萬物簡史 第25期:走進太陽系(3)

One nice touch about Christy's discovery was that ithappened in Flagstaff, for it was there in 1930 thatPluto had been found in the first place. That seminalevent in astronomy was largely to the credit of theastronomer Percival Lowell.

克里斯蒂的發(fā)現(xiàn)有一點妙處：它發(fā)生在弗拉格斯塔夫，冥王星就是1930年在那里首次發(fā)現(xiàn)的。這個天文學上的重大發(fā)現(xiàn)，很大程度上要歸功于天文學家珀西瓦爾·洛厄爾。

Lowell, who came from one of the oldest and wealthiest Boston families (the one in the famousditty about Boston being the home of the bean and the cod, where Lowells spoke only toCabots, while Cabots spoke only to God), endowed the famous observatory that bears hisname, but is most indelibly remembered for his belief that Mars was covered with canals builtby industrious Martians for purposes of conveying water from polar regions to the dry butproductive lands nearer the equator.

洛厄爾出生于波士頓一個最古老、最富裕的家族(就是那首關于波士頓是豆子和鱈魚故鄉(xiāng)的著名歌謠中提到的家族。歌詞中說，洛厄爾家族只跟卡伯特家族說話，卡伯特家族只跟上帝說話)。他捐贈了以他的名字冠名的著名天文臺，但人們最不會忘記的是他這樣的看法：火星上到處是由勤勞的火星人修建的運河，用來積儲來自極地的水，以灌溉赤道附近那干旱而又豐產(chǎn)的土地。

Lowell's other abiding conviction was that there existed, somewhere out beyond Neptune, anundiscovered ninth planet, dubbed Planet X. Lowell based this belief on irregularities hedetected in the orbits of Uranus and Neptune, and devoted the last years of his life to trying tofind the gassy giant he was certain was out there.

洛厄爾另一個令人不忘的看法是：在海王星以遠的某個地方，存在著未被發(fā)現(xiàn)的第九顆行星，他給它起名為行星X。洛厄爾的這種看法是基于他在天王星和海王星的軌道上發(fā)現(xiàn)的不規(guī)律的現(xiàn)象。于是，他把生命的最后幾年致力于找到那顆氣態(tài)巨星。他斷定它就在那里。

Unfortunately, he died suddenly in 1916, at least partly exhausted by his quest, and the searchfell into abeyance while Lowell's heirs squabbled over his estate. However, in 1929, partly as away of deflecting attention away from the Mars canal saga (which by now had become a seriousembarrassment), the Lowell Observatory directors decided to resume the search and to thatend hired a young man from Kansas named Clyde Tombaugh.

不幸的是，他于1916年突然去世。至少在一定程度上，這是他的探索工作過于疲勞所致。洛厄爾的繼承人為了遺產(chǎn)爭吵不休，探索工作暫時擱置下來。然而，1929年，某種程度上是為了轉(zhuǎn)移對火星運河傳說的注意力(到那個時候，它已經(jīng)成為一件非常令人難堪的事)，洛厄爾天文臺的負責人決定恢復探索，并為此從堪薩斯州請來了一位名叫克萊德·湯博的年輕人。