演講MP3+雙語文稿:天文學家成功的奧秘是什么？——嘗試不止十年的錯

聽力課堂TED音頻欄目主要包括TED演講的音頻MP3及中英雙語文稿，供各位英語愛好者學習使用。本文主要內(nèi)容為演講MP3+雙語文稿:天文學家成功的奧秘是什么？——嘗試不止十年的錯，希望你會喜歡！

【演講者及介紹】Erika Hamden

天體物理學家-TED研究員Erika Hamden建造了望遠鏡，重點關(guān)注紫外線，并開發(fā)了傳感器技術(shù)，使望遠鏡更加高效。

【演講主題】發(fā)射望遠鏡需要什么

【中英文字幕】

翻譯者Buyun Ping 校對者Cissy Yun

00:13

I'm an astronomer who builds telescopes. I build telescopes because, number one, they are awesome. But number two, I believe if you want to discover a new thing about the universe, you have to look at the universe in a new way. New technologies in astronomy -- things like lenses, photographic plates, all the way up to space telescopes -- each gave us new ways to see the universe and directly led to a new understanding of our place in it.

我是一名專攻望遠鏡的天文學家。我之所以建造望遠鏡，原因之一是因為它們很棒。但原因之二，我相信如果你想探索宇宙的新奧秘，你必須從一個新的角度 觀察宇宙。在天文界新的科技—— 例如鏡頭、照相底板，所有這些組成的天文望遠鏡—— 每一個都讓我們能夠從 新的角度來觀察宇宙，并且讓我們重新思考 我們在宇宙中的位置。

00:47

But those discoveries come with a cost. It took thousands of people and 44 years to get the Hubble Space Telescope from an idea into orbit. It takes time, it takes a tolerance for failure, it takes individual people choosing every day not to give up. I know how hard that choice is because I live it. The reality of my job is that I fail almost all the time and still keep going, because that's how telescopes get built.

但這些發(fā)現(xiàn)需要代價。數(shù)千人努力了44年 才真正建造出了哈勃望遠鏡。這需要時間，需要經(jīng)歷失敗，需要每個人每天 都堅持不放棄。我知道這樣的堅持有多難，因為我經(jīng)歷過。我工作的現(xiàn)實是，我?guī)缀趺看?都失敗，但依然堅持嘗試，因為這就是望遠鏡的誕生之路。

01:19

The telescope I helped build is called the faint intergalactic-medium red-shifted emission balloon, which is a mouthful, so we call it "FIREBall." And don't worry, it is not going to explode at the end of this story. I've been working on FIREBall for more than 10 years and now lead the team of incredible people who built it. FIREBall is designed to observe some of the faintest structures known: huge clouds of hydrogen gas. These clouds are giant. They are even bigger than whatever you're thinking of. They are huge, huge clouds of hydrogen that we think flow into and out of galaxies. I work on FIREBall because what I really want is to take our view of the universe from one with just light from stars to one where we can see and measure every atom that exists. That's all that I want to do.

我努力建造的望遠鏡叫作 小型星系際紅移排放氣球，這很拗口，所以我們叫它“火球”。不要擔心，它最后不會爆炸。我從事火球的開發(fā) 研究已經(jīng)有10多年了，現(xiàn)在手下有一支出色的建造團隊?；鹎虻娜蝿?wù)是觀測一些 非常模糊的結(jié)構(gòu)： 巨型氫氣云層。這些云的體積之龐大，超出你們的想象。它們是由氫氣組成的巨型云層，我們認為它們會在星系間浮動進出。我研發(fā)火球，因為我非常希望我們對宇宙的認識 從幾顆星星上的亮光 進化到可以測量每一個存在的原子。這就是所有我想做的事。

02:13

(Laughter)

（笑聲）

02:15

But observing at least some of those atoms is crucial to our understanding of why galaxies look the way they do. I want to know how that hydrogen gas gets into a galaxy and creates a star. My work on FIREBall started in 2008, working not on the telescope but on the light sensor, which is the heart of any telescope. This new sensor was being developed by a team that I joined at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. And our goal was to prove that this sensor would work really well to detect that hydrogen gas.

但測量一部分原子 能對我們理解星系樣貌 有至關(guān)重要的作用。我想知道 氫氣是如何進入星系 進而創(chuàng)造一個恒星的。我對于火球的研究始于2008年，研究的并非是望遠鏡，還有而是光敏元件，這是所有望遠鏡的核心。這個新元件的發(fā)明者 是我在美國國家航空航天局 噴氣式飛機推進實驗室加入的小組。我們的目標是證明這個元件 能夠完美完成任務(wù)，檢測到氫氣。

02:49

In my work on this, I destroyed several very, very, very expensive sensors before realizing that the machine I was using created a plasma that shorted out anything electrical that we put in it. We used a different machine, there were other challenges, and it took years to get it right. But when that first sensor worked, it was glorious. And our sensors are now 10 times better than the previous state of the art and are getting put into all kinds of new telescopes. Our sensors will give us a new way to see the universe and our place in it.

在我工作的時候，我弄壞了幾件非常非常昂貴的元件，然后才意識到我使用的機器 會產(chǎn)生一種等離子體，這會破壞 我們放進去的所有電子設(shè)備。我們換了一臺機器，還有其他挑戰(zhàn)，花了好幾年才走上正軌。但當?shù)谝粋€元件起作用的時候，我非常有榮譽感。我們的元件比之前的 最新科技好上10倍，現(xiàn)在被用于所有新款望遠鏡中。我們的元件可以讓我們從新的角度 認識宇宙和我們的位置。

03:26

So, sensors done, time to build a telescope. And FIREBall is weird as far as telescopes go, because it's not in space, and it's not on the ground. Instead, it hangs on a cable from a giant balloon and observes for one night only from 130,000 feet in the stratosphere, at the very edge of space. This is partly because the edge of space is much cheaper than actual space.

