《旅行到宇宙邊緣》英文解說

1、Our world. warm, comfortable, familiar. .But when we look up, we wonder: Do we occupy a special place in the cosmos? Or are we merely a celestial footnote Is the universe welcoming or hostile? We could stand here forever, wondering Or we could leave home on the ultimate adventure To discover wonders

2、 Confront horrors Beautiful new worlds Malevolent dark forces The Beginning of time. The moment of creation. Would we have the courage to see it through? Or would we run for home? Theres only one way to find out Our journey through time and space begins with a single step. At the edge of space, only

3、 60 miles up. .just an hours drive from home Down there, life continues. The traffic is awful, stocks go on trading .and Star Trek is still showing When we return home, if we return home. .will it be the same? Will we be the same? We have to leave all this behind To dip out toes into the vast dark o

4、cean On to the Moon. Dozens of astronauts have come this way before us Twelve walked on the moon itself Just a quarter of a million miles from home. Three days by spacecraft Barren. Desolate. Its like a deserted battlefield But oddly familiar. So close, weve barely left home Neil Armstrongs first fo

5、otprints. Looks like they were made yesterday Theres no air to change them. They could survive for millions of years Maybe longer than us. Our time is limitedWe need to take our own giant leapOne million miles, 5 million, 20 million miles. Were far beyond where any human has ever ventured Out of the

6、 darkness, a friendly face The goddess of love, Venus. The morning star. The evening star. She can welcome the new day in the east. .say good night in the west A sister to our planet. .shes about the same size and gravity as Earth. We should be safe here But the Venus Express space probe is setting

7、off alarms Its telling us, these dazzling clouds, theyre made of deadly sulfuric acid The atmosphere is choking with carbon dioxide Never expected this Venus is one angry goddess. The air is noxious, the pressure unbearable. And its hot, approaching 900 degrees Stick around and wed be corroded suffo

8、cated, crushed and baked Nothing can survive here. Not even this Soviet robotic probe. Its heavy armors been trashed by the extreme atmosphere. So lovely from Earth, up close, this goddess is hideous Shes the sister from hell. Pockmarked by thousands of volcanoes All that carbon dioxide is trapping

9、the Suns heat. Venus is burning up. Its global warming gone wild Before it took hold, maybe Venus was beautiful, calm. .more like her sister planet, Earth. So this could be Earths future Where are the twinkling stars? The beautiful spheres gliding through space? Maybe we shouldnt be out here, maybe

10、we should turn back But theres something about the Sun, something hypnotic, like the Medusa Too terrible to look at, too powerful to resist Luring us onward on, like a moth to a flame. Wait ,theres something else, obscured by the sun It must be Mercury. Get too close to the sun, this is what happens

11、. Temperatures swing wildly here At night, its minus 275 degrees e midday, its 800 plus. Burnt then frozen.The MESSENGER space probe is telling us something strange.For its size, Mercury has a powerful gravitational pull. Its a huge ball of iron, covered with a thin veneer of rock The core of what w

12、as once a much larger planet. So wheres the rest of it? Maybe a stray planet slammed into Mercury .blasting away its outer layers in a deadly game of cosmic pinball Whole worlds on the loose careening wildly across the cosmos. .destroying anything in their path And were in the middle of it Vulnerabl

13、e, exposed, small Everything is telling us to turn back. But who could defy this? The Sun in all its mesmerizing splendor Our light, our lives. .everything we do is controlled by the Sun Depends on it Its the Greek god Helios driving his chariot across the sky The Egyptian god Ra reborn every day Th

14、e summer solstice sun rising at Stonehenge. For millions of years. .this was as close as it got to staring into the face of God Its so far away. .it is burned out, we wouldnt know about it for eight minutes Its so Big, you could fit one million Earths inside it But who needs number? weve got the rea

