Japan Demographic Woes Deepen as Birth Rate Hits Record Low

People use their umbrellas to shelter from the rain as they walk through Shibuya district in Tokyo on June 2, 2023. (AFP)
People use their umbrellas to shelter from the rain as they walk through Shibuya district in Tokyo on June 2, 2023. (AFP)
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Japan Demographic Woes Deepen as Birth Rate Hits Record Low

People use their umbrellas to shelter from the rain as they walk through Shibuya district in Tokyo on June 2, 2023. (AFP)
People use their umbrellas to shelter from the rain as they walk through Shibuya district in Tokyo on June 2, 2023. (AFP)

Japan's birth rate declined for the seventh consecutive year in 2022 to a record low, the health ministry said on Friday, underscoring the sense of crisis gripping the country as the population shrinks and ages rapidly.

The fertility rate, or the average number of children born to a woman in her lifetime, was 1.2565. That compares with the previous low of 1.2601 posted in 2005 and is far below the rate of 2.07 considered necessary to maintain a stable population.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has made arresting the country's sliding birth rate a top priority and his government, despite high levels of debt, plans to earmark spending of 3.5 trillion yen ($25 billion) a year on child care and other measures to support parents.

"The youth population will start decreasing drastically in the 2030s. The period of time until then is our last chance to reverse the trend of dwindling births," he said this week while visiting a daycare facility.

The pandemic has exacerbated Japan's demographic challenges, with fewer marriages in recent years contributing to fewer births and COVID-19 partly responsible for more deaths.

The number of newborns in Japan slid 5% to 770,747 last year, a new low, while the number of deaths shot 9% higher to a record 1.57 million, the data showed. More than 47,000 deaths in Japan last year were caused by the coronavirus pandemic.



Scientists Detect Longest Pair of Jets Streaming from Supermassive Black Hole

This undated artist’s impression illustrates how it might look when a star approaches too close to a black hole, where the star is squeezed by the intense gravitational pull of the black hole. ESO/M.Kornmesser/Handout via REUTERS
This undated artist’s impression illustrates how it might look when a star approaches too close to a black hole, where the star is squeezed by the intense gravitational pull of the black hole. ESO/M.Kornmesser/Handout via REUTERS
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Scientists Detect Longest Pair of Jets Streaming from Supermassive Black Hole

This undated artist’s impression illustrates how it might look when a star approaches too close to a black hole, where the star is squeezed by the intense gravitational pull of the black hole. ESO/M.Kornmesser/Handout via REUTERS
This undated artist’s impression illustrates how it might look when a star approaches too close to a black hole, where the star is squeezed by the intense gravitational pull of the black hole. ESO/M.Kornmesser/Handout via REUTERS

Scientists have discovered the longest pair of jets streaming from a black hole in a distant galaxy.
The jets shooting hot plasma are the largest ever spotted – about as long as 140 Milky Way galaxies lined up end-to-end.
“This one has managed to reach a size that’s so big,” said Eileen Meyer, who studies black holes at University of Maryland, Baltimore County and who was not involved in the study.
The discovery, made using images from a European radio telescope, was reported Wednesday in the journal Nature, The Associated Press said.
Black holes eat most space debris that falls their way. Sometimes, heated-up plasma makes a narrow escape by spewing out in thin, high-energy jets.
The jets can break apart soon after their creation, jostled by space turbulence or starved in the absence of new matter. But jets from supermassive black holes can become supersized.
The latest combined jets from a faraway supermassive black hole are around 23 million light-years long. That’s about 7 million light-years longer than the previous recordholder. A light-year is 5.8 trillion miles.
Study co-author Martijn Oei said researchers weren’t expecting to find long black hole jets so early in the universe’s history. The jets date back to when the universe was less than half its current age.
Studying the jets could reveal whether they had an influence on how the early universe came to be, said Oei with the California Institute of Technology.