萬物簡史 第23期:走進太陽系(1)

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2.歡迎來到太陽系

Astronomers these days can do the most amazingthings. If someone struck a match on the Moon, theycould spot the flare. From the tiniest throbs andwobbles of distant stars they can infer the size andcharacter and even potential habitability of planetsmuch too remote to be seen—planets so distant thatit would take us half a million years in a spaceship toget there.

如今，天文學家可以辦到最令人瞠目的事。要是有人在月球上劃一根火柴，他們能看到那個火焰。根據遠處星星最細微的搏動和抖動，他們能推算出行星的大小和性質，甚至潛在的適于棲居的可能性，而這些行星可是遠得根本看不見的啊--它們如此遙遠，我們乘宇宙飛船去那里也要花250萬年。

With their radio telescopes they can capture wisps of radiation so preposterously faint thatthe total amount of energy collected from outside the solar system by all of them together sincecollecting began (in 1951) is "less than the energy of a single snowflake striking the ground,"in the words of Carl Sagan.

他們能用射電望遠鏡捕捉到一絲一毫的輻射，而這種輻射是如此微弱，自開始采集(1951年)以來，所采集到的來自太陽系之外的全部能量，用卡爾·薩根的話來說："還不到一片雪花落地時所產生的能量。"

In short, there isn't a great deal that goes on in the universe that astronomers can't find whenthey have a mind to. Which is why it is all the more remarkable to reflect that until 1978 noone had ever noticed that Pluto has a moon. In the summer of that year, a young astronomernamed James Christy at the U.S. Naval Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, was making a routineexamination of photographic images of Pluto when he saw that there was something there—something blurry and uncertain but definitely other than Pluto.

總之，宇宙里沒有多少東西是天文學家發(fā)現不了的，只要他們愿意。因此，想起為什么在1978年之前還沒有人注意到冥王星有一顆衛(wèi)星，這就更為尋常了。那年夏天，亞利桑那州弗拉格斯塔夫的美國海軍天文臺有一位名叫詹姆斯·克里斯蒂的年輕天文學家，正在對冥王星的照片作例行審查，突然發(fā)現那里有什么東西--模模糊糊、不大確定的東西，反正肯定不是冥王星。

Consulting a colleague named Robert Harrington, he concluded that what he was looking atwas a moon. And it wasn't just any moon. Relative to the planet, it was the biggest moon inthe solar system.

他跟一位名叫羅伯特·哈靈頓的同事討論片刻以后下了結論：他觀察到的是顆衛(wèi)星。它還不是一般的衛(wèi)星。相對于那顆行星而言，它是太陽系里最大的衛(wèi)星。