TIME December 11, 2017

Time Asia [US] December 11 2017 (単号)

　今年最後の通常号。
　次は年末恒例のパーソン・オブ・ザ・イヤー。今年はサイレンス・ブレーカーズとして、複数の女性たちが選ばれている。セクハラの話はいたるところで聞かれるようになった。
　その次は年を跨いだダブル・イシュー。分野ごとに来る年の見通しなど書かれているようだ。
　分量は多いし、特に後者は文字がぎっしり詰まっているが、ようやく先が見えてきた。

　アルプスでも雪不足は深刻であるという記事の中、人工雪を始めて作った人として日本の中谷宇吉郎という学者が紹介されていた。

　It was in 1936 that Japanese physicist Ukichiro Nakaya created the first artificial snowflake in a sealed chamber in his laboratory at Hokkaido University. That was no small feat, since snow is much more than just frozen water falling from the sky. You could get that much from hail, which is nothing but wind-driven raindrops that combine and freeze at high altitude. A snowflake forms when water vapor condenses into infinitesimal micro-droplets and the droplets then find a nucleus―typically an even smaller grain of atmospheric dust―to which they attach and crystallize. More vapor collects on the crystal, producing a larger flake, which eventually grows big enough and heavy enough to fall to the ground.
　Nakaya nucleated his first flakes on the fur of rabbits, inspired by a single flake he spotted on a single rabbit hair. One flake at a time, of course, is no way to make enough snow to cover a slope; what was needed was a way to manufacture the stuff in bulk. (p.43)