解決了元件之后，是時候造望遠鏡了。作為一個望遠鏡，火球顯得很奇怪，因為它既不在太空，也不在地面上。相反，它是懸掛在一個巨型氣球的電纜上，僅僅在平流層13萬英尺的高度上，宇宙的邊緣，觀察一個晚上。這么做的原因之一是 宇宙邊緣比真正的宇宙便宜多了。

03:53

(Laughter)

（笑聲）

03:55

So building it, of course, more failures: mirrors that failed, scratched mirrors that had to be remade; cooling system failures, an entire system that had to be remade; calibration failures, we ran tests again and again and again and again; failures when you literally least expect them: we had an adorable but super angry baby falcon that landed on our spectrograph tank one day.

那么建造，當然會有更多失敗： 反射鏡失效了，鏡面磨損了需要重做； 冷卻系統(tǒng)失效了，整個系統(tǒng)需要重做； 校準失效了，我們一次 又一次地重新測試； 還有你最想不到的失?。?有一支可愛但非常暴躁的幼年鷹隼 降落在我們的光譜儀上，占據(jù)了我們一天的時間。

04:21

(Laughter)

（笑聲）

04:22

Although to be fair, this was the greatest day in the history of this project.

盡管公平來講，這是這個項目歷史上 最棒的一天。

04:26

(Laughter)

（笑聲）

04:27

I really loved that falcon.

我真的很喜歡那只鷹隼。

04:30

But falcon damage fixed, we got it built for an August 2017 launch attempt -- and then failed to launch, due to six weeks of continuous rain in the New Mexico desert.

在修復了它造成的破壞后，在2017年8月我們嘗試發(fā)射—— 然后失敗了，因為新墨西哥州沙漠 時長六周的連續(xù)降雨。

04:43

(Laughter)

（笑聲）

04:45

Our spirits dampened, we showed up again, August 2018, year 10. And on the morning of September 22nd, we finally got the telescope launched.

我們心情沮喪，收拾心情再努力，2018年8月，項目工作進入第10年，然后在9月22日的早晨，我們終于成功發(fā)射了望遠鏡。

05:00

(Applause)

（掌聲）

05:04

I have put so much of myself -- my whole life -- into this project, and I, like, still can't believe that that happened. And I have this picture that's taken right around sunset on that day of our balloon, FIREBall hanging from it, and the nearly full moon. And I love this picture. God, I love it.

我為了這個項目付出了 許多——我整個生命，我現(xiàn)在依然不敢相信 接下來發(fā)生的事。我拍下了我們氣球升空的照片，正好是快要日落的時候，火球懸掛在氣球上，旁邊是一個滿月。我愛這張照片。天哪，我愛死它了。

05:27

But I look at it, and it makes me want to cry, because when fully inflated, these balloons are spherical, and this one isn't. It's shaped like a teardrop. And that's because there is a hole in it. Sometimes balloons fail, too. FIREBall crash-landed in the New Mexico desert, and we didn't get the data that we wanted. And at the end of that day, I thought to myself, "Why am I doing this?"

但認真看這張照片，它讓我有一種想哭的沖動，因為當完全充氣膨脹時，這些氣球應該是球型的，但這個氣球不是。它看起來像一滴眼淚。這是因為它上面有一個洞。有時候氣球也會失敗?；鹎驂嬄湓谛履鞲绲纳衬?，我們甚至沒能收集到想要的數(shù)據(jù)。那一天結(jié)束的時候，我對自己說： “我為什么要做這個？”

05:58

And I've thought a lot about why since that day. And I've realized that all of my work has been full of things that break and fail, that we don't understand and they fail, that we just get wrong the first time, and so they fail. I think about the thousands of people who built Hubble and how many failures they endured. There were countless failures, heartbreaking failures, even when it was in space. And none of those failures were a reason for them to give up. I think about why I love my job. I want to know what is happening in the universe. You all want to know what's happening in the universe, too. I want to know what's going on with that hydrogen. And so I've realized that discovery is mostly a process of finding things that don't work, and failure is inevitable when you're pushing the limits of knowledge. And that's what I want to do.

自那天起我思考了很多。我意識到我所有的工作 都是破壞和失敗，我們搞不懂，它們失敗了，我們可能第一次就弄錯了，所以它們失敗了。我想到建造哈勃的數(shù)千人，以及他們所經(jīng)歷過的失敗。有數(shù)不盡的失敗，心碎的失敗，甚至在太空中都可能失敗。但任何一次失敗都沒能讓他們放棄。我思考為什么我愛我的工作。我想知道宇宙中發(fā)生了什么。你們也都想知道宇宙中發(fā)生了什么。我想知道氫氣怎么樣了。這樣，我意識到發(fā)現(xiàn)幾乎是 一個尋求失敗的過程，而當你想要突破先有知識的極限時，失敗是不可避免的。這就是為什么我想這么做。

06:49

So I'm choosing to keep going. And our team is going to do what everyone who has ever built anything before us has done: we're going to try again, in 2020.

所以我選擇了繼續(xù)下去。我們的團隊準備遵照 那些已經(jīng)成功的前人的路： 我們要再嘗試一次，在2020年。

07:01

And it might feel like a failure today -- and it really does -- but it's only going to stay a failure if I give up.

盡管今天看起來像是一次失敗—— 的確是一次失敗—— 但如果我放棄了，這將永遠保持失敗。

07:10

Thank you very much.

非常感謝。

07:11

(Applause)

（掌聲）