Have you ever seen the auroras (极光) in the sky? Cosmic radiation (宇宙辐射) creates these pretty lights in the North and South Pole areas. It seems that cosmic radiation is a beautiful gift from space. But for some people, it can be dangerous.

A 53-year-old fight attendant in South Korea, who spent about 1,022 hours flying each year, passed away due to cancer. A South Korean court connected his death to great exposure (暴露) to cosmic radiation. During his career, nearly half of his flights crossed the areas in and around the North Pole, where cosmic radiation is extremely strong.

①       Cosmic radiation from space is hitting Earth nonstop, coming from both the sun and other stars in the Milky Way.

②       Earth’s magnetic field (磁场) and atmosphere (大气层) protect us from most cosmic radiation. The magnetic field is strongest near the equator and weakest at the poles. People living at higher latitudes (纬度), like in Heilongjiang province, are exposed to a little bit more cosmic radiation than those living at lower latitudes, like in Hainan province. Also, when you go higher in an airplane, the thin atmosphere increases exposure to cosmic radiation.

③      For flight attendants crossing polar areas and for astronauts in space, cosmic radiation can create health risks. NASA reported that the radiation exposure faced by astronauts spending six months in space is the same as having 1,000 chest X-rays.

④      However, what makes cosmic radiation dangerous also makes it useful. The light speed and energy of cosmic radiation have provided wonderful ideas for treating tumors (肿瘤). Scientists can now produce man-made radiation similar to cosmic radiation. Compared to the present ways of treating tumors, it can kill tumors better with less damage to healthy parts of the body around them.

On December 10 each year the Alfred Nobel Foundation presents six prizes. These prizes are named after Alfred Nobel who invented dynamite (炸药) in the I9th century. During his life, Mr. Nobel made a lot of money from his invention. It was his idea to create the prizes. He put the money in a bank, and money made more money through interest from the bank.

Mr. Nobel wanted to use his money to help scientists, artists and people helping others around the world. The prizes include physics, medicine, chemistry, literature and peace.These five Nobel Prizes were first given out in 1901. Later, Nobel Prize in Economic (经济) Sciences was set up to celebrate the 300th year business of the Central Bank of Sweden (瑞典) in 1968.

Each winner is given a cash prize, a medal and a special paper which explains the prize the person won. The amount of money each person gets is calculated (计算) from the interest made from all of Mr. Nobel's money still in the bank. This interest is divided equally between the five prize winners in physics, medicine, chemistry, literature and peace. The Central Bank of Sweden then pays the same amount to the winner of the prize in economics.

Affected by the COVID-19, this year's Nobel Prize Award Ceremony (仪式) will be held online instead of the traditional one.

What’s the best way to remember our happiest moments, like a birthday or festival? I am sure you would answer, “Take lots of photos!” Well, here is a great surprise. People who always take photos may actually be harming their memory, because they’re not concentrating on the event itself. That’s according to a new research by Fairfield University, Connecticut, in the US. They call this the “photo-taking impairment (损害) effect”.

“People so often take out their cameras almost mindlessly to catch a moment, to the point that they are missing what is happening right in front of them,” Henkel and her team decided to perform an experiment (实验). They wanted to find out whether taking photos in a museum would weaken (减弱) a visitor’s memory of what they had seen. So they simply told a group to look around the museum, and either take photos of the items on display, or try to remember them. The next day, the group was tested.

People who took photos in the museum were less likely to remember what they had seen. Besides, the details (细节) they remembered were worse than those who didn’t take photos. “These results show how the mind’s eye and the camera’s eye are not the same,” said Henkel.

But don’t put your camera down just yet. Other studies have found that looking back at old photos helps us remember an event, compared to just taking a photo and forgetting about it. So next time you’re thinking of taking a photo, just think: Is it better to look at the beauty around you with your own eyes, or behind the eye of the camera?