15、l thing We see it every day, a familiar face in our sky Now, up close, its unrecognizable. A turbulent sea of incandescent gas The thermometer pushes 10,000 degrees cant imagine how hot the core is ,could be tens of millions of degrees Hot enough to transform millions of tons of matter .into energy

16、every second More than all the energy ever made by mankind Dwarfing the power of all the nuclear weapons on Earth. Back home, we use this energy for light and heat But up close, theres nothing comforting about the Sun. Its electrical and magnetic forces erupt in giant molten gas loops. Some are larg

17、er than a dozen Earths More powerful than 10 million volcanoes. And when they burst through they expose cooler layers below. .making sunspots. A fraction cooler than their surrounding, sunspots look black. .But theyre hotter than anything on Earth.And massive up to 20 times the size of Earth.But one

18、 day, all this will stop The Suns fuel will be spent. And when it dies, the Earth will follow This god creates life, destroys it. .and demands we keep out distance This comet strayed too close The Suns heat is boiling it away. .creating a tail that stretches for millions of miles. Its freezing in he

19、re. Theres no doubt where this comets from, the icy wastes of deep space But all this steam and geysers and dust. .its the Sun again, melting the comets frozen heart. Strange. A kind of vast, dirty snowball, covered in grimy tar Tiny grains of what looks like organic material. .preserved on ice, sin

20、ce who knows when. .maybe even the beginning of the solar system. Say a comet like this crashed into the young Earth billions of years ago. Maybe it delivered organic material and water .the raw ingredients of life It may even have sown the seeds of life on Earth. .that evolved into you and me But s

21、ay it crashed into the Earth now Think of the dinosaurs, wiped out by a comet or asteroid strike Its only a question of time. Eventually, one day, well go the way of the dinosaurs If life on Earth was wiped out, wed be stuck out here. .homeless, adrift in a hostile universe Wed need to find another

22、home Among the millions, billions of planets. .there must be one thats not too hot, not too cold, with air, sunlight, water. .where, like Goldilocks, we could comfortably live The red planet Unmistakably Mars. For centuries, weve looked to Mars for company. .for signs of life Could there be extrater

23、restrial life here? Are we ready to rewrite the history books, to tear up the science books. .to turn our world upside down? What happens next could change everything Mars is the planet that most captures our imagination. Think of B-movies, sci-fi comics, what follows? Martians?Its all just fiction,

24、 right?But what it there really is something here? Hard to imagine, though. Up close, this is a dead planet The activity that makes the Earth livable shut down millions of years ago here Red and dead Mars is a giant fossil. Wait. Something is alive A dust devil, a big one Bigger than the biggest twi

25、sters back home. Theres wind here And where theres wind, theres air Could that air sustain extraterrestrial life? Its too thin tor us to breathe. And theres no ozone layer Nothing to protect us against the Suns ultraviolet rays. There is water. .But frigid temperatures keep it in a constant deep fre

26、eze Its hard to believe anything could live here Back on Earth, there are creatures that survive in extreme cold, heat. .even in the deepest ocean trenches Its as though life is a virus. It adapts, spreads Maybe thats what were doing right now. .carrying the virus of life across the universe. Even i

27、n the most extreme conditions life usually finds a way. But on a dead planet? With no way to replenish its soil, no heat to melt its frozen water? All this dust, its hard to see where were going Olympus Mons, named after the home of the Greek gods A vast ancient volcano. Three times higher than Ever

28、est. Theres no sign of activity. Since its discovery in the 1970s, its been declared extinct Hang on. These look like lava flows. But any sign of lava should be long gone. obliterated by meteorite craters Unless, this monster isnt dead, just sleeping There could be magma flowing beneath the crust ri

29、ght now. .building up, waiting to be unleashed Volcanic activity could be melting frozen water in the soil. .pumping gases into the atmosphere, recycling minerals and nutrients Creating all the conditions needed for life This makes the Grand canyon look like a crack in the sidewalk Endless desolatio

