Every day, you step through your front door and enter a deadly environment: the radiation out here kills hundreds of people each year, and injures many more.
It's a good thing science has provided us with a protective medicine. It's loaded with one of the dozens of chemicals that have been shown, time and again, to absorb the radiation you'll be exposed to. It's mixed into a bevy of special solvents, so that it adheres properly to your skin. A fragrance might have been added to negate the scent, or polymers to prevent water and sweat sloughing it off.
The medicine represents thousands of hours of developing, testing, and redevel-oping by thousands of dedicated scientists — and more than a few human volunteers who have gotten burned to check it works.
Yes — it's sunscreen.
It should be no surprise that Australia has some of the strictest regulations on sunscreen. Along with New Zealand, we have the highest rates of melanoma in the world. A few different factors fuel the Sun's deadliness here, such as our proximity to the equator, and the fact that a big chunk of our population has pale skin.
BECAUSE PERIHELION HAPPENS DURING THE SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE SUMMER, OUR SUNLIGHT IS SLIGHTLY MORE INTENSE
A particularly sly one is the Earth's variable distance from the Sun. In early January, Earth hits perihelion and is a mere 147 million kilometres (or so) from the star. In
