Bristol
Sunday, June 25, was a harrowing one for many Alexandria residents when water from the heavy rains washed out roads and left many people stranded at home, in danger of being flooded. Alexandria police and fire departments were called upon to assist in evacuating people, with the Bristol Fire Department also asked to assist.
Bristol’s Engine 4 got caught up in the storm damage: Shortly after midnight, the crew reported it would be out of service because Plumer Road, on both sides of the engine, had washed out. Bristol Road, on the other side of Plumer Hill, also flooded.
Other roads experiencing flooding or washouts were Bog Road, Bailey Road, Burns Hill Road, Thissell Road, Mathews Road, lower King Road, and Town Pound Road. Bristol’s West Shore Road also experienced problems.
Alexandria set up an emergency shelter at the town hall and offered to feed those working around the clock to get roads passable again. In Bristol, highway crews were dealing with washouts on Hemp Hill Road, Hemlock Brook Road, Gareth Lane, Upper Birch Drive, and Bristol Hill Road. Work in both communities continued into the week.
Bridge Over Yellowstone River Collapses
A day before the flooding in the Newfound Region, a bridge that crosses the Yellowstone River in Montana collapsed, plunging portions of a freight train carrying hazardous materials into the rushing water below. The cause of the collapse is under investigation.
The train cars were carrying hot asphalt and molten sulfur, according to Stillwater County Disaster and Emergency Services. Officials shut down drinking water intakes downstream while they evaluated the danger after the 6 a.m. accident on June 24. An Associated Press reporter witnessed a yellow substance coming out of some of the tank cars.
The river was swollen with recent heavy rains, but it was unclear whether that was a factor in the bridge collapse.
Japan To Begin Releasing Contaminated Water
Japan is moving forward with plans to release water contaminated by the 2011 meltdown of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant into the Pacific Ocean. The plant operators plan to slowly release treated water into the ocean through a pipeline for the next 30 years, alarming many nations, such as South Korea, which have expressed concern that the treated water could have undetermined impacts on the ocean environment.
Scientists downplay the danger, pointing out that releasing tritium-contaminated water is part of the usual operating procedure for nuclear power plants, including the Heysham nuclear power station and Sellafield nuclear-fuel-processing plant in the United Kingdom.
Tokyo Electric Power Company has used an advanced liquid-processing system that removes enough radionuclides to bring their concentration below Japan’s 2022 regulatory limits for water to be discharged into the environment. The limits are based on recommendations from the International Commission on Radiological Protection. That process does not remove carbon-14 and tritium, so the treated water must be diluted further, to less than one part per 100 parts of seawater, before being released.
Jim Smith, an environmental scientist at the University of Portsmouth, UK, says the risk to nations around the Pacific Ocean will probably be negligible. “I always hesitate to say zero, but close to zero,” he says. “The nearest Pacific island is about 2,000 kilometres away.”
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