30、n.so vast it would stretch all the way across North America.But here, signs of activity, erosion, and what looks like dried up river beds Maybe volcanic activity melted ice in the soil. .sending water gushing through this canyon. Underground volcanoes could still be melting ice, creating water And w

31、here theres water, there could be life The hunt for life is spearheaded by this humble fellow. .the NASA rover, Opportunity. Its finding evidence that these barren plains. .were once ancient lakes or oceans that could have harbored life Look at those gullies. Probes orbiting Mars keep spotting new o

32、nes. More proof that Mars is alive and kicking .that water is flowing beneath its surface right now Water that could be sustaining Martian life Now, all we have to do is find it Maybe weve already found what were looking for on Earth Some think that life started here and then migrated to Earth An as

33、teroid impact couldve blasted fragments of Mars. plete with tiny microbes out into space. .and onto the young Earth where they sowed the seeds of life No wonder we find Mars fascinating, this could be our ancestral home It could be we are all Martians The Mars we thought we knew is gone. .replaced b

34、y this new, active, changing planet. And if we dont know Mars, our next door neighbor. .how can we even imagine what surprises lie ahead Our compass points across the cosmos. .back in time 14 billion years. .to the moment of creation. This is getting scary. Its like being inside a giant video game B

35、ut these are all too real. Asteroids, some of them hundreds of miles wide This one must be about 20 miles long. And there, perched on it, a space probe. Cant have been easy. .parking on an asteroid traveling at 50,000 miles an hour. Its a lot of effort just to investigate some rubble. Rubble that re

36、gularly collides. .breaks up and rains down on Earth as meteorites. Our ancestors saw shooting stars as magical omens. And they were right Rubble like this came together to make the planets.including our ownPretty magical. By dating the meteorites found on Earth .we can tell the planets were born 4.

37、6 billion years ago. These are the birth certificates of our solar system. For some reason, these rocks didnt form into a planet Something must have stopped them Something powerful. Jupiter. What a monster At least a thousand time bigger than Earth. .so vast you could fit all the other planets insid

38、e it Something this massive dominates its neighbors Its gravity is pulling the asteroids apart And its breathtaking But this beauty is a beast. Its almost all gas. Land here and wed sink straight through its layers into oblivion. And Jupiters good looks? The product of ferocious violence Its spinnin

39、g at an incredible rate .whipping up winds to hundreds of miles an hour. .contorting the clouds into stripes eddies, whirlpools. .and this, the legendary Great Red Spot The biggest, most violent storm in the solar system. At least three times the size of Earth, its been raging for over 300 years All

40、 these churning clouds must have sparked an electrical storm Just one bolt is 10,000 times more intense than any at home. Looks like the safest place to see Jupiter is from a distance Up there at the poles. .those dancing lights, theyre like the auroras back home. But the Geiger counter is going wil

41、d Even these are deadly, generated by lethal radiation Out here, nothing is what it seems. The universe is full of terrors, traps. Maybe this is a safe haven, the multi-colored moon, Io Wrong Very wrong. Those brilliant colors are molten rock, volcanoes spewing lava. Our journey across the universe

42、is turning into a struggle for survival Weve got to hope that if we outlast the dangers. .well be rewarded by wonders beyond imagination Four hundred million miles from Earth. .flying a commercial airliner here would take nearly a centuryWhat a weird looking place.and yet, strangely familiar A bit l

43、ike the Arctic, with all that ice, all those ridges and cracks Its Jupiters moon, Europa. And maybe, like the Arctic, this ice is floating on water, liquid water But were half a billion miles from the Sun. Surely, Europa is frozen solid Unless, Jupiters gravity is creating friction deep inside. .hea

44、ting the ice into water, allowing life to develop in the water. .beneath its frozen crust. We might be feet away from aliens From a whole ecosystem of microbes, crustaceans, maybe even squid The only thing between us and the possibility of alien life. .this layer of ice. But until we send a spacecra

