Although the fields of extraterrestrial activity and ramen may seem to be worlds apart, these disparate subjects have provided one Japanese academic with widespread recognition.
Sho Sasaki, an associate professor of planetary science at the University of Tokyo, is the author of a paper focusing on the relationship between meteoroids and asteroids that was published in the scientific journal Nature in March 2001.
He is also the man who, two months previously, had won a TV ramen contest after overcoming a series of challenges, including identifying the name of a noodle shop after sampling its "menma" bamboo shoot pickles, a typical ramen topping.