2026-08-12の世界

Look up at the night sky this week, because one of the best meteor showers of the year is about to peak. According to NASA, the Perseid meteor shower will reach its peak on the night of August 12 through the early morning of August 13. Dozens of meteors can streak across the sky every hour when the sky is dark and clear, and NASA says the shower is famous for producing bright fireballs, meteors that burn especially large and long. This year's timing is unusually good because a new moon falls on August 12, so there will be almost no extra moonlight to wash out fainter meteors. The Perseids happen every August when Earth passes through dust and debris left behind by comet Swift-Tuttle, a comet that takes about 133 years to orbit the Sun and was first discovered in 1862. Each tiny piece of comet dust burns up after slamming into the atmosphere at roughly 37 miles, or 59 kilometers, per second. NASA recommends finding a dark spot away from city lights, lying back, and looking toward the northeast without a telescope, since the meteors can appear anywhere in the sky. Give your eyes about 30 minutes to adjust to the darkness for the best view.

Scientists have shown that ordinary sunlight can create quantum entanglement, a strange link between particles that most people thought only powerful lasers could produce. Physicists at the University of Ottawa in Canada worked with the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light in Germany to test the idea outdoors, using real sunlight instead of a laser beam in the lab. The team used a cone-shaped solar concentrator, about the size of a home window, to gather sunlight and focus it through a fiber as thin as a human hair into a tiny crystal. Inside the crystal, pairs of entangled photons were created through a well-known process called spontaneous parametric down-conversion. Tests showed the entangled photon pairs matched a perfect entangled state with about 94 percent fidelity, and the results broke Bell's inequality, which is the standard test that confirms true quantum entanglement. The study, led by recent graduate Cheng Li and published in the journal Optica on August 6, suggests that satellites could someday use sunlight already shining in space to build secure encryption keys, instead of carrying heavy lasers and extra equipment. Because sunlight is free and available almost everywhere, this approach could also make quantum technology cheaper and more energy efficient on Earth.

One of Japan's biggest street parties is happening right now in Tokushima, on the island of Shikoku. The Awa Odori dance festival runs from August 11 to 15, and according to the city of Tokushima, it has a history of more than 400 years, with roots tracing back to a celebration held in 1586 after the completion of Tokushima Castle. Every summer night during the festival, teams of dancers called ren move together through the streets in flowing lines, wearing bright yukata and straw hats, while drums, flutes, and shamisen play a bouncy rhythm. Dancers often chant a well-known local phrase that jokes that since everyone looks foolish while dancing, you might as well dance and enjoy it rather than just watch. The city of Tokushima says the festival now draws more than one million visitors from Japan and abroad across its five days, filling the city center with music long into the night. Anyone can join certain public dance areas as a beginner, since some ren welcome curious visitors who want to try the steps themselves. Local shops and food stalls also stay open late, selling Tokushima specialties such as sudachi citrus dishes and fresh somen noodles to hungry dancers and spectators.

Baseball fans watched history happen on August 9, when Oakland Athletics shortstop Jacob Wilson set a new Major League Baseball record for the longest errorless streak ever at his position. Wilson played his 111th straight game without making a single error during a game against the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park, breaking the previous record of 110 games set by Mike Bordick with the Baltimore Orioles back in 2002. A shortstop is one of the busiest defensive positions in baseball, fielding fast ground balls and making quick, accurate throws to first base almost every inning, so avoiding errors for so long is considered remarkably difficult. Wilson's last error actually happened more than 13 months earlier, on July 6, 2025, which means he handled hundreds of tricky plays in between without a single mistake. After the game, Wilson said the moment felt special, but that what mattered most to him was helping his struggling team end a long losing streak at the same time. His teammates on the pitching staff also praised his calm, steady defense, saying it takes real pressure off the pitchers when they know almost every ball hit toward him will be turned into an out.

On Wednesday, August 12, the Moon will completely block the Sun for a total solar eclipse, and for the first time in more than a century, mainland Spain will be in the direct path. The Moon's shadow will sweep across Greenland, Iceland, northern Russia, the Atlantic Ocean, Spain, and a small corner of Portugal, according to NASA. In Spain, totality will last only about two minutes, and it will happen in the evening, close to sunset. Cities such as León and Valencia will briefly go dark before the Sun reappears. Skywatchers outside the path of totality are not left out either. A partial eclipse will be visible across Alaska, Canada, the northern United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland, and much of Europe and northwestern Africa, with coverage reaching as high as 99 percent in Barcelona and Madrid. NASA warns that looking directly at the Sun is never safe without special eclipse glasses, except during the brief seconds of full totality. NASA plans to livestream the event starting at 1:15 p.m. Eastern Time, letting people everywhere watch this rare sky show safely from home.

Dogs have lived alongside people for thousands of years, but scientists have just found new proof of how well dogs actually read our feelings. Researchers at the University of Vienna, working with teams in Mexico and Hungary, used brain scans and machine learning to study 12 pet dogs while they watched pictures of human faces showing happiness, fear, anger, and sadness. When dogs saw happy strangers, two brain regions linked to thinking and reward, the temporal cortex and the caudate nucleus, became active. More surprisingly, the scans showed different brain patterns for fear, anger, and sadness, the first evidence that dogs can tell these negative emotions apart, not just recognize that something is wrong. Lead researcher Laura Cuaya said dogs followed a very different evolutionary path from primates, yet domestication gave them the social skills needed to understand and cooperate with humans. The study, published in the journal iScience on August 11, only tested pet dogs, so the team is not sure whether dogs living outside human homes would react the same way. Next, the researchers want to study how dogs combine facial expressions with body language, voice, and scent to understand people even better.

On the opening night of the World Athletics U20 Championships in Eugene, Oregon, the United States team broke its own world record in one of track and field's newest events, the mixed 4x400m relay. Runners Joshua Shelton, Taylor-Nicole Overton, Jaelen Hunter, and Olivia Harris crossed the line in 3 minutes 15.31 seconds on August 5, more than two seconds faster than the previous U20 world record of 3:17.69, which the same country had set back in 2022. The mixed relay is unusual because each team must run with two men and two women, so coaches must decide the fastest running order for both genders together. The race was close behind the winners too. Czechia finished second in 3:18.16, a new national U20 record, while Australia took bronze in 3:18.45, an area record, and Jamaica set a national record of its own in fourth place with 3:18.78. Anchor runner Olivia Harris said she knew she just had to hold the lead her teammates gave her and finish strong to get the record and the win. The record still needs official ratification from World Athletics before it becomes permanent.

Finding new ceramic materials for everyday electronics usually takes a long time, because each new mixture must be weighed, blended, shaped, and fired separately before scientists can test it. Researchers at the Institute of Science Tokyo, led by Assistant Professor Sou Yasuhara, have found a much faster way to search for new materials. Instead of handling dry powders, the team mixes ceramic powders into water containing tiny cellulose nanofibers, which spread the powder evenly and hold it together. By blending different nanofiber dispersions in different ratios, then drying and firing them, the researchers can create and test many new ceramic recipes without the usual slow steps. The new method needs only about 3 minutes of hands-on work for each sample, instead of the usual weighing, mixing, and shaping. Using this technique, the team quickly tested barium titanate and related materials, and discovered a new barium-strontium-calcium titanate composition with an unusually high dielectric constant of about 4,000, a property that helps materials store electrical energy efficiently. Materials with strong dielectric properties are used inside capacitors found in smartphones, computers, electric vehicles, and renewable energy systems. The university announced the results on August 5, based on research published earlier this year in the Journal of Materials Chemistry C.