45、ft to drill here. .Europas secrets will remain beyond reach Its captivated our imaginations, haunted our dreams And here it is, spinning before our eyes Saturn. Named for the Roman god. .who reigned over an golden age of peace and harmony This planets a giant ball of gas, so light it would float on

46、water Its spectacular rings would stretch almost from Earth to the Moon. Theres the Cassini orbiter Its picking up ghostly radio emissions Probably generated by auroras around Saturns poles This is the real music of the spheres. Cassinis telling us where these rings came from. Theyre the remnants of

47、 a moon shattered by Saturns gravitational pull Incomparable beauty from total destruction Billions of shards of ice Some as small as ice cubes, others the size of houses. They collide, break apart, reassemble Its like a snapshot of our early solar system. .as dust and gas orbited the newly born Sun

48、 .and gravity worked this magic pulling the lumps together. .until from space trash like this, our home emerged We could stay here forever But theres so much further to go, so much more to see. Like this moon wrapped in thick clouds, Titan. Theres an atmosphere down here Theres wind, rain ,even seas

49、ons Rivers, lakes and oceans It looks so familiar, so similar to Earth.But thats not water, its liquid natural gasHundreds of times more natural gas than all the Earths oil and gas reserves Maybe, one day, well use this energy to fuel a colony. Assuming there isnt life here already The Huygens space

50、 probe is here to find out Its telling us theres organic material in the soil. But its so cold, minus 300 degrees Theres no way life could develop Unless Titan warms up. The Sun is supposed to get hotter When it does maybe life will spring up here. .just like it did on Earth And as the Earth gets to

51、o hot for us, maybe well move to Titan. One day, we might call this distant land home Home. Were at least 700 million miles away now. After this we lose visual contact with Earth. Were standing on a cliff Looking out over a great chasm that stretches to the beginning of time. Do we have the courage

52、to jump? Were in the solar systems outer reaches. Unseen from Earth, unknown for most of history Its like diving into the depths of the ocean Those rings make it look like Uranus has been tilted off its axis .toppled over by a stray planet Its eerie out here. Already beginning to feel small, lonely

53、Maybe this is how well feel at the edge of the universe But weve barely left the shore If the solar system was one mile wide, so far weve traveled about 3 inches Out of the deep, another strange beast. .the god of the sea, Neptune This world is covered in methane gas And a storm as big as Earth. .wh

54、ipped up by savage thousand mile-an-hour winds Back home, its the Sun that drives the wind. .But Neptunes far away. Something else must be creating these ferocious winds But what? We know very little about our own solar system. After all those balls of gas a solid moon .Triton. Solid but not stable

55、Just look at those geysers.cosmic smokestacks pumping out strange soot.And this moon is revolving around Neptune .in the opposite direction of the planets spin. A cosmic battle of wills. .that this angry moon is destined to lose Neptunes massive gravity is pulling on Triton. Slowing it down, reeling

56、 it in One day, it will be ripped apart by Neptune And thats it No more moons, no more planets in our solar system. Its getting colder, were getting further from the Sun. .slipping from the grip of its gravitational tentacles. But this isnt a void Its teeming with frozen rocks. Like Pluto. Until rec

57、ently, we thought Pluto was alone. Beyond it, nothing We were wrong More frozen worlds Discoveries so new nobody can agree what to call them Plutinos, ice dwarves, cubewanos Our solar system is far more chaotic and strange than we had imagined Now were 8 billion miles from home. The most distant thi

58、ng ever seen that orbits the Sun. .another small, icy world, Sedna, discovered in 2003 Its orbit takes 10,000 years to complete. Hang on, theres something else out here. Ten billion miles from home the space probe, Voyager 1. This bundle of aluminum and antennae. .gave us close up views of the giant planets. .and discovered many of their strange moons. Its traveling 20 times faster than a bullet, sending messages